Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (23 page)

I managed to keep it together until I got in the back of that cab.

I just
broke
.

What had I done?

What the hell had I done to make Dante yell at me like that?

Dante

I didn’t even know if she had a ride to get
home
.

Was it my problem? She was an adult. Daniella was downstairs and could help her out if she needed it. She had a cell phone; she could have called anyone she wanted to pick her up. If those weren’t options, she had
two
legs
, and both of them worked. She could walk home, or to a bus stop, or wherever the fuck she wanted as long, as it wasn’t here.

I was so mad; I just didn’t want to be in the same room as her anymore.

I felt like I was going to punch someone or something. I paced around the room before I zeroed in on my victim. I grabbed the standing lamp and swung it into the wall, smashing it into splinters. I swung the broken piece, smashing it smaller. I tore one of the drawers out of my bedside table and threw it across the room. The drawer smashed, and what was in it, just condoms, scattered across the room.

I grabbed the one item on the bedside table which was a remote control and threw it against the door. It hit the wood and popped open.

A knock on the door stopped me. I turned to the door and walked up to it, opening it, nearly tearing it off its hinges.

“
What
!” I barked.

I saw Daniella at the door with her eyes wide. She backed away and turned her back when she realized I was still naked.

“I’m so sorry, sir. I wanted to ask about your guest,” she said. I backed into the room and looked for something to cover myself. I grabbed some boxers from the closet and put them on. I went back to the door.

“I’m sorry, Daniella. I didn’t know it was you,” I said to her.

“Your guest, the young woman, she already left. I arranged for a taxi to take her home.”

“That’s fine. That’s great. Thank you, Daniella.”

She wanted to ask about Quinn. I knew she did. She had seen countless women come in and out of the house and she had never asked about one of them. She was always polite when she would see them though and she always offered to get them taxis to take them where they wanted to go. She didn’t come to work every day, and that meant that she wasn’t there every single time there were women over. If she wasn’t there, then they just had to make their own
walk of shame
arrangements.

I had asked her to be there. I had asked her and the cook to come by the day before so that they would be here for when Quinn and I got back from Houston. I had never asked her to do shit for a woman who I had over.

Never
.

I had told her that I was going to be having Quinn over for a while, and I knew she wanted to ask what had changed, but she was biting her tongue. I silently thanked her for it because I did not want to answer it. She probably thought her wild boss was settling down but nope.

“Sir… I heard some noise coming from up here,” she said quietly.

I looked over my shoulder at the damage. There was smashed and shattered wood all over the floor.

“Uh… yeah. There was a little… situation.”

“I can clean it up,” she offered.

“Uh… not right now, Daniella.
Later
.”

Daniella left, and I closed the door behind her.

I walked back into the room. That lamp had cost six hundred dollars. That table… it was probably a shitty one from IKEA or something, but it was all over the floor. The remote control likely was not going to work again. That throw had been pretty hard.

Fuck
.

Daniella coming to the door had stopped me before I could do any more damage, but it looked pretty bad in here. It looked like the scene of a crime. Quinn was gone. Apparently. She had gotten herself a safe ride home… good, I guess.
Good riddance.

Why did she… how could she?

It was literally one thing. She was smart. She had a fucking degree, she could count to
one
.

It was all I fucking asked not to be filmed, and she…

I could still see it. I never forgot anything. I had tried for years to forget what had happened, but I never could. I could always remember it like it had all just happened yesterday. I never told this to anyone. Maybe I should have told
her
when she was here, or even before, when we had talked about the bottle and the bullying—but I hadn’t.

It didn’t happen every time, but it happened enough.

She wouldn’t have done it if she knew… I hoped she wouldn’t. I
knew
… I was pretty sure that she wasn’t the type of girl who was trying to use me to get somewhere in her life. She didn’t need to do that. She already
was
somewhere in her life. She was an established writer before she and I even met. She had her degree and her talent and her obvious chops. She didn’t need a come up.

What if what she was looking for wasn’t a come up, it was just a chance to drag Dante Rock through the mud?

She hadn’t given me any sign that that was something she wanted to do, but since she had that camera out, I couldn’t be sure anymore.

Why’d she have to make me not trust her? Why did she have to do some shit like this and make me doubt her?

