She turned her lips down and narrowed her gaze. “Thanks, Santoro. Maybe next game.”
She walked away from me and moved to Angelo Song, our power forward, to interview him. I stormed off the court, knowing that I wouldn’t need to do any other interviews tonight. What the fuck was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she just leave me alone?
“You good, Santoro?” Christian Bourne, our center, asked.
“Yeah,” I grumbled, heading for the showers. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I already knew Coach would be on our asses soon.
I walked back down the hall leading from the locker rooms. I overheard Coach Jesse’s voice before I saw him. When I turned the corner and saw him speaking with Chanel, I leaned against the wall just out of their view.
“You gotta know how to handle his type. When you don’t handle him right, he can become aggressive, territorial, and difficult to handle.”
I walked into view. “What the hell am I, a dog? I’m a grown ass man. What do you mean handle me?”
“Your aggressive, territorial ass acts just like a dog sometime. You act like that mean ass cane corso of yours.”
I couldn’t help but ease up and snicker at the way he said that because only Coach could speak to me that way. Chanel smiled until I met her gaze, and it immediately dropped.
“Stay out of trouble, and don’t say anything that she can use against you,” Coach warned, pointing at me as he tugged his bag up his shoulder and headed to the private team parking lots.
“Well, I guess I’d better be going too,” she stated as she started walking in the same direction Coach Jesse had.
“Chanel, can I holler at you for a sec?”
She turned around and lifted an eyebrow at me. Tugging her bag further up her arm, she angled her head at me as though she was trying to determine if she wanted to give me another chance.
“I’m listening.”
“I just wanted to come and apologize to you for before. I was an asshole. The game was tight, I had a lot of shit on my mind, and we just weren’t gelling. But that was to be expected, right?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t. I’ve told you a thousand times that I regret giving you those pictures. I think it may have pushed everything over the edge.”
“Nah, I was already a pot of boiling water. Those pictures just turned up the heat a little more until I boiled over.”
“I guess that’s why you’re still punishing me for it.”
“I’m not, Chanel. I swear that I’m not, and I’m sorry about that. I wish that I could take it back, but I cannot. I promise that it won’t happen again.”
“Damn right, because the next time I’ll snap back on your ass, and I don’t care who’s listening.”
I smirked at her sassiness as she sashayed away with her ass bouncing and hips twisting.
“Where the hell are you?” I growled into the phone as I pressed the L button on the elevator for the lobby.
“At home where I belong. You do realize that we’re going through a divorce, and I don’t owe you an explanation as to my whereabouts, don’t you?”
“Are you sure that you’re at home?”
“What do you want, Ashton?”
“Never mind.”
“If you don’t believe me, you can always check my location. I haven’t blocked you yet.”
“You know I don’t believe in that shit. You started doing that to me because you didn’t trust me. I guess I understand why now. When you’re not trustworthy, it’s impossible for you to trust anyone else.”
“Whatever. I gotta go.”
She ended the call, and I allowed my finger to hover over the app that she had installed on my phone a while back. Pushing it, I went to her contact to check her location. Sure enough, it showed her at her house. She was in Chicago and not in California with me.
