Baller: A Bad Boy Romance (25 page)

I knew it was way too much to say that she would want to defend me or see me do well or even to win that championship that we had been talking about. I thought about it. What I had said to her, she probably didn’t want to see me win anything or be happy in my life again.

I had maybe been a little mean to her, more than she had deserved to hear from me. I was mad, but I didn’t think that was an excuse. It was a reason. She had disrespected me. I didn’t want to apologize. I wasn’t going to because part of me just didn’t believe that she would really screw me over. I told her to say whatever the hell she wanted and to do what she wanted, too, but what she decided to say about me would likely have a huge impact on my career.

She was the reporter who had done my
Inside the League
interview after all.

What was she going to say?

“Besides yourself, and your team, and your reputation, who would you try to win this championship for?”

“You really think I want this win for anyone other than myself?” I challenged.

“Tell me. You have a lot of people who want to see you fail, but you have some who it's in your best interests to impress.”

“My family. My mom and sister.”

“Not your dad?”

I narrowed my eyes. Where was she about to take this?

“No. Not him. He isn’t a part of my life.”

What was she doing? Why was she talking to me like that? Nobody tried it. Nobody ever dared. I was used to having reporters kiss my ass, and she hadn’t. Not once since we had known each other, but then she hadn’t done this either. I never got the impression that she might hate me from any of our conversations.

Did she?

Did she circle around from liking me to hating my guts, and if she did, was it because of what I had said to her?

If that was the case then, of course, it was because of what I had said to her. I had been cold-blooded. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to hurt her specifically, but I had wanted to preserve myself, even if that meant hurting her in the process.

Guess I did it.

Was she…?

Was she over me?

She was sure acting like she was. She was acting like a girlfriend who really didn’t want anything to do with her ex.

If she was over me… did that mean there was someone else?

I hated how curious I was about her. What was she thinking? What was she doing? What was she up to? What was she going to do to me?

“So only select members of your family matter.” That one hadn’t been a question. She had just said it like it was a statement.

“Family is extremely important to me. I don’t think the people you share your genes with are all that make up your family. Blood relation is the thing that matters least. What matters is love. If someone is your family, you love them unconditionally and it doesn’t matter whether you are their blood or not.”

“Have you always felt like that?”

“Yes. For as long as I can remember.”

“From your public persona, you probably wouldn’t be surprised to find out… in fact, you probably already know that virtually
nobody
has you pegged for a family guy.”

“They're wrong.”

She looked at me and her eyes, for the first time, felt cold.

“How?”

“I love my family. There is nobody I have to prove it to but them. Fuck public opinion. They don’t care about what's important to
me
. They care about what I can do for them. I would die for my mom and sister. I got my mother a house in Calabasas so she wouldn’t have to live in the middle of nowhere anymore. I take her to church whenever I’m free and can make it.”

“You sound like a man trying to make a point,” she said.

Fuck
, she really wasn’t going to let me win today. Her mind was made up, huh.

“I don’t have to convince anyone of anything. If they don’t want to believe me, then there is nothing I can do to make them. The public
not
believing me isn’t something I care about or can change. I don’t answer to them. I answer to my family, and I answer to myself.”

She paused and watched me for a second like she was waiting for me to continue talking.

“Good luck in your next games,” she said suddenly. She stood up and picked her recorder up, turning it off. I stood and looked at her.

“What? The interview is over?”

“Yes. It's over. Was there something else you wanted to say to me?”

Yeah. Yeah, there was. Why was she being like this? I didn’t like feeling like there was something going on that I wasn’t being told about.

“What are you doing, Quinn?” I asked her.

“My job. Your game is about to start. Go do yours.”

Quinn

Watching Dante play, it was like he was trying to make up for all the time he had had to spend on the bench this past season.

He was killing the opposition. Murdering them.

The Yellow Jackets were going to be in the championship. They had done it. He had done it. All that was left was winning that game. That and our last interview.

I had been an absolute bitch to him during the last one, but I really just didn’t want him to know how much I was hurting. I was rallying. I was busy. I wasn’t just moping around thinking about him. I was doing stuff while thinking about him. Important stuff. Stuff about him, actually, which was likely why I had been thinking about him so much. The story series.

I didn’t know whether he knew, but I had been spending a lot of time with his mother. I hoped she hadn’t told him because that would have just made things awkward. We were sat together at game two, watching her son basically dominate.

This last interview… I didn’t even want to have it. I was so tired with what I had been working on. I had hardly anything left to ask him about. It was the last one. I didn’t want to phone it in, but I felt like the real important stuff had already been said and done. I approached him after the game, and we greeted each other like strangers. Again, we just used some courtside seats rather than going back into the locker room.

“I wanted to ask you about women,” I said. He frowned. What a question. I was already bored.

“What about them? You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“I want to know what women mean to you, as a man. As a person.”

“From the age of twelve, I was the only man in the house, with two women.”

“Did you feel you had to protect them?”

“Once my father was gone, not as much. I felt like I had to take his place, though, to some extent.”

“Provide for them?”

“Yeah. Sort of like that.”

“Your mother is obviously a huge supporter.”

