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I stormed into the locker room, ready to destroy the entire room. Everything had been a fucking lie, and though Aldrich had been the one left bleeding, he’d won where it counted. If we lost the game, it wouldn’t be Hickey’s fault; it’d be mine. I was one of the team leaders; I was the one that directed the plays of the game. Not that my backup, Laurence Toomey, couldn’t do just as good a job, but I had disrupted the team’s concentration with my bullshit, and I had no one to blame but myself. Yeah, Sinclair’s lies were at the heart of all this, but I was responsible for my own actions, justified or not.
“What in the fuck was that?” Wendell Jackson snapped, walking into the locker room. Wendell was one of our assistant coaches.
“It was personal,” I bit out.
“Personal?” he practically screeched. “We don’t do personal on the fucking court, Knight.”
“I know that!” I yelled. “I fucking know that!”
“Then what the fuck was that?” he repeated. “You’re a damn team captain-”
“I don’t need a fucking lecture, Wendell,” I said, stopping my pacing to stand in front of the man. He deserved my respect, no matter what. “I know I fucked up.”
“Man, you gotta talk to me,” he said, calming down. “You’re going to be fined and suspended, and I need a reason why that’s okay.”
“He was talking shit about my girl,” I told him honestly, though it was clear as day that Sinclair wasn’t my girl anymore.
Wendell placed his hands on his hips, giving me an understanding nod. “Okay, I get it,” he replied. “That would set any guy off, so I get it. However, you could have waited untilafterthe game and win to kick his ass, Orion.”
“No, I couldn’t.”
Letting out a heavy sigh, he said, “Look, how about you pack up and get out of here. Coach will want to talk to you in the morning, but I think it’s best to get your destructive energy out of here before halftime. We don’t need the team distracted any more than it already is.”
“That’s fine with me,” I replied, ready to head over to Sinclair’s place and let her know that her little plan to snow me didn’t work.
Wendell eyed me. “You’re famous, Orion. You’re going to have to get used to haters talking shit about your girl. Unfortunately, there are a lot of them out there, and social media has given them a platform to spew their jealousy and hate.”
“I can ignore online bullshit,” I assured him. “It’s the getting in my face that I will not tolerate.”
He nodded. “Fair enough.”
Ten minutes later, I was dressed out and had all my shit. My phone was going off, and I knew that I was going to have to send the guys a group text, promising to explain later. Granted, I had stopped long enough to reply to Nova’s text, so I was sure that she had already let the guys know that I’d get back to them as soon as I was able.
Starting my car, I wasn’t even sure if I was in the state of mind to drive safely to Sinclair’s apartment. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d felt this incensed, and when you considered my childhood, that was saying something. Still, that wasn’t going to stop me.
Chapter 22
Sinclair~
The pounding on the door had me wondering if everything was okay. Since Orion had a game tonight, the only person that could be at my door was Harley, and with the way that he was beating on the poor door, it had me wondering if he and Vany had broken up. I’d been going over some therapy plans when he started banging on my door, but work would always come second to my best friend. Forgetting about work, I went to open the door, praying that he and Vany were okay.
However, when I opened the door, it wasn’t Harley on the other side.
What in the hell?
“What are you doing here?” I asked, stepping back to let him inside. “I thought you had a game?”
As soon as I shut the door, Orion turned to face me. “Are you fucking Cap Aldrich?”
I could feel my eyes widen. “What?”
“Are you fucking him?” he snarled, and that’s when I noticed how tense his body was. “Or a better question would be have you ever fucked him?”
When Orion had gotten back from Raven’s Super Bowl win, we’d gone out on a couple of public dates, and it hadn’t taken long for the media and internet detectives to figure out who I was. Though Orion had still left my name off his social media accounts, internet sleuths were more skilled than the FBI when sniffing out gossip. So, as expected, my identity had been made public, and I’d been trending for a couple of days, something that I had come to terms with.
However, along with that invasiveness came a recap of your past. It wasn’t farfetched to believe that someone from my past might have decided to become a fifteen-minutes-of-fame news article and give an interview about how I had dated Cap back in college. It was amazing how low some people were willing to sink just to feel significant on the internet.
“Look, I-”
