Fourth Down and Dirty: A Bad Boy Sports Romance (29 page)

It took a moment
for Hayden to realize that the angry and loud voice he heard came from me. I had
ended my call while he was busy thinking about his sudden rush of feelings.
Before he had a chance to react, I turned on my heel and stormed off toward the
stairs. He was intent on keeping me within range so his mind clicked and he
started running after me, attracting a few strange looks from random people in
the lobby.

“Ali!” he cried
out. I didn’t turn around as I continued to charge up the stairs. When we
finally got to my floor and stood in front of my hotel room door, I turned to
face him.

“Are you just
going to follow me around now?” There was a lot of anger in my voice. Hayden
wanted to believe it wasn’t all aimed at him, but he knew I blamed him for
getting fired. I had a whirlwind of emotions coursing through my body. They
were the same feelings he felt many years ago when I caused him to get fired.
And now he feared there was nothing he could do or say to calm me down. I
huffed and turned around to open the door, not bothering to close it.

To Hayden, that
was a green light to enter. We needed to talk. He wasn’t sure what we needed to
talk about or what would come of the conversation, but he couldn’t just walk
away. Just as he was about to say something to get my attention, Hayden noticed
a few pieces of paper inside the trash can of my hotel room. He couldn’t tell
exactly what they were, but something about them caught his eye.

 
I was mad at him and blaming him for something
he never meant to cause in my life but I didn’t want to listen, much less
apologize, for having done the same thing to him first. In Hayden’s mind, my
offense was greater because it had been more direct. We had worked for the same
company; it wasn’t some kind of “freak accident” like Mind Lash. The two
situations were worlds apart and he didn’t have the benefit of a brother like
Benjamin to bail him out or back him up. Hayden had been entirely on his own.

Quickly, he
snatched up the sheets of paper from the trash can, waving them in front of my
face and asking if that was how I found out he was in Peru. He didn’t even bother
to look closely at them. I tried to grab them as quickly as I could and tear
them from his hands. When my face drained of color and I became desperate to
take them away from him, he got even more suspicious. He held them high up out
of my reach. Never had he experienced such a strong and confusing set of
feelings as he had with me.

He had gone from
hating me, to reluctantly having feelings for me, and now enjoying watching me
squirm again. Although it was a lot to grapple with, his mind was of a single
track in the moment. He quickly read the papers expecting to find information
on how I had found him, but he quickly came to realize it wasn’t that at all.

It was a song I
wrote.

My heart dropped a
million flights of stairs. He paused and stared at the pages, taken aback. Of
any possibility that could have ran through his mind on what he would read on
those tossed papers, a song written by me was one that would have never been on
the list. He looked over scrawled handwriting again and read the lines more
carefully.

Just like that,
his anger flushed out of his face—he loved the song. Momentarily speechless, it
was all he could do to look down into my eyes and try to convey the emotions
coursing through his body. But that was impossible. I was too panicked to
notice, even if everything was obvious from the look in his eyes.

“Ali,” he finally
whispered. My gaze softened immediately upon hearing the tone of his voice.
“This song is great. I never knew…” He trailed off and looked back at the pages
in his hand before meeting my eyes again. He knew I wanted them back. He knew
that, if I’d had my way, he would have never laid eyes on the song. However,
that didn’t stop him from clutching the papers tightly and walking right out of
my hotel room.

“Hey!” My strangled
yell came from inside the room when he was already a few paces down the
hallway. “Get back here!” My voice was getting closer and the fall of my quick
steps echoed. I reached out and grabbed at his arm. I fought him to get the
papers back, but he was too fast and held them up too high. I stopped at the
exit of the stairwell. As much as I wanted to snatch the papers away from him
and never look at his face again, I couldn’t bring myself to cause a scene in
the hotel lobby.

Noticing I had stopped
following, Hayden halted and turned slowly to look at me. There was a brief
moment of intense silence. I had no clue what was going to happen next.

 
“I’ll be leaving one of my bodyguards with you
to make sure you’re safe,” he said before pushing the door of the stairwell
open and walking out. I rushed to hold it open, but didn’t cross the threshold.
Instead, I watched helplessly as he walked straight out of the building, still
clutching my song in his hands.

