Second Chance: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Kathryn Thomas

  Why the fuck?

  Why did fans act like that when they came to games? For them, it's just another day watching a fucking game. It was fun or whatever, but this was my fucking job. I was at work, and their dumb asses were here trying to be funny. It wasn’t my fault his team was losing. If he was mad about that, he should have thrown shit at them.

  I got to the lockers. I was too mad to sit down. I wanted to do something. I wanted to punch something or break something… or someone.

  Everything had been going great. It had been fine. What the fuck. Why today and why now? I had been great for the last six months. Fuck. Were they going to suspend me again? Were they just going to fire me, trade me?

  I had fucked up. I had fucked up, and I had let that shitbag kid get the best of me. He wasn’t the one who could be suspended from the league, I was. I was and the dumbass kid got to go home and talk about how he almost got beat up by Dante Rock at a Charlotte Yellow Jackets game.

  The press would have a field day with this. The coach would have my fucking ass. It wasn’t as if I had actually managed to do anything, but still. The damage was done. They'd probably have me pay another fine again… shit. It wasn’t that I didn’t have the money to pay a fine. I could afford it, but I didn’t want to fucking pay again for a fan being an asshole.

  If they didn’t know how to act at basketball games, then they needed to stay the fuck home and watch the games on their damn televisions. Why was that so hard to understand? You didn’t do shit like that and just get away with it.

  I remembered the last time something like this had happened. It had been worse then. I hadn’t actually gotten to punch the shithead who thought it was a good idea to chuck a fucking glass bottle through the air, but I almost had. Everyone had sort of swarmed then, and in the disruption, I had lost the guy. That one had been a little more serious. We were actually lucky that there hadn’t been a stampede and also that neither myself—nor any of the other players—had ended up beating on one of the fans and gotten arrested.

  Nobody was arrested, but I was suspended. Eighteen fucking months off the court because some idiot wanted to play games with me. You didn’t come to my court, my fucking place of work, and act like a hoodlum. You could take that shit outside. It was just plain disrespectful to me and all the guys on the court who had a game to play. It was disrespectful to the fans, too, who were sitting in their seats and trying to enjoy the game.

  I was so mad. I should have just stayed where I was or asked the ref for a timeout. The idiot had it coming, but it wasn’t he who would potentially get in trouble for this. It was me. My mind raced as I thought about what the hell I was going to say to the coach when he wanted an explanation. I didn’t want to get suspended again. He would understand why the fuck I got mad, right?

  There was no way this shit wasn’t going to be all over YouTube by tomorrow. Ha. Tomorrow, who was I kidding? Later tonight even. It would be all over the news, too. I shut my eyes realizing something.

  Quinn.

  She had been there. She was the news. She was probably going to report on it. God. I had never had to think about the impressions I made on women, but I hated thinking this was the impression that Quinn would leave with of me. I was a dick, yeah. I knew that and she seemed to know that, too. There was the whole fact that she was a reporter, and now she really had no reason to write anything positive about me, but on the other hand, I didn’t want her to think I was just this angry maniac on the court.

  Whether or not I actually was, was beside the point. It wasn’t about what was true. It was about what she thought, and there was no way she was thinking anything good at the moment. I had never read anything by her, but she must be a good writer if she was being paid to do it. The thought of reading the smear piece she was probably going to write about me at this point was a little bit exciting, not because I was masochistic, but because I liked the thought of her having to talk to me again. I had liked our little bit of banter on the court. She seemed tough, like she took no shit. I appreciated that. She wouldn’t spare me. She would let me have it.

  Not all publicity was good publicity. Bad publicity was bad publicity, and I had it out the ass. It went in levels. There was some bad publicity that was harmless, like rumors about who I was or wasn’t fucking. There was nothing too damaging about that.

  Then there was the shit like this. Especially when it was coming off what had happened last time. If I would really have to take a loss for this, it would probably be bigger and worse than the last one I had taken. How much time off? Two years? Three? How much money?

  I hated it. I hated this.

  She would most likely be back here to talk to me. I didn’t want to talk to her. I couldn’t face her just yet. The game would be over soon. The other team had a lead on us. Were we going to win? Did I care?

  Some time passed before the locker room started filling up. I was getting changed back into my street clothes because, fuck this, I was out. The guys would likely be back in soon. I owed them something. Like a thank you or whatever, but I didn’t want to see them. I didn’t want to see anybody. I wanted to go the fuck home and go the fuck to sleep, my hangover was still killing me.

  If it hadn’t been for Troy, Dre, and the other guys, I could have been leaving here in a police car. I sighed, thinking I didn’t want to get into it just then. I would talk to them, the reporters, the coach, and Quinn tomorrow. Tomorrow. That was when.

