The Ballerina And The Baller: (A Football Baby Romance) (Bad Boy Ballers) by Imani King

Author:Imani King [King, Imani]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: UNKNOWN
Published: 2016-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10: Troy

Scott sat with me in the green room before my final performance, my final act of penance for 'cheating' on Kayleigh. The Instagram video had been filmed and posted over a week previously, after an entire afternoon of shooting and re-shooting the footage, being told I didn't look serious enough, didn't look whipped enough. Someone had even asked if it was going to be possible for me to squeeze out a few tears, which it hadn't been because I'm an athlete, not a goddamned trained actor.

After the Instagram post – which had been staged to look spontaneous, as if I was so torn apart by guilt I just grabbed my new phone and filmed it rough in my living room – came the talk shows. Daytime talk shows. Nighttime talk shows. A parade of sanctimonious presenters scolding me and shaking their heads at me like it was them I had personally disappointed. Most of whom probably went off to do blow and fuck their married colleagues as soon as the cameras were off. And, surprising even myself, I took it all. I put on a sad face and swallowed any urges to protest or fight back or just call time on the whole ridiculous sham. Why? Anna Harris. I didn't have a choice but to keep my shit together, because if I didn't, she was the one who was going to pay. And that wasn't something that was going to happen.

It didn't even dawn on me until after the media blitz that the reason I was able to be mostly-convincing in my guilt is because I was guilty. Just not of what everyone thought I was. It was such a stupid, careless thing to go out in public with Anna. I could hardly even think about it without wanting to put my fist through a wall – or my own face. I wanted to apologize. I wanted to look her in the eyes and tell her I'd never met anyone like her, that I'd done something incredibly stupid and risky and that I would do anything to earn her forgiveness. But I couldn't. The contract specified no contact and my entourage were watching me like hawks. Scott had even taken to confiscating my cell phone before I went to the bathroom. And I'd willingly signed up for all of it.

I just had to get through it. I had to weather it, all the bullshit, until it was in the past. Whenever it rankled (and it did, almost all the time) I just pictured Anna's beautiful face and bulldozed on through.

"You ready?" Scott asked, breaking into my thoughts.

"Huh?"

"You ready? This is the last one, Troy, and then you're home-free. Well, not home-free but past stage one, at least."

"What's stage two?" I asked grimly. "Beating myself with rusty chains at half-time?"

Scott didn't laugh, because it wasn't funny. "No," he replied. "Stage two is you acting right. Stage two is you following through on every single promise you've made over the past few weeks, keeping your nose so clean no one will be able to question anything you've said.

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