I
wanted
to trust her, but she was fucking up.

It was the one and only condition that I had given her.
The only fucking one.
I didn’t ask her for shit else. I didn’t ask her to paint me any specific way in the stories she would write. I didn’t ask her to sign an NDA or anything like that. All I wanted was for her to never, ever film me without my permission.

All she had to do was tell me that she wanted some footage and I wouldn’t have said no. She could keep a camera on me like a fucking documentary, filming everything I did, as long as she fucking
asked me first.

But she didn’t.

I didn’t like feeling used. I didn’t like feeling taken advantage of and that was what she had done.

I was asleep. There was no way I could have given her permission, so she took it. There was no way that was a mistake. She took that camera out when I was asleep on purpose. She wanted to get away with it. That had to be it.

I didn’t want to think that she was sneaky or two-faced, but she had given me a damn good reason to think just that.

She had the footage now, of me sleeping. How much did she have? What was she going to use it for? What
could
she use it for?

I hadn’t let her stay around long enough to tell me.

I didn’t want to hear it.

She wasn’t welcome in my house again.

Quinn and I…. no, that was done. That was over. There was nothing there anymore. There was no way she’d be coming here again.

We had never put a label on what we were, so we couldn’t break up, but I was done. We were done. She and I were history, and that was that. No more Quinn Blaze.

It was fun while it lasted.

The season was almost over; it wasn’t like I'd be suffering, waiting to get girls again.

I could survive the few games that remained.

My body felt tight and tense. I went to the bathroom to stand under the shower a while. Maybe that would loosen me up or at least help me feel less like I wanted to commit murder.

The flashes and images that came back to me when I was triggered didn't scare me anymore the way the used to when I was younger. They made me
mad
. They just made me angry.

I stood under the water a little. Maybe I would need something else. Maybe I had to go out running, or go to the gym. I felt like if I was bent anymore I would break.

I came out of the shower and sat on my bed.

All the things she had left behind jumped out at me. They were on the floor and on the bed. I saw a lacy underwear thing, like a teddy. I saw a t-shirt. I saw a hairbrush. They must have just not made it all the way back into her bag when she was trying to get out.

I went over and picked the teddy up. It was pretty. I could imagine her in it. She would have looked good.

A beeping from my phone caught my attention.

I looked at my phone. I had been ignoring it since I had been in the bathroom and there were a few missed calls.

All from Quinn.

She sent a text message, too. I guess since I didn’t pick up and she didn’t know what else to do.

I’M SORRY. PLEASE. TALK TO ME. I DON’T KNOW WHAT I DID.

I rolled my eyes.

Wow
.

Either she was desperate, or she was a
cunt
.

She didn’t know what she did?
How
? Because I didn’t fucking tell her?
I told her
. I remembered telling her, and I remembered her saying she understood. It was even before the first interview when I had told her about my dad abusing mom. She told me all the shit I couldn’t do anymore while we were working together, and I had agreed. I told her that all I wanted was for her to tell me when she got the camera out. I didn’t say she couldn’t get it out, or that she should only get it out at certain times or anything.

She could have gotten it out as often as she wanted as long as she fucking
asked me first.

She had heard me… she just didn’t care. Hell, maybe she hadn’t heard me at all. Maybe she was just waiting for me to get to the good stuff so she just nodded and agreed with what I had asked her so she could get her recorder out and really get to the scandal.

I trusted her.

She did this to herself.

I ignored the text message and blocked her number.

There was nothing she could say. If she didn’t respect me enough to listen to what I had asked her, she didn’t deserve me listening to her now.

Quinn

What did I do?

What the hell did I do?

Was it a mistake coming to the first playoff game?

I had a good reason to be there… I was a journalist. It was their first game back after the games on the road. That was a thing. That was something people cared about.  I was there to report on it. That was
barely
true. I was a journalist, that hadn’t changed, but I had come with exactly none of the things that I would need to report
anything
on the game. I didn’t have my recorder, not even a pen and paper. I was there alone; I wasn’t there with a cameraman or even my own camera.

The camera that had gotten me in so much trouble before.

Oh, my god.

What the hell did I do?

Why didn’t he say anything when I asked him?

