Second Chance: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Kathryn Thomas

  He wasn’t going to flirt and sway me for his cause. I was there to be impartial. I wanted the truth, and if he wanted to be off the hook, he would give it to me.

  “Listen, Dante. I’m not one of your little hoes, okay? I am here to clear you name if there is reason enough for it to be cleared. We aren’t friends, and we sure as hell aren’t anything else.”

  “Mm-hmm. Do you threaten all your interviewees like this? It’s kind of hot.”

  “You and I are working together. Sitting here and talking to you is part of my job. Because I am at work. I will and expect you to behave professionally, as well. Your job is a little untraditional, but you can understand that can't you?”

  He narrowed his eyes at me. I was being mean. Was I being mean? I couldn’t be nice to him. He’d steamroll right over me. He didn’t understand nice. If he did, he didn’t understand it in this context. I couldn’t let him feel like he at any point was leading the interview or had the upper hand. He was at my mercy and he had to remember that. I had to remember that.

  His personality was so dominant; it was hard to believe that he would really be the kind to roll over and let a woman dictate him, but he was going to be that guy and I was going to be that woman. If he wanted his name cleared, it was going to be on my terms. It was his story, but I was writing it.

  “Uh huh. And I can't fuck another girl till the end of the season. I got it. You read me the riot act already. Let's get this over with. You’re late,” he said to me as I walked into the room. I wasn’t late. He was just early actually, to my surprise and approval.

  “You’re on time. Keep this up and we’ll have no problems. You and I,” I said. He was already in his basketball shorts, but that was it. He didn’t have his jersey on. His body was lean and powerful. He was built for speed. Luckily for him, his body, built by his sport, wasn’t that bad to look at. Very luckily for him, considering his track record with the ladies.

  He looked good, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. There was no way he didn’t hear that often enough to be sure of the fact himself. He didn’t need to hear it from me. Besides, I couldn’t say it, not with the sort of relationship that we had. Not when I wanted to get the truth out of him.

  He wasn’t even my type, anyway. Too tall. Too much of an asshole. Too cocky and arrogant. Too much of a whore. Was it bad that he was still appealing despite all the glaring character flaws? I understood the appeal, sort of, but that wasn’t what he or I were here for.

  “I don’t have to tell you why we’re here, do I?” I asked, turning my recorder on and taking a seat next to him.

  “Because you are intent on making my life a living hell?”

  “Be serious, Dante.”

  “I don’t know, might be hard. This reporter lady made me promise her that I wouldn’t party or chase girls for as long as she was writing about me. You can understand that I’m a little bit on edge, can’t you?” he said sarcastically.

  “All that irritation is the toxins leaving your body,” I shot back facetiously. He rolled his eyes. “So let’s start.”

  “I didn’t do it.”

  “Are you currently in a romantic relationship?”

  “What?” That one took him by surprise. I waited for him to answer and saw that he would need some encouragement before he was able to.

  “Are you currently in a romantic relationship with anybody?” I repeated.

  “No. What does that have to do with anything?”

  “The presence of a romantic partner would strengthen your case. In one way, if you had someone you were dating, you would be able to plead that you didn’t know the woman because you were dating someone else. Also, a girlfriend or wife or very faithful fuck buddy would be able to vouch for your character and back it against a woman trying to defame it.”

  “Are you trying to lecture me for not being in a stable monogamous relationship?”

  “I ask the questions. Not you. Who was that woman?”

  “I did not fucking do it.”

  “Mm-hmm. You have told me that several times now, and each time I have told you that that just won't cut it.”

  “That’s all there is to it, TMZ,” he said. “I’m sorry I can't give you a story because there just isn’t one there. I don’t know that woman, and I didn’t do anything to her.”

  I looked at him.

  “What? You don’t believe me? Are you going to make me swear on a Bible or something? Am I on trial?”

  “I believe you, but you need to give me more than that.”

  “There is no more.”

  “Why should anyone else believe you?”

  “Because I didn’t do it. That’s not enough? I have nothing else to say.”

  I looked at him and wondered why he had to make this so hard for me. So he didn’t do it. Fine. He didn’t do it. I believed him, but that wasn’t enough. There were more people who would want to believe that he had done it rather than he hadn’t. There had to be more to the story than just a denial.

  “Do you realize how bad it looks when you choose not to comment?” she asked me. “It makes it look like the woman is right. That might as well be your comment if you aren’t going to defend yourself. Telling me you have no comment is the same as saying you did something.”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “I believe you, but a lot of people will not unless you can tell then what actually happened.”

  “I can’t tell you anything, Quinn, because I haven’t seen that lady in my life. I have no idea who the hell she is.”

  “Think…because that answer is not going to cut it for a lot of people, especially coming from you.”