I fumed. I didn’t
care that he complimented what I had wrote. He crossed a line and considering
he was guilty of that in my life already, I was in disbelief. First he took my
career and changed my life for the worse. Now he even had the nerve to take my
music and tell me it was great, even though it was pretty crappy.

I threw myself
onto the bed and shut my eyes. I drew in deep breaths and hoped I could calm
down.

Hayden got back to
his hotel to find Gina waiting in front of his door, arms crossed and foot
tapping on the carpet. He eyed her wearily, but didn’t ask any questions. He
knew once they were inside he’d be expected to answer a barrage of them. He
moved past her and slid his key card in the reader, pushing the door open and
holding it enough for her to enter.

“So you went to
look for her again,” Gina said, obviously annoyed. Hayden knew she was jealous.
He knew she was upset about me taking even more of his time and attention on
this trip; time that she had hoped would be just for the two of them. Maybe she
had wanted to pull him out of the city and away from me with the faint hope
that something would happen between them, but she had been sorely mistaken if
that was the case.

Hayden had never
been attracted to her and the more she wanted him, the less he cared for her.
At first, she had been a very valuable member of his team. Over time, what had
started off as flattery had quickly progressed into something annoying. She
even treaded the line of being unprofessional at times and that was what really
bothered him. He was no fool—he knew she would keep pushing if she thought she
had a tiny chance at something more between them.

He knew it was
time to admit the truth. He gulped and looked her dead in the eye, “Yes, I went
to look for Ali again. Why is that such a problem?”

Gina stared at
him, rays of anger pulsing from her eyes into his. She drew in a rattling
breath, rolled her eyes, and started to pace back and forth in front of him.
She was putting him on edge and he didn’t appreciate it, especially not when
he’d already had a hell of a morning. He turned to look out the window, eyes
fixated on the sky. He had to think of the truth and speak honestly to her, but
in order to do that he first had to come to terms with it.

As much pain and
suffering as I had caused him in the past and as much as I could sometimes be a
nuisance to him, he couldn’t deny what he truly felt for me. I drew him in like
no other woman he had ever known. I was full of surprises and I made him want
to be surprised even more. I wasn’t afraid to go after what I wanted, take
matters into my own hands, and even had an edge to show if pushed hard enough.

“Gina,” Hayden
finally said. She turned to look at him. “I have feelings for Ali.” At first he
was hesitant to even say it, but as soon as he spoke the words came out as
confident as ever. He wasn’t only admitting it to Gina—he was admitting it to
himself.

The silence rang
out in the room before she stormed off, slamming the door of her own hotel
room. Hayden didn’t dare go after her. He had no clue what sorts of things she
might say or how she would react. He sat down and took solace in the fact that
he had been honest.

Perhaps he would
now be able to have Gina by his side purely as a colleague. That was only if she
managed to move past everything. What he didn’t know was that Gina wouldn’t
allow her budding rivalry with me to fester like he had– she would take matters
into her own hands. She was determined to make things increasingly
uncomfortable for me, even more than they already were.

While Hayden sat
on the bed in his hotel room, thinking of what to do next, Gina was already
moving forward with her plan.

There was a loud
banging on my hotel door that made me jump about a foot into the air. I
clutched my chest and drew in a rapid breath as I tried to calm down. I stared
at the door as if my intense gaze could keep it closed, but there was a second
round of knocks that were louder than the first. Shaking, I walked slowly to
the door and looked through the peephole.

 
I was unable to hold back my gasp when I saw
three Peruvian police officers standing on the other side. My heart started to
beat even faster, pulse thundering in my ears, as the panic grew inside me. I
had absolutely no clue what was going on or what they wanted. I reached out and
pulled the door open with a shaking hand.

Without a word,
the three police officers stormed into my hotel room. That was when I finally
broke and cried out, “What’s going on?” I walked after the man nearest me and
shouted, “Hey! You can’t do that!” But none of them paid any attention to me.
They completely trashed the place as they looked for something, but I had no
idea what it was they were in search of. All I knew was that I needed to put a
stop to this, but had no way of doing so. It seemed nobody would actually
listen to me anymore.