He had been so mad. I had never been scared of him the entire time that we had worked together, but when he was yelling at me to leave, to get out of his house, for the first time, I was afraid of him. I didn’t think he would try and force me out,
hit
me or anything, but just the sound of his voice and the look on his face was enough.

He was livid.

I had done something wrong, and I didn’t know what it was. I felt like an idiot for not knowing what I had done to affect him that deeply. I thought I knew him, or at least knew more about him than a lot of people could say that they knew.

What was it?

Why wouldn’t he tell me?

I had tried calling him and sending him messages, but he must have blocked my phone number, or he was just ignoring me.

Both were bad. Both hurt as bad as the other. He didn’t want to talk to me. That was what he was saying without saying it.

Hell, he
had
said it. He had told me to get the fuck out of his house. I wasn’t dumb. I knew that someone avoiding communication with you meant they did not want to talk to you. I understood that. What I didn’t understand, was what I had done to make him feel that way. He had been silent the entire duration that the Yellow Jackets were on the road. He spent his whole four-game suspension silent.

I remembered the way he had asked me to go home with him. He had wanted me to spend some if not all the time that he was going to have off with him. I had spent less than one full day.

We had had such a good time.

Such an amazing time.

The flight back… what he did when he asked me to bend over… then in the pool.

What went wrong? What the hell did I do wrong? I wanted him to tell me so I could make it right.

I watched him the whole game. I never saw him looking over at me, but I hoped he could see me. I wanted him to look at me, just so I could see something on his face rather than the look of complete rage that I had last seen.

The game ended with a victory for them. I wasn’t paying attention to the game close enough to even notice what the final score was. When the game finally came to an end, I suddenly felt out of place. I should never have come.

He had made himself clear when we were last together that he didn’t want to see me. I stood and looked for a way out. I had gotten to sit courtside because I was technically press, but now I felt too close. I wanted to leave before he came over to me. That was if he even
wanted
to. I didn’t want to give him that option.

If he did, what would he even say? Would he yell at me the way he had when we were at his house? I looked down and fell in line behind some people making their way out.

“Quinn.”

I jumped, hearing my name. It sounded like Dante. I didn’t turn. I kept my head down and tried to keep moving.

“Quinn.”

There it was again. He had seen me. I couldn’t pretend like I couldn’t hear because I had stopped instinctively. He was getting closer. I turned around and saw him walking up to me. His arms hung loosely at his sides, and he didn’t have the same rage in his face and anger in his voice as the last time we had talked. He had a towel around his shoulders which he had used to dab his brow and neck. He looked… like he always did. I couldn’t tell what he wanted from his stance or the way he had called to me. I took a deep breath and waited for him.

“Dante,” I said weakly.

“We have work to do,” he said. Oh. Okay. So no
hello
then? No nothing? He wasn’t going to say anything else? He wasn’t going to ask how I was. That was a little presumptuous to think that he really wanted to know, but
I
wanted to know how he was.

I felt a little abashed by the way that he addressed me. Work? I had wanted to hear him make an
apology
, or at least ask whether the two of us could talk. He was asking whether we could talk, but I didn’t want to talk work, I wanted to talk
us
. About what had happened? About what I did and about what I could do to fix it.

“What?” I asked.

“The interviews?”

Of course
. The interviews. The fucking interviews. The interviews that I had brought exactly zero things to conduct with. I wasn’t even in my usual work clothes. I was in jeans and a sweatshirt. I
never
wore those things outside of the house. Never. Unless I was working out, or something.

I suddenly felt self-conscious. I wasn’t in heels so I was a lot shorter than him than I usually was. My work clothes were like an armor—and I didn’t have that right then. I was just standing there, bare and open to attack. He had just asked me about work, so I wasn’t sure he was going to bring the incident up, but I wanted him to. I wanted us to talk. He was talking to me now after all that silence, so I wasn’t going to just keep standing there like an idiot.

“Uh, yeah, of course. When can we get back to work?”

“Not right now. I want to head out soon,” he said.

“How about tomorrow morning? Can I come to the house?” I asked carefully.

“No. You can't come to the house. We can go somewhere. A restaurant. I can have my agent or someone text you the details.”