  They must have heard me thinking that I didn’t want to talk to them because just like that, in they started coming.

  “Yo, Rock, what the fuck?” one of my teammates asked. His name was Troy Lees. He was the center. I started getting changed faster.

  “Did we win?” I asked.

  “We won. You decided to lose your shit and get kicked off again. What the hell happened?

  “He threw a cup at me, man, what was I supposed to do?” I said to him.

  “Come on, man, still?”

  Yeah. Still.

  I knew he understood, but he was still mad. I got why I would be mad, too. Troy and I were friends. I was friends with a lot of the guys on the team, but Troy and I were buddies. Like, I used to go see him when he was out with his injury and he would come to my place to hang out when I had been suspended. He was this big, black dude. He was pretty intimidating, but he was a cool guy. Unlike me, he had the whole wife-and-kids thing going on. All great people, but it wasn’t for me.

  “Coach is going to have your ass for this,” he said. I knew he was right, but I didn’t want to think about it.

  “It was the kid’s fault; he started it.”

  “Even if the guy gets banned, coach is likely going to want to do something to you. You’re lucky you didn’t take him out.”

  Yeah. I was lucky.

  I thanked him and the other guys for helping me out and stopping me from murdering that kid.

  So I had a couple problems with my anger. Who didn’t, right? I was an athlete, where did anyone think all that aggression and on-court fights come from? That wasn’t a good excuse, and I knew it. I had just lost my temper on the wrong person, and now I had to get ready to take my fucking punishment.

  Was it right of me, trying to get away before coach came by and saw me, or before the after-game interviews started? I sighed, thinking it was a bitch move. I was no bitch. I wasn’t a pussy. I could face a little criticism if that was what the coach wanted to give me. I could face another fine too, whatever he wanted.

  The reporters would want to hear something, Quinn included. If I got to talk to the coach first, maybe he could close the post-game interviews for today, or at least for me. He would want to hear from me first. He wasn’t just going to throw me to the wolves and let them have at my corpse. There weren’t even that many. It wasn’t as if this was a final championship game or anything; it wouldn’t be all that hard to dodge the guys who were there. It wasn’t like I had to say something when one of them asked me a question. I could just politely decline to answer.
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  Fuck, what about Quinn though? She would be… disappointed. I could see it now. I didn’t think she was in love with me or anything when we had been talking on the court, but now she would hate me. I was surprised at how much her opinion of me mattered to me. We didn’t even know each other, but she felt like someone I wanted to impress.

  It was fine. I would just talk to the coach when he showed up, and then I would leave. All the rest could be handled tomorrow by public relations. Quinn… I didn’t know what I would do about Quinn. Maybe I would talk to her and tell her it was all a misunderstanding and release a statement directly to her tomorrow.

  “Hey, Troy, guys. That chick reporter, the one with the brown hair, don’t talk to her,” I said.

  “If she’s a reporter, we have to tell her something, Dante,” Troy said to me.

  “Don’t tell her anything about the cup and me going after the guy.”

  “Why not? She was there. She saw the whole thing. She probably has it all on tape.”

  “I want to talk to her. Just don’t bring it up.”

  What did I have to lose? It wasn’t like we were friends. If she had a poor opinion of me, she could just join the club.

  Chapter Three

  Quinn

  What the fuck did he think he was doing?

  What was wrong with him?

  It wasn’t as if this was his first time; he knew what that sort of behavior could potentially earn him. I nearly had a stroke watching him lunge for that kid who had thrown the cup at him. There was just some shit you couldn’t do. The guy who had thrown the cup was a kid. He looked what, like, eighteen, nineteen?

  Dante had to easily have a foot of height on him and ten years if not more in age. I shuddered thinking about the scandal that would potentially have followed. Did he just want to give away hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, to that kid when he pressed charges? Because he would press charges. Even if he didn’t, the Yellow Jackets or Dante himself would have to compensate the guy to “pay for damages.”

  I had been watching the game. The kid had thrown the cup first, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was what Dante had decided to do about it, and he had decided to lunge for the guy and basically try and kill him. Dante was so big, what could he do to an average-sized guy in a fight?

  Oh, my god.

  It made me so mad.

  Why was he like this?

  Did he realize the position he was in? First of all, he was in a position where he couldn’t afford to act like a wild animal whenever anyone made him mad. Didn’t sports help you channel your aggression? At that point, that kind of behavior from him was expected but that didn’t mean he had to go and prove all his detractors right.

  He wasn’t irreplaceable. If he continued, the Yellow Jackets would not hesitate to get rid of his ass. At some point, he would be on suspension more than he was playing in games and he would just be a liability. Like a gangrenous limb that cost the team more than it rewarded them, they would cut him loose. He was nearly thirty, he needed to get his act together. There was only so much more time before people would stop entertaining his nonsense.

