Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (20 page)

I saw the men before I saw Dante.

“What happened?” I asked one of them. “What’s going to happen with Dante?”

“Were you the one on the phone?” one of them asked. He had on dark glasses even though we were inside.

“Yeah. I’m Quinn Blaze. Was I talking to you?”

“Yes. Dante… is a very lucky man. This could have gone very wrong for him.”

“So what's going to happen?”

“He had a nice long conversation with his management and he has to miss the rest of the games that they have on the road.”

“How many is that?”

“Four.”

I winced.
Another
suspension. When was Dante ever going to play again?

“What does he do now?”

The man shrugged.

“Whatever he wants. You’re his…?”

I thought about what the answer to that question was.

“I’m his… we’re
friends
,” I said.

“How about you keep an eye on him for us. Make sure he doesn’t get into any more trouble.”

Could I do that? I didn't know.

What did he mean by that? How was I supposed to watch out for Dante unless we were together?

I hoped that his lawyer didn't think he and I were
together
. Not that there was anything wrong with that, or because I didn't like Dante. I liked him just fine. I just didn't think that would be a good thing for him and his image.

If anyone from the restaurant was going to open their mouth to blab about what they had seen or
thought
they had seen Dante Rock doing, they were maybe going to mention that he had been in the restaurant with a woman.

I
would be that woman.

I could just
see
the rumors swirling.

It would be terrible for Dante. There were worse things than being in an alleged relationship, but I didn't want it.

It would just be more shit, and the last thing he needed. I didn't know what the hell he thought he was telling me when he asked me to keep Dante out of trouble. It didn't seem that Dante
could
stay out of trouble. It was just attracted to him. It followed him wherever he went.

How much influence did he believe that I had over Dante anyway? If Dante was a known rule breaker, what did he think
I
could say to him to change that? Trouble and Dante Rock were obviously two sides of the same coin. I had basically tethered him to his home, with no alcohol at his disposal or women to distract him and he had
still
managed to get himself behind bars.

I hoped his lawyer had some advice or something because I was clean out of options. Dante was obviously not someone who interacted with the universe the same way we mere mortals did.

Watching Dante come out, I couldn't help myself. I ran over to him and hugged him. He seemed a little surprised, but he hugged me back. I was so nervous about what would happen. I was happy that he wasn't in worse trouble, but how long before it was game over and he fucked up in a way that his lawyers could not fix for him?

"Are you okay?" I asked him, looking him over. He had light bruising on his face and the back of his right hand, but that seemed to be it.

"I'm fine, Quinn. What about you?"

What about
me
? Why was he asking, he was the one who had just spent most of the night literally behind bars. Yeah, I was a little
tired,
but no one had ever died of a little fatigue.

"I'm fine. What did they tell you?"

"The usual speech about how I am an idiot and I am going to do something one of these days that I can't get out of," he said, shrugging.

I wished he wasn't so cavalier about this. I was more worried than he was and
he
was the one with his entire career on the line.

"Did you talk to your team management?"

"They are the ones who told me I had to miss the rest of the road games. They also said they would release an official statement or whatever and that I was not permitted to say anything about this to anybody."

"What do they think happened?"

"Who
cares
? I'm benched. Once they want to tell me something, they will. I'm not going to ask them for information."

“What are you going to do now?” I asked him.

“Go home, I guess. They don’t need me here anymore. Wait. What are
you
going to do?”

“If you aren’t going to be here anymore, I don't have to be. I’m going home, too, I guess… till your suspension is over. If we have to do anything, we can do it from there.”

“Come with me,” he said.

“I
am
. Your team flew us out here, I suppose they will fly us back out?”

“They won't. They might pay for it, but we can't use the team’s private plane because it will be taking the team to the next stop.”

“That’s fine. I could get a ticket back to LA easy.”

“Don’t worry about it. I could give you a lift back.”

“How?”

“I only fly with the team because they prefer that all their players are together and arrive places at the same time so they don’t end up fucking up their schedule. I have my own plane.”

Dante had his own plane.
Of course, he did
. What was I thinking?

“You sure you don’t mind?”