He didn’t want me coming to the house. He wanted his agent to text me the details
. Wow. I thought we were past that. We knew each other intimately. He didn’t have to go through other people to get to me, and he had never made me go through other people to get to him. This was horrible. He was pushing me away. In Houston, he had basically asked me to move in with him, and now he didn’t want me coming to see him at home.

It was clear what he had come up to me to discuss. It was work. He wanted to talk work, and he wanted to keep it strictly professional. I didn’t.

I didn’t
want
to see him at a restaurant and I didn’t
want
his agent to text me the details. I wanted to sit down somewhere where we could be alone and tell him what I was feeling. How sorry I was and how confused I was at his behavior. I wanted him to tell me what I
did
goddammit.

“Dante, I don’t know what I did, but I’m sorry—”

“Usually, I would be excited about sitting down with you again. I know how you get after the interviews, what we end up doing together… it’s done.”

“What is done? You can’t back out of the interviews.”

“No. The interviews we can do, but everything else… it's over. I don’t want to see you unless we have an interview.”

I had been rejected in the past. It was nothing I couldn’t handle, and it wasn’t anything I was particularly mad about when it happened.
This
rejection, though… it stung. He was giving me what I wanted in the first place from him, professional distance, but now it came at a price.

When we would have sex, it wasn’t just the expression of the lust we felt for each other. It went hand in hand with everything he had told me. It wasn’t
just
fucking. I wanted to believe so much that it was, but it wasn’t. It was an extension of the intimacy that we were sharing when we talked, when he would open up to me.

He was giving himself to me when he would let me in, both in the interviews and sexually—and now, he was taking himself away. He was erecting a wall between us. It felt like a smack in the face. I didn't know what to do. I caught myself before I allowed any tears to fall.

“Dante. I’m sorry, but whatever I did I’m so sorry. Please tell me what I did wrong.”

“I don’t have time for this today. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He turned to start walking away from me. His face, his voice, his posture, everything was strong and hard. Did he really not care? Was he really unbothered by this, and was I the only one losing my mind, desperate and on the verge of begging?

“Dante—” I grabbed his arm, making him stop and turning him to me. I searched his green eyes for something. For anything, but there was nothing. They were empty. I didn’t see the warmth, the honesty, or the affection that I had seen in them before. Not even the lust. I wanted something. Anything from him, but he was giving me nothing. It hurt.

“Quinn. Stop. Okay. Just stop.” He gently moved my hand from his arm and walked away from me.

A part of me, the idiotic part that was hung up over Dante and wasn’t thinking straight, couldn’t process what he had done and said as an absolute rejection. I was hanging onto the hope that I would receive the text message directly from him.

I didn’t.

Just like he said. I got a message from a number I didn’t recognize, asking me to meet Dante at
Republique
at eight in the morning.

The restaurant opened for breakfast, but I didn’t think that he wanted a breakfast date with me. I was way too nervous to eat anything anyway. I made my way to the restaurant and scanned the room for Dante. He was nowhere to be found. I asked a waiter where I would be able to find him or where I could sit to wait for him since he didn’t seem to be there yet, and I was directed to a private room. I had no idea that the place even had private rooms.

It wasn’t dark or mysterious in the room when I walked in. It looked very much just like a regular room. It was probably very expensive to eat there, but it wasn’t as if Dante couldn’t cover the cost. There was one table in there and Dante was sitting at it.

I walked over to it suddenly feeling like I was going into an interrogation. He and I were alone once the waiter left.  He was sitting, but I could tell he was dressed casually, jeans and a shirt. He didn’t say anything to me so I decided to start.

“Dante—”

“Do you want anything to eat? Drink?” he asked. Why was he cutting me off so much all of a sudden? I suppose I might have deserved it since I had made him so mad somehow, but I still had no clue what I had done to him.

“No. Dante—”

“Sit down, Quinn,” he said.

I sank into the seat. There was nothing on the table between us, but I wished suddenly that there was, then I would have something to do with my hands.

“Dante…” I waited for him to stop me, but he didn’t that time. “Dante, please tell me what I did wrong. I've been wracking my brain and I can’t come up with
anything
. It’s been killing me to think that I did something to you. Please tell me what it is.”

“I was wondering whether you were listening when I would talk. So you
do
only care about what I say when the recorder is out?”

“Dante, how could you say that? Don’t just say things to hurt me. You know that isn’t true.”