I tugged my cock and thought about her. Fuck, what did she look like naked? I couldn’t wait to see all of her. I couldn’t wait to feel her naked skin against mine and hear her scream as I drove into her, deep as I could go. I couldn’t wait to make her mine again. My hand sped up. I was close. I was going to come.
The sound of my phone ringing broke through my fantasy. I stopped and cursed. It was somewhere in the room, but it wasn’t in its usual spot on the bedside table. I looked around the room, cursing again when the ringing stopped. I found it finally in the bathroom, who the fuck knew how it had gotten there. I grabbed it and looked at who had called me.
I frowned. There was more than one. Loads of text messages, too. My agent, more than one from him… Fred, who did PR for the Yellow Jackets, several from him, too. Why were they looking for me this early in the morning? For what? Did I have to go in for something? I knew I wasn’t in trouble. I hadn’t done anything since that incident with the cup. And there were missed calls from my mom. Just one or two. Hers had been the number that was trying to call me when I couldn’t get to the phone. I scrambled to call her back. There was something wrong. She wouldn’t just call me like that for no reason. I was nervous. The darkest, worst shit ran through my mind. What if my dad was harassing her? She picked up even before the first ring was over.
“Mom?”
“Dante?”
“Mom, where are you? Is everything okay?”
“Dante? Yes. Everything is fine. I’ve been trying to call you.”
“Sorry, Mom. I just got up.”
“Just now? So you haven’t seen it?”
“Seen what?”
“Dante… there’s a story about you on the computer. A horrible story Dante…” she said.
“A story? About what? I haven’t done anything.”
“Dante… tell me it’s a lie. Tell me you didn’t hurt her.”
Hurt her? Hurt her? Hurt who?
The answer to that question came the second I had asked it.
Shit.
The woman with the black eye. There was no way she had gotten to the press. With what? I hadn’t even done anything.
“Mom, whatever is on the television, or the internet or anywhere else, don’t believe it. I didn’t do anything, mom. I didn’t do anything.”
She was silent for a second, and it was worse than if she had taken the time to yell at me instead.
“Is it true?”
“It isn’t, Mom. I swear. Not a word. I haven’t met that woman in my life.”
“I was always afraid that you—”
“Mom, please. Please, listen to me. Whatever you heard, whatever you read, it is not true. That’s not me… after what happened to you, I would never. I could never.”
She was silent again for a beat. I could picture her with the computer on in front of her, or the television. I could imagine her face and how distraught and upset something like this would potentially make her. I heard what sounded like another voice in the background and some shuffling.
“Dante?”
“Gabbie?”
They were together?
“Dante, what the fuck is going on?”
Mom was distraught while Gabbie was obviously mad.
“Nothing, Gab, I swear. Where are you guys seeing all this?”
“Did you do it?”
“No, I didn’t do it. I haven’t done anything.”
“You’re on speaker,” she said.
“Mom?”
“Your sister called me with the news.”
“It is all over the internet, most likely printed as well in the tabloid papers. I had no idea. I was minding my own business when my notifications blew up with people asking about you. People were asking whether I knew what was happening, whether I knew that woman, and what I was doing about it…like we live together or something.”
“Has the press contacted either of you?”
“They haven’t been able to get to Mom, but I got a couple of people emailing me, telling me they were reporters.”
“Don’t talk to them. Mom?”
“Dante… I want you to be honest—”
“Mom, I am being honest. I’ll put that on anything, my entire career, I didn’t do anything. I’ve done a lot of things, Mom, but I would never do anything like this.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Gabbie.
“I don’t know. I might have a friend who can help me out.”
“A friend?”
“She’s a reporter.”
“Be careful talking to reporters, Dante.”
“This one is good. She’s a real journalist, not one of the people who work at one of the places publishing this bum story.”
“If it isn’t true, why are they publishing it?”
“Because it's scandalous. Coming off the news of the fight I nearly got into at the game not too long ago, it's something people want to read. It’s a headline that will sell copies and bring new clicks to websites. People love it when I fuck up.”
“This looks so bad, Dante,” my mother said.
“I know, Mom. I’m sorry that you had to see any of it.”
“I hope your friend is good,” Gabbie said. I hoped so, too. I hung up the call with them and looked around the room for my laptop. I hardly ever used it; it was in the closet in its bag. I turned it on and did something I had never done in my entire life, typed my name into Google.