“Quinn, I’m offering. It’s the least I can do after getting into that fight.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“I have one more thing to ask though,” he said.

“What?”

“I don’t know about you, but I was excited about finally being in a place with plenty of private rooms that we could use…
together
.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. I like fucking in places it's not allowed, but I like being able to lock a door, too.”

“Hm, I agree.”

“This whole suspension thing doesn’t have to ruin everything though.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“Come home with me,” he said.

“Your
house
?”

“Yeah. You can stay as long as you want.”

“Are you asking me to come to your place for a sleepover?”

“Quinn,” he said, pausing and touching my hair, moving it behind my ear. “We both know the last thing either of us will be doing is
sleeping
.”

It was that
thing
that Dante had that made women so attracted to him; he was using it on me. He was using it on me—and it was working. He was selling
something
—and I wanted to buy. I felt hot inside of my body. He didn’t need to ask me twice to do anything at all with him. The answer was already yes, but I was too proud to just let him know what a hold he had over me. Even if he already knew, I didn’t need to make him feel any more confident about it.

“If I come to your place, then I have to stop by mine for clothes.”

“Tell me what you want, I’ll tell Daniella to send someone to buy some.”

“Who is Daniella?”

“My housekeeper.”

He said ‘
housekeeper’
like it was the commonest thing in the world to have one. We had never had a housekeeper when I was growing up, but we hadn’t needed one. Dante sure made the most of his money, making sure he had all his bases covered. Maybe that was why he had never settled down with anyone, he didn’t need to because he had all the benefits of a wife without actually being married to one. His housekeeper kept his house running and went home every day, and the girls he fucked provided
that
service while also leaving every day. The dream…he was living it.

“How long do you expect me to stay?” I asked him.

“You don’t have anything else to do… you don’t have any other guys you have to go home to,” he said. So
…a long time
was what he was saying. He just wanted me to stay with him, indefinitely. I didn’t know how I felt about that. Of course, I wanted to say yes, but it was sort of a lot. The point at which I could still be awkward about us being together had passed. We were fucking. I couldn't even be coy about it anymore. It was no use.

I couldn't pretend that we were still here, trying to maintain some semblance of professionalism, because we were
not
. We were going at it and going at it was probably what we would have been doing if this whole fiasco hadn't occurred. I wasn't mad about it as much as I was just a little insecure.

This would last as long as he was in a position where he had to have me around all the time. I was the woman he was allowed to be with, so I was the woman that he
was
with.

If he wasn't into me beyond the sex we could have together, he was good at making me think that he was. He... the last time we had been together…had said I was his. He had said it over and over again:
“Mine, mine, mine.”

I was nervous about what he meant when he said it. Did it even
mean
anything? Maybe he was just saying it to make me hot or whatever. Maybe he got off on hearing women say that they were all his. The way we related to each other every other time, it was just so hard to put a real label on what we were or to even try and pinpoint what it was that he must have been feeling, or what box he had me in in his life.

I didn't have him in just
one
box. He was in several. I had heard enough times that men could compartmentalize things and not get as harassed about them as women got.

This
, now that I was feeling it, was what I had been trying to avoid when we had gotten together.

I wanted to know what
this
was so I knew how to feel about it because labeling it according to my feelings was way too risky. My feelings had been pretty fine before this whole thing, but now that the man had essentially tried to take me out on a date and now was asking me to go hide away with him at his house, I was beginning to feel a little funny.

I was beginning to feel that perhaps, I liked Dante a lot more than I wanted to and a lot more than he wanted me too, as well
.
So I had a little crush. That was fine. That was not that big a deal.

Thousands of women had crushes on Dante Rock. I was just the girl who was lucky enough—at the moment at least—to be the one he was sleeping with.

The one he was sleeping with.

The one he was sleeping with.

That was who I was. Nothing more. I was the one he was sleeping with. He had a reputation. He could sleep with anyone and he had slept with everyone. I was just
another
one.

"It's still dark, how soon before we can leave?" I asked.

It was the wee hours of the morning. After midnight and before five in the morning was no man's time. It was the time at which anything that was happening was bad. You could be sure of it.