“Then you’d better not be calling me about Darius’s bum ass. I don’t want to hear a single word about him.”
“Girl, please. If his ass was on fire, I wouldn’t call the firehouse to come save him, so I definitely won’t pick up the phone and call you about anything. No, it’s Ashton Santoro.”
“What?”
“He was just brought in to cool off after an assault and battery, but they’re waiting for his coach to pick him up. I knew you had just interviewed him recently, so I decided to call and give you a heads’ up.”
“Assault and battery on who?” I asked, rushing into my closet to change clothes.
“Alex Curry.”
It felt as if my brain was slammed against the front of my head, because it instantly started hurting. I wanted this phone call to be a bad dream. This was all my fault. Had I not shown him those pictures of his wife and his teammate together, hewouldn’t have been locked up. I should have let sleeping dogs lie, because it was not my secret to tell. But damn it, I had needed that story.
I hadn’t put out a good story for LSM in a while, and Andrew Nowinski, my editor, was in my ass about it. My attention had been so consumed with Bolton Sports for a long while, and I had given them everything. I had allowed my focus on LSM to falter, and I felt bad about it.
They were the ones who had given me my shot in this industry and allowed me to make a name for myself with the interview with Noah Jones, the football legend. It had been that interview that brought my name before Bolton Media in the first place, and they had hired me on for their sports division, Bolton Sports.
I had proposed the interview with Ashton, and when Andrew threw out the idea of building it into a series, I went for it. It alleviated my guilt to some extent, but now I regretted that I had done that.
“I’m on my way down there now, Tommi. Can you hold him until I get there?”
“I’ll stall things as long as I can, but you know how it is for the rich and powerful. Y’all pull all type of strings,” she teased.
“No, I don’t. I’m not rich or powerful, just wealthy and bold.”
“Don’t I know it.”
We ended the call, and I hurriedly dressed and raced to my car. I put on Solemn and listened to her music on the drive over. I hoped that I could catch him, but I wasn’t sure what I would say when I saw him.
He probably blamed me, too, and I couldn’t even be upset with him. This was not what I wanted for him. To see a great man go down like this at the end of an exemplary career was horrible, especially at the hands of a sister.
People always hyped up his and Muffin’s marriage. But I had learned long ago that things weren’t always what they seemed. Although they had been married plenty of years, I noticed a few years ago that her demeanor had changed.
I did not know the woman, but I knew that the way she dressed and carried herself in the beginning was completely different than the way she started presenting herself a few years ago. The sweet, modest, pretty, and quiet young lady had morphed into a gorgeous, sexy, flirtatious siren.
I pulled into the parking lot of the county jail and headed to the front doors. Tommi was standing in the reception lobby, talking to another officer. When she spotted me, she said something to the woman, nodded, and then headed in my direction.
“Did I miss him?”
“Not yet. But barely. He should be walking out any minute. His coach is outside waiting for him. He’s already been in to check on Ashton, and we let him know that he should be out soon. He said he would be waiting out front for him and to please let Ashton know.”
“I wonder what they’re going to do. It’s his final season.”
“You would know better than me. I don’t follow sports, other than to let folks know that’s my famous, beautiful cousin on TV.”
I chuckled and waved off her comment. Thomasina was a gorgeous woman herself. She was petite at five-two, with chocolate skin, slim curves, big, round, expressive hazel eyes, and dimples in both cheeks. She usually wore her shoulder-length, wavy hair pulled back in a ponytail when she was at work, but after hours, it flowed around her shoulders.
My cousin was a baddie, and despite the work that she did for a living, she was very feminine and girly. She claimed that she was entering into her soft-girl era. She had nothing to prove to anyone anymore, and rather than being focused onclimbing higher in law enforcement, she was taking some time to breathe, relax, and take care of herself mentally, spiritually, and physically. She wasn’t even chasing a man any longer.
“I just want to say thank you for calling me. I know that I didn’t give you any details, but this means a lot to me.”
“Are you feeling some sort of guilt, cuzzo?”
“What makes you ask that?”
“Because I know you. You have a way of pushing and triggering these big ass men, and later, you drag yourself for doing it, but the stories you create are informative and entertaining.”
“I’m really re-thinking how I handle this shit, because I can’t keep having these men out here acting like maniacs because I pushed their asses too far.”
