Page 30 of Flawless

Shut out the laughter and the ridicule.

“Danica!” he shouts as I make it through the living room and to my bedroom door.

I’m on the threshold when his hand grabs my upper arm and spins me around.

“What the hell, Dani?”

I just stare blankly back at him.

“What just happened back there?”

“Nothing.”

“Dani, come on. It’s me. Talk to me, please.”

“I was just tired and ready to relax. I’ve been on go since I woke up this morning and haven’t had a chance to sit down and breathe.”

“You had an entire hour of meditation earlier. Did you forget that?”

Shaking my head, I say, “No, Z. I didn’t. I’m just tired.”

“What the hell were they talking about back there? When did you pass out? And what’s this shit about drugs?” he asks in his heavily accented voice.

“I’m tired, and I don’t want to do this with you, okay? It was simply a coincidence that we ended up here together. Don’t pretend to care now,” I reply in a tired, frustrated voice.

“Pretend to care? Dani, what’s gotten into you? You know that I never stopped caring! It was you who...”

He breaks off his sentence, running his fingers through his hair. Why is it that I notice how his hair seems to fall perfectly back into place? Now is not the time to be thinking about those things.

“It was me who what?” I challenge.

“You who didn’t want what I wanted. You who didn’t care enough to stick around and try to make things work.”

Looking pointedly at his hand on my arm, I grit out, “Just let me go.”

“Not until you tell me what the hell has been going on with you in the last five years.”

“I don’t owe you anything, Z. You told me to stay out of your life.”

“And you know damn well why!”

“It wasn’t my fault, okay? It was part of my job! Part of what I was expected to do!”

“Show up at my championship game with another man? A man that you knew you were screwing behind my back? A man that the tabloids had a field day posting pictures of you within the days leading up to my game and you swore it was nothing? Then you showed up at my game with him. What’s worse is that you didn’t have the decency to stick around afterward and check on me. I came to your room afterward, using the keycard you gave me, only to find you undressing for him! Tell me who doesn’t care now, Dani!”

I hear the brittleness in his voice, and I see the pain on his face. The look of disgust he wears can’t hide the truth; that he’s still carrying the weight of his pain after all these years.

He should be carrying it. I know that I do.

The hurt, the guilt, the disappointment, and the shame are carved on my heart. The things that I did to hurt him disgustme whenever I think about it. I could have just told him that I didn’t want him, but that wasn’t enough. I had to go and hurt him because I was hurting, knowing that I could never have him. It wasn’t good enough until he was hurting the way that I hurt.

“I didn’t think it was smart to stick around after you assaulted the man on the field. You and I both know that I couldn’t have that associated with my career! The media and paparazzi were there! Everyone would have had a field day if they’d seen me visiting you at the locker room afterward.”

“They had a field day anyway with the fact that you were there with Johan Jurgen while you were supposed to be dating me! You made a spectacle of us!”

“No, you did when you acted an ass out on the field like that throwing away the game for your team and Italy and throwing away your career like that!”

“As if you ever gave a damn!”

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