Immediately the results page displayed news story after news story about the same thing. Dante Rock, the abuser. Dante Rock, the woman beater. Dante Rock, the menace. Dante Rock, the fucking bully. My stomach felt sick. If I had eaten already, I probably would have had to throw up. It was everywhere. Once I had seen it all, I couldn’t stop looking. It was all over the place. Twitter. Facebook. This was a disaster. I had to do something.
The thing I probably should have done was call Fred. He was the one to call when there were scandals, but I didn’t want to talk to fucking Fred. I wanted to talk to Quinn. I knew what I was feeling. I was scared. I was scared, and I wanted someone who would make it so that I wasn’t anymore. I picked my phone up and dialed her number.
I waited for a few rings.
“Hello?”
“Quinn. Have you been on Twitter this morning?”
“Dante, I—”
“Have you seen some of these headlines?”
“Dante, listen to me—”
“Woman accuses Charlotte Yellow Jackets point guard, Dante Rock, of physical assault,” I said, reading out a headline. “Dante Rock, MVP and Abuser. Woman comes forward with shocking accusations against Yellow Jackets MVP.”
“Dante… they’re all lies. They are all not true.”
“I know that.”
“Then why are you so mad? I need you to calm down. This isn’t going to get anything solved.”
“Why am I so mad? I’m sorry I’m not calm and happy about my name, image, and brand being dragged through the mud on false, ugly accusations, Quinn. I’m sorry that I’m not happy about the fact that my mother called me crying this morning because she saw some of the stories and thought that I had ended up just like her ex. I’m sorry my sister had been bombarded by people sending her links to all these fraud stories and that both of them are likely going to get harassed by the press.”
I heard her exhale, sighing like she was stressed out, too. It wasn’t her ass that was on the line, it was mine.
“I’m sorry that this happened.”
“Being sorry isn’t going to fix it.”
“I realize that. What do you want me to do?”
“You are my voice. You have to print something that tells everyone that I didn’t do it or something. You have to make all this go away.”
“I don’t know how easy that will be,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she has no evidence, but because something like this has already been published, we can't be sure how much she is willing to fabricate?”
“Fabricate?”
“I’ve heard of cases where people have faked phone calls, faked footage, all kinds of things in order to point the finger at someone.”
I felt my heart drop.
“Are you saying there’s no chance?”
“I’m saying it is going to be extremely hard to sway the public in the direction of trusting you again and hearing you over her. I don’t think I need to tell you that powerful men, like yourself, may have the benefit of the system being on your side, but the woman will have public rally around her. Even though you didn’t do it, there are people who will lose respect for you because they will choose to believe her.”
“Quinn… you have to help me.”
“I know.”
“I’ve told you everything. You know everything about that. You have to make everyone else believe.”
“I’m going to do what I can, okay. Just… let me think about it.”
“Quinn. I’m serious,” I said.
“Yeah, just give me some time. I’ll come up with something.”
“Quinn?”
“Yeah?”
“You still believe me, don’t you? You know I didn’t do anything. You know I’m innocent, right?”
She paused, and it was a few seconds too long for me to feel like she was going to tell me the answer that I wanted to hear.
“Quinn?”
“I believe you, Dante, but I’m not the one who needs to be convinced.”
I sighed. I thanked her and hung the phone up. I had just gotten up, but suddenly, I felt tired. I felt like I had just run a marathon. I knew I had to get a hand on the situation, damage control. I could have called back my agent and Fred, but I thought it was probably better if I just saw them in person.
Was it, though? With a story like this, who was to say that the press weren’t trying to scale the perimeter wall to get to my house right now? They would be all over me. It was probably better to lay low. I turned the computer off and my phone too, just until after I had at least had coffee. I hoped Quinn would come up with something good. My career depended on it.
Chapter Fifteen
Quinn
This had to work. I had asked him to trust me. I knew what I was doing, right? I was a professional, wasn’t I? I knew what I was doing. Absolutely. This would totally work.
I wanted to give him more on the phone when he had called me, but I had nothing. Literally, not a damn thing. When he called, I honestly wanted it to be that Daniel or someone else from my work had contacted him or his agent or his publicist or someone and wanted to hear about that picture of us from the club.
I had woken up to the same news that he had woken up to.