“She’s my
mother
. I love her. She comes to a lot of games, but when she doesn’t come, I know she always watches them. She was, she
is
the most important woman in my life.”

“She raised you under pretty difficult circumstances.”

“She’s the greatest story of strength and recovery that I know. She had every reason to give up, but she never did. She just kept coming back. A lot of the things that happened to her should have killed her. They should have run her into the ground, but she didn’t let them. She just became stronger. I try my hardest to make her proud every day.”

“What about your sister?”

“She’s so smart. I wish I was as smart as her. She’s the person who I would go to prison for. The two most important people in my life are women. The most fantastic women I know.”

“You obviously love them, but what about the
other
women in your life?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You do have a reputation for womanizing.”

He looked at me silent for a while. I knew by now that I wasn’t going to get him to really open up. He was preparing himself to give me something generic and boring. Whatever. It didn’t matter as long as he answered the question.

“I respect every single woman I've ever been with. I don’t use women, and I don’t lie to them. I don’t think the fact that I've been with many women should say anything about…
anything
, really.”

I didn’t have the energy to pull apart what he had said about the women he slept with and try to apply it to me. I was done. I was finished. I wasn’t trying anymore. I had more pride than that.

I had met up with Pamela Rock, Dante’s mom after the interview. She didn’t seem to hate me the way her son did. I liked her, so I was glad that was the case. I wondered how many of his other hookups were that close with her.

“How was he?” she asked.

“Not the best interview we’ve ever had. He wasn’t that chatty. Sort of taciturn.”

“He's concentrating on the game, dear,” she said.

“Of course, he is—but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still hate me.”

“He doesn't
hate
you, Quinn.”

“I did something he asked me not to do, and he doesn't trust me anymore because of it. Even if he doesn’t hate me, he doesn’t want to see or hear from me again once this season is over and our professional engagement comes to an end.”

“Quinn, Dante completely changed when he met you,” she said.

“No way. He was still getting into trouble and being outrageous. The only thing I stopped—for a while at least—was him sleeping around.”

“
Trust me,
Quinn, I saw the change in him when you entered his life. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to him.”

I sighed and let her butter me up. It felt good to hear, but what the fuck was she talking about. She couldn’t mean
Dante Rock her son
, could she? Because that man wanted me as far away from him as I could get. I had made him madder than I had ever seen anyone get, and I had broken any trust or faith that he had in me. I didn’t think that that still made me the best thing that ever happened to him.

Maybe she knew something that I didn’t know. I figured that she and Dante had probably talked about me together, but who knew about what? I wanted to ask her what she meant, but would it make a difference if I knew? It wouldn’t make a difference if I knew. Dante hated me now, and the season would be over once this game ended.

That would be the end. The official end of the time that Dante Rock had to dedicate himself to me. After the final buzzer went off, it was game over for more than just the season. I would finish my pieces and that would be that. I would just watch Dante Rock on TV like everyone else. I would be able to say that I had experienced a side of him that so few ever got to see, but I would have to live with the fact that it was my own fault that I would never see it again.

Dante

This was it. The last game.

This was the grand finale. What we had all been waiting for. What we had all been busting our asses for.

I had made it to a championship before but had never been on the winning team.

This time was going to be different. Every team went into a championship with the intention of winning but there could only really be one. That one would be us.

We had been on a winning streak. We were the obvious answer.

In my career, I just wanted to win that Championship trophy
one
time. Once would be enough.

I thought about the things that would change if we won.
Once
we won because that was what was going to happen today.

This was the end of the season till next year. It was also the end of something else. Quinn and I… well, we had been over for a while now, but this would be the
end end
. The real end. After this, she was just another reporter. She couldn’t come to me for shit once this game was over. I would just wait for her little stories or whatever to come out and that would be that. I wouldn’t even read them. I didn’t have to. I was there for every interview, I knew what they would be about.

***

We sealed the deal in overtime.

I heard the applause and joined in the celebration but… if this was what winning was like… I hadn’t been missing out on much. They named me MVP, which was nice of them, or whatever. There were a lot of people around me bumping into me and pushing mics in my face. None of them was Quinn.

I had been so locked on the game I hadn’t even noticed if she had been there watching.

“Dante, Dante,” I looked for whoever it was calling my name. The guy was handing me a mic; they wanted a speech. I wanted to roll my eyes, but I smiled instead. I took it.

“The journey to get to this point as a team had been long and hard. This is a real victory for the Yellow Jackets,” I said. The crowd cheered. I could have probably just stood there and told them my
Chipotle
order and they would have still cheered. “Mom, this one’s for you,” I said. I beckoned her over. She always sat courtside at games. I had to do a double take because the woman standing at the seat that was next to hers looked a hell of a lot like Quinn.

It was her.

When did she get there?

Had she seen the entire game?

Mom came up and she let me hug her even though I was sweaty. She turned and she called Quinn over. She didn’t look at me, but she stood at mom’s side.

“This is an amazing win. It’s been a tough season, but you’ve made us all proud to call ourselves fans. Dante, for your MVP win, I have something for you. A surprise,” she said.

A what?

What the fuck was she talking about?

“We’ve been working on something for you, son.”

We? She and who?

Suddenly all the lights went down and the jumbotron lit up.