  “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means, people know about you, Dante. They know that you aren’t a family and church man. They know you party, and they know you chase skirts. This isn’t that big of a mental jump for a lot of people to make.”

  He rubbed his hands over his face and looked down.

  “Quinn… you might think or want to think that, but I swear, on my mother’s life, on my sister that I have never hit a woman. Not that one and not anybody else. I would die before I hurt a woman. I swear it to you, Quinn.”

  I looked at him. He was visibly agitated. The tension ran through his long limbs and his jaw ticked.

  “I’m just trying to tell you the kind of impression that other people are going to have. Why do you look so shaken if you aren’t guilty?”

  “It’s just… it’s just…”

  “It’s just what? This is a safe space, Dante. I know I’m a reporter, but I don’t want to say anything that isn’t true. I would never use anything you say to me against you.”

  He looked at me.

  “My dad… my father, for most of the time that I knew him before he finally walked out on us, used to beat my mom,” he said.

  I felt all the air get sucked out of the room. For a second, I had no idea what to say to that. What did you say to that?

  “Did he ever hurt you?”

  “No. She never let him.”

  “When did it start?”

  “My sister was just a baby. She was like…two, and I was six. It went on until I was twelve.” I knew he had a sister. There weren’t stories on her the way there were about him, but there were some pictures because they had been photographed together. She was beautiful. They had the same light features. Her name was Gabrielle Rock, and if she was two when he was six, then she was the same age as I was.

  “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

  “He used to yell at her. He used to call her a whore and a slut, and I never knew what those words meant at the time, but I knew they weren’t good. Gabbie would cry and I would hold her and tell her to keep her hands over her ears so she didn’t hear the thumping and screaming.”

  Thumping and screaming. I cringed, as I imagined hearing that.

  “Was he ever charged with domestic abuse?”

  “No. Never. I didn’t see him for yea
rs, but he came out of the woodwork when I started in the league, demanding money for all the trouble I apparently caused him when I was a kid. I give it to him because I know he isn't above coming after my mom again, or Gabbie.”

  “He sounds like a monster.”

  “He was. He is. It took mom years to get over what he did to her for all those years. Me and Gabbie, we were scared shitless of him. We couldn't do anything, if it wasn’t his threats that scared us, it was the fact that mom worked so hard to keep him away from us.”

  “You were just kids. It doesn't matter if he never touched you…he abused you, too.”

  “The way my mom used to cry, the way she would scream when he would hit her… I would never hurt a woman. Never. Not after seeing what happened to my mom when my dad was done with her. I would rather have both my fucking hands cut off than use them to hurt a female.” His voice was hard. His words came like he was talking through gritted teeth. He didn’t do anything to that woman. I believed him, but hearing the reason why made goosebumps rise all over my skin.

  “Is she… is your mother still alive?”

  “She lives in Calabasas. I bought her a place there. She’s fine now. He’s not coming near her again.”

  “You still have her; that’s all that matters.”

  “We came so close to losing her. Too fucking close. She was so fucked up after he left, she got into a relationship with a dealer and started abusing drugs. I can't tell you how many times I found her passed out on the couch and thought that was it. He used to…” He paused and took a deep breath. “Before he left, my dad, he used to do this thing, I only saw it once, but he would knock my mom down onto the floor and he would grab a handful of her hair. She would scream because it hurt but he would… he would kick her until the only thing left in his hand was a handful of her hair.”

  His voice cracked as he said “hair.” His face was stony still, but his eyes were shiny like he might cry. I reached for him, almost as an automatic response. His hands were on his lap, and he had them balled into fists. I covered one gently with my own, urging him to unclench and let me hold it. His hand was large, but the grip he eventually had on mine was gentle. He looked at me. We were sitting very close together. Extremely close.

  “I’m so sorry you had to see your mother go through any of that. I can't imagine how hard it was. No child deserves to go through that fear and terror.” I used my other hand to gently brush his cheek. The skin was stubbly under my thumb. He was a child from an abusive household. I had never heard any reports of that, not once. All that was public knowledge was the fact that they had grown up pretty working class in Ohio, him, his sister, and his mom, but I didn’t know all this. The public reports surrounding his parents—(there weren’t many)—were that his mom and dad had split up and she had kept the kids. It was his story and his dark past, but hearing him tell it, I felt cold. I felt this urge to…I don’t know…hug him, or something.

  “I don’t like someone wrongly accusing me of assault,” he said.

  I felt horrible for ever thinking that he had done that…for even contemplating the possibility and threatening him. He had done nothing wrong. She, the woman who had been at the basketball center, really was in the wrong. She was falsely accusing a man who was totally innocent. I felt anger all of a sudden. I felt angry at that woman for making those wild and reckless claims.