  My job was to be impartial, but he made it so hard. So so hard.

  The worst part was this shit… he had done it before.

  I could remember it like it was yesterday. I wasn’t at the game myself, but there were so many videos of the event online, and I had seen it from every angle possible. It was big news in sports. Dante Rock, point guard of the Charlotte Yellow Jackets attacked a fan.

  The headlines had been out of control. The guy who Dante had actually gone after had never been named, and he had never pressed charges against him or the team, but that didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that Dante or the Yellow Jackets never had to pay this guy off because he had still lost his cool and attacked a fan.

  Some people were on Dante’s side, saying he had reacted reasonably because the fan had thrown something at him first. It was so stupid to think about, but the guy, some dude who was upset that the Yellow Jackets were doing well that game, or who just wanted to see if he could hit a moving target, had thrown a bottle at Dante.

  It had been a glass bottle according to reports so that was a shitty thing to do right there. Someone could have been hurt. Dante wasn’t hurt. It hit him, and it fell onto the ground, smashing. That was the point at which the guy should have ducked or just shut the fuck up, but he didn’t. He jeered and booed in Dante’s direction, and just like that, he was racing through the stands to get him.

  It was like those riots that people have out in the streets when their favorite team didn’t win, but this time, it was in a basketball arena. There was no report on the property damages if any, but the guy who had thrown the bottle, luckily for Dante, he didn’t get hurt. They were kept separate for long enough before the security could break up the fight.

  From that not so little altercation, Dante had been suspended for eighteen months and made to pay a three-million-dollar fine. There were a lot of people who thought it was way too steep of a price to pay for what he did, and I was one of them.

  What he had done was inexcusable. You couldn’t do that to another person. He had been wild but three million? Eighteen months?

  It must have been the outside pressure that made the Charlotte Yellow Jackets’ management decide on that figure and that amount of time. Maybe there was also some behind the scenes stuff that he was being punished for and we just didn’t know about it. I had just started at my outlet at the time and was still an intern so I wasn’t able to report on the story or even copyedit the articles. I just had to hear about it like everyone else.

  There were tons of ways in which it could have gone even worse for everyone involved, but the fan whose action had in a way started the whole thing… if the guy had pressed charges, he would have had a huge payout to look forward to from Dante, the team, or both. The team could have continued as if nothing had happened and just made excuses for him, but that would have been disastrous. Pressure from the public, not to mention sponsors, would have forced them to do something about it. Dante could have gotten much worse than what he had, no matter how harsh I—or anyone else—thought the punishment he did get was.

  The Yellow Jackets were losing their MVP for eighteen months. That was a long time. Though it had been unlikely, the team could have elected never to reinstate him. They had in the end though. For the league, there were apparently meetings about limiting player and fan contact even more during games. It hadn’t been an all-out brawl like the Pacers-Pistons blow up in 2004, but these things looked bad for the league, and they weren’t allowed to pretend that they weren’t happening or make excuses for their players.

  Dante had left the bench earlier soon after being sent off the court. I had wanted to go back and talk to him then, but I was stopped by security until the game was officially over. At least he knew he had fucked up. He also hadn't been there to see his team eventually win, ninety-seven to eighty-two.

  I had hardly noticed anything that had happened after Dante had left the court. I just wanted to go talk to him. What could he possibly have to say to defend himself? I didn’t even know what I wanted to ask him. I just wanted him to explain himself. I sort of wanted to yell at him.

  Why now?

  Why again?

  Hadn't he done any work on himself during that whole eighteen months? That would have been a perfect time to get his anger under control, see a professional, and all that other stuff. It had only been six months since he had been back from that suspension. Was he really trying to get himself put on another one?

  There were people who had just been waiting for him to fuck up again. Dante wasn’t beloved by everyone. If he got into trouble again, he might just be traded.

  The minute the court had cleared, I went straight for the locker room. The person I wanted to talk to was Dante, but I couldn’t just go to him and pretend like the rest of his team, with or without him, hadn’t just played an amazing game.

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nbsp; None of the guys looked like they were going to talk to me. They all had their heads down like they hadn’t just won. Eventually their center looked at me and grudgingly answered a couple questions about the game. It was just the usual sort of boring answers that you heard all the time about them being proud and satisfied and happy with their teamwork and pointing out the guy who had made the last basket.

  “Can I ask you about the fight?” I said to the man.

  “You can ask me, but I know I don’t have to answer you,” he said. The way he had said it had sounded resigned and tired, like he just really didn’t want to talk about it. He hadn’t said it like he was mad, or he was resentful or anything like that. I wondered what they had been saying before I had come into the room. I wished so hard that I could have been a fly on the wall to hear that.