He had been so mad. I was so scared that he was going to ask me whether I had done it. I would never, but he had no real reason to believe or think that. Why did I care so much what he thought? It wasn’t misplaced, he and I weren’t friends or that other thing, but we were in a relationship of sorts. We had to be able to trust each other, and I needed to know that that was what he did.
It didn’t matter that I hadn’t released the story, someone had, and now he was in trouble.
I had called Daniel as soon as I had gotten off the phone with Dante. He had told me that he knew. Of course, he knew. What he was mad about was the fact that we didn’t break the story as well. There began the journey I would have to take defending the honor of Dante Rock. Daniel was convinced that Dante had done something. Even if he didn’t really think that, he didn’t like the fact that something was happening and we hadn’t reported on it.
I’d had to reason with him for him to get ahold of himself. It wasn’t what he thought.
“You’ve been talking to Rock this whole time and somehow this shit passed you by?” he had demanded.
“No, Daniel. It came up. Of course, it did, but I dismissed it because there was no story there.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I mean, there is nothing there. The accusations are false. He didn’t do anything.”
“Then we need to print that.”
“Just one rebuttal from one news source isn’t going to bail him out of trouble,” I said.
“Who cares about him being in trouble? I’m not trying to bail him out, I’m trying to sell stories.”
Because of Daniel’s insistence, I’d ended up putting together a piece with a few official statements from Dante’s people and an eyewitness account, my own, from the day that the woman had shown up at the locker room, accusing him, and the fact that he was completely baffled as to who she was. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Though it was something, it was not enough. I needed more.
I had to think. I had to do something. Dante was right. I did sort of owe him. It was not my fault that he was in this situation, but it was in my power to get him out of it. He had said that because he had been so honest with me, he deserved my protection. That was saying a lot. That was saying way too much. I didn’t think he deserved to be protected from anybody who wanted to come after him.
He didn’t deserve a pat on the back or trophy for being honest. That was literally the least that he could do. It was what was expected of him. What he didn’t deserve was character assassination…and that was what was happening. We were past the point of damage control. I didn’t know whether Dante’s people had been totally silent or what had happened, but I had been wracking my brain thinking about what to do.
I had Daniel’s support, which was key. All I had to do was come up with a plan and approach it head on.
Daniel loved a scoop.
What would he think about an interview? Not like the ones I had had with Dante already. A real live interview, one which would be broadcast?
I shouldn’t have talked about it with Dante before contacting his PR person first, but I did. It was Dante who was under attack, and if he liked the idea, the two of us would do a better job of compelling Daniel and the rest of his people that this was a good idea.
“So what do you think?” I had asked him over the phone. I had wanted to meet in person, but he was lucky if he was able to get in and out of his house without flashbulbs going off in his face. He and I, out in public together, would have been potentially disastrous.
“A live interview? Like on the news?”
“Not on the news, I was thinking about maybe doing it on Inside the League.”
“Doesn’t that show already have a host?”
“It does. Jock would do a great job.”
“No, I don’t want him. I want you to do it.”
I tapped the pencil I was holding against my desk.
“Dante, it doesn’t work like this. Inside the League is its own show. It will take meeting with Jock himself and their producers to swing that sort of thing.”
“Then do it.”
Then do it. When did he get so bossy?
“I don’t know if you realize this, but you have something of a time-sensitive case. We don’t have all the time in the world to butter up Jock Winters enough to let us highjack his show.”
“It isn’t like it wouldn’t be great for ratings. People are going to tune in; they want to hear the truth.”
No, people didn't want to hear the truth. They wanted scandal. That was why they would tune in. They were going to tune in in the hopes that they would hear Dante say something crazy, admit to beating that woman, or unveil this whole seedy, secret underbelly of a secret relationship that no one knew he had.
“Dante, the longer you wait, the worse this will get. Why don’t you talk to your PR people or something?”
“They want me to do a press conference, but I don’t want that. I asked them to release a statement, and once you okay this live interview or whatever, they can release another about that.”
“It's going to take longer if you really need me to be there and not Winters.”
“I don’t care how long. It’s what I want. You. You have to do it, or I don’t do anything at all.”
I would have hated to
be part of the Charlotte Yellow Jackets’ PR team right about then. It was literally just a matter of time before endorsements started disappearing and brand deals went out the window, for both Dante and the team.
Second Chance: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Page 53