  Did she know that if enough people believed her, Dante would be ruined? She probably did. My mind raced. What if this was some sort of inside job and someone or a group of people was on a campaign to take down Dante Rock? I swallowed, thinking that I had threatened to be one of those people if he lied to me.

  He hadn’t lied to me. He had told me something that—whether or not he admitted it—had been hard for him to tell. I felt honored to be the one to whom he felt safe opening up. I marveled at the man in front of me, who had just poured his soul out to me. My thumb ghosted over his lips. He parted them as it did. I felt his hand leave my grasp and close around my thigh…near the knee. He pushed my skirt up a little, so he was touching my bare skin.

  “I understand. You shouldn't take the fall for something you didn’t do.”

  His hand was kneading my thigh, making it a little hard to think.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  He leaned slowly into me.

  “You’re welcome,” I whispered, realizing what was happening.

  I sat rooted to the spot as he leaned into me. He held my face in his hands and our lips touched. It was gentle at first, and I thought that was it, but then he continued. I felt his lips part and his tongue run along my lower lip.

  This was wrong.

  This was so wrong, but I didn’t want it to stop. I parted my lips and allowed his tongue entrance into my mouth. How many rules did this break? How many ethical codes was I violating? I was a journalist. I was a reporter—and I was letting my subject stick his tongue down my throat. I was sticking my own tongue down his throat.

  His large, callused hand gripped the back of my neck. The way his lips moved over mine…and the way his tongue felt… who had ever brought me to my knees like this with just a kiss? I put a hand on his chest and gently pushed him away from me.

  We couldn’t do this. It was not professional. It was a conflict of interest. My career was potentially on the line. How could I expect anyone to believe anything I said when I was out here fucking the guy that I am reporting on? No. Lord no. We couldn’t have sex.

  Dante wasn’t the kind of man whom I needed to be having sex with. He was an athlete and he lived like a rock star. He didn’t seem like the sort of guy who had sex with women twice. This was a terrible idea. I didn’t want anything out of it, but I didn’t need to get involved in the first place.

  My hand was on his chest, but he hadn’t stopped kissing me. He had just turned his attention to my neck, sucking and biting. He had fine, soft hairs—not that much and not that dense—covering his chest.

  “Dante… Dante?” I said.

  “What is it?” he said between kisses on my neck.

  “Dante, we can’t do this.”

  “Mm-hmm,” he said. “You're a reporter. That would be like, using your position over me for power or something,” he mumbled. He didn’t stop. I felt his teeth nibble my ear and my eyes fluttered shut.

  “Dante, I want you to stop,” I said definitively. My voice was shaking and my hand had been absently feeling the grooves of his abs. Under my skirt, my lips felt slick with moisture, already. I knew that if I looked down, my nipples would be hard, pressing against the fabric of my blouse. He raised his head to look at me.

  “If that’s really what you want,” he said gently. I looked at his face. He was so handsome. Everyone knew that. Everyone could see that. It was obvious, but this was new. Dante being vulnerable and honest, talking about something that happened to him, was more attractive than all the flirting he had done in my direction since we had met, but it also just made him a real person.

  Who was this guy? I liked this guy who was honest and who could talk about things even when they hurt. More than anything I wanted to kiss him. It was a bad idea, but I couldn’t just leave. Not then. I leaned forward and kissed him gently. He immediately took the lead, invading my mouth.

  It was a bad idea and it was a mistake, but I was one I was ready and willing to make. I let my hand sink into his crotch and feel him growing through his shorts. We were in the locker room. There was no way we could have gotten completely naked. I heard his groan as my hand felt him through the fabric.

  “Take it out,” he said to me.

  I looked up and saw him looking down at me. I bit my lip and looked down again, easing my hand down into his shorts and feeling his dick. The skin was pulled tight over the shaft because he was hard. It was hot and hard under my fingers. His penis was… it matched the rest of him. He was long and felt thick in my hand. I felt my pussy ache thinking about how thick he would feel when he thrust it into me. He groaned some more as my hand stroked t
he head in slow circular motions with my fingertips.

  “Do you have protection?” I asked him. I saw his brow furrow a little, he didn’t.

  “I won’t come inside,” he said.

  As if I didn’t already have enough reason to get out of there as fast as I could. We had started with an already bad idea, and it had just gotten a lot worse. He didn’t have any protection. I knew what my status was, but there was no way of knowing with him. His dick was in my hand, and I had never in my life wanted to please a man more. I wanted to suck his cock into my mouth and make him forget his name.

  It was a bad idea, but it was also an opportunity I couldn’t be sure that I would ever have again. I wanted this man, my body was aching for him, and he wanted me, too. There was time for regret later.