The three men
finally stopped and gathered together before standing in front of me. “We’ve
received information about drug use in this room. We do not
tolera
–”

“
WHAT?!
” I shouted, gripping my hair and
staring at the men. It was impossible. “I’ve
never
done drugs in my life!” I was beside myself. This was
definitely too much. It was the last straw. The three men looked at one another
and mumbled something. They determine that I appeared to be in a fair state of
mind and since they couldn’t find any drugs, they would have to let me go. They
walked out of the room without cleaning it up or offering an apology.

I couldn’t believe
what had just happened. I stood in the middle of my room, door still open wide
and everything trashed around me, just staring out the window. I wasn’t focused
on anything. I was in utter shock. It wasn’t until I heard the distant voice of
a man calling my name that I came to and turned to see Hayden’s bodyguard standing
at my door, cell phone in hand. He continued to ask me if I was okay. I was
unresponsive. All I could do was try desperately to fight back an impending
panic attack.

 
It wasn’t long after I collapsed to the floor,
still staring at the bodyguard who had gone silent, when Hayden appeared. He
dashed inside and crouched in front of me, gripping my shoulders to shake my
body.

“Ali!” he yelled
but even his voice sounded distant. Everything had come to a head. I couldn’t
wrap my mind around everything that had happened.

A couple hours
later, I woke up in a comfortable bed. As soon as my eyes started to open I
realized I wasn’t in my hotel room. I sat up so quickly the room started to
spin. As I looked around, memories from earlier in the day started popping up
until I realized I was in a suite.

“Hayden,” I
muttered, recalling how he had convinced me to move to a suite next to his at
the hotel he was staying at, which was more like a luxurious lodge than a
hotel. I knew I must have been quite shaken up to agree to it.

I stood up and
reached into the mini-fridge for a cold bottle of water. As I sipped on it and
began to piece everything together, I started to think maybe being closer to Hayden
might help me convince him to change Via’s appearance. If all else failed, I
could at least take back the pages of my song he took from me.

I let out a heavy
sigh and rubbed the top of my head. There was a strange feeling in my stomach.
I knew the subtle churning inside my tummy had nothing to do with the ordeal
from earlier. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, it was Hayden who was the
cause of the strange feeling– a feeling I begrudgingly admitted was not a
negative one.

I chugged the rest
of the water and crumpled up the bottle in my hand, staring out the window at
the sky. I sighed. If I was to be honest with myself, I had to admit my
feelings for Hayden. Although I often felt some level of hatred toward him, I
couldn’t deny that I had been falling for him this whole time. It was something
I had even admitted to my brother.

I turned around to
lean my back against the wall and slid down to the floor, pulling my knees up
to my chest and resting my chin between them. How was it possible that I had
such strong feelings for Hayden? Everything I was going through now, right down
to the ridiculous drug raid of my room in a foreign country, had all been
thanks to him. When I met him, I had found him rude and callous. Now I cared
for the man. It just didn’t make sense to have such mixed emotions, especially
in this type of situation. But that was the thing… these types of emotions
rarely, if ever, make sense.
 

It was getting
late and my head was pounding. Figuring I had had more than my fair share of an
eventful day, I climbed into bed and shut my eyes. I wanted to push the image
of Hayden’s handsome face out of my mind, but it only made me think of him even
more. I grunted and clawed at the comforter, wishing I didn’t have such
conflicting emotions.

“Why now,” I
murmured against my pillow, “Why now of all times…”

The following
morning, at the foot of Machu Picchu, I cracked open my eyes to the light of
day flooding my hotel suite. I was still next door to Hayden, which meant I was
still in a mess and no closer to figuring out what to do. But as I flipped onto
my back and grabbed my phone to check the morning’s headlines, my jaw dropped.
In large letters, crude headlines had my name written all over them.

I frantically
skimmed through various articles only to find that I was being dubbed the “real
life Via Mace”. I was being described as someone even more crass and crazy than
Via Mace herself. Apparently I had stalker-like tendencies, crazy unpredictable
behavior, and even an affinity for enjoying life on drugs.

I couldn’t believe
my eyes. Of everything I had seen, heard, and experienced since Via Mace came
into existence, this was the most outrageous. I felt like my heart was about to
stop.