Baller: A Bad Boy Romance

by Love,Amy

  The way he talked about his past and the things that he had been through made him seem like he was such an old, gnarled angry man. He acted publically like there was nothing to him, but what he showed us. I could see it while he lay there sleeping.

  His innocence.

  He still had some. Despite what had happened in his life, he was still good and pure, some parts of him at least.

  I wanted to kiss him right then, but I stopped myself, afraid to wake him and break the spell. I moved slowly to my bag and pulled my camera out. I just wanted to capture it, the Dante he was when he was alone and no one was looking.

  I looked at him through the camera.

  His eyes were closed, but his body moved. He silently shifted, stretched and I watched him open his eyes.

  His face seemed to transform as I watched.

  "What the fuck!" he roared.

  I leaned back on my heels and looked at him.

  "What's the matter?"

  "The fuck are you doing with that camera? Turn it off!"

  He was suddenly on his feet.

  My skin felt clammy suddenly and I felt insecure. What had I done? I put the camera back in my purse and showed him my empty palms.

  "It's gone."

  "Get out," he spat. I looked up at him.

  "What?"

  "Out! Get the fuck out of my house! Leave!"

  What?

  What was going on? What did he mean? Why was he talking to me like this?

  "Dante? What is going on? What...what did I do?"

  "I swear to God, Quinn. Get your shit and get out. Do it before I call the cops and they can help you," he bellowed.

  I felt like a child as he yelled at me. I felt scared by his anger. He looked so angry. He was pacing the room like a caged tiger, and his stance was erect and defensive.

  I went to my bag and silently started packing. There wasn't that much to pack, I mostly had to get clothes onto my own body. I kept the shirt I was wearing on and just pulled on panties and pants because I didn't want him getting even madder than he was at me.

  He had just woke up.

  I had watched, literally watched him go from zero to one hundred—and there was no apparent reason why he was so mad. He just was. I wanted so badly to talk to him. To ask him what it was that I fucking did because I did something. I fucking did something.

  You didn't go from having sex with someone to kicking them out with that much anger unless something was wrong.

  "Don't fucking come back," I heard him say.

  I turned and faced him.

  "Dante?"

  "What?" he shouted. "What! Why are you still here? Get the fuck out of my house! How many times do I have to ask you to leave?"

  I had to give it one last try. The way he was looking at me and talking to me was making no sense. Why was he so mad?

  "Dante—?"

  "You aren't welcome here! See yourself the fuck out."

  He turned and walked into the master ensuite bathroom, where we had been having sex not that long ago.

  I grabbed my suitcase and purse and quickly left the room.

  I closed the door behind me, and I immediately felt sick.

  I wanted to go back in there and kiss him. I wanted to hold him, and I wanted him to tell me what had made him so mad.

  How could I when it was apparently me that had made him that mad?

  He hadn't stuttered. He had been perfectly clear.

  I couldn't imagine his ire if he came back out of the bathroom and I was still there. The house was so big that if I wanted I could have remained inside it and still be so far away from where he was that he wouldn't have noticed.

  It wasn't time to be childish.

  I was being kicked out.

  I went down the stairs and found Daniella in the kitchen. Her face was concerned.

  "Ma’am, what's going on?"

  "I... I'm not sure," I said honestly. "I'm leaving."

  "Do you have a ride home?"

  "No," I said awkwardly. A cascade of shame washed over me. How many of Dante's hookups had she had this conversation with? I felt like just another one of his hoes as Daniella called a taxi service for me.

  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?

  Chapter Twenty

  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.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  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.