Hidden Desire

Chapter 4

Mikey's point of view

Walking out of the club, I had to fight myself not to look back at her.

What the hell was she thinking?

What the hell was I thinking that when she'd asked to go back to my hotel room with me that my immediate answer had been yes. It had taken a full thirty seconds for me to comprehend her question, to remind myself that saying yes, even though I'd wanted to, was absolutely not a fucking option.

She was Tyler.

Tyler.

Reggie's little sister.

She was ten years younger than me. Not that I hadn't been dating girls her age since I was that age myself. My last fling was a nineteen-year-old model. I'd been twenty-nine at the time. A ten-year difference, just like the ten-year difference between me and Tyler now. She was twenty-one, freshly.

What could she possible see in me?

But the way she called me Michael when no one else did, that definitely did things to me. It had started after I'd rescued her from the snow outside Val and Reggie's house when she'd been sixteen, right after Vincent had been born.

When had she decided that she was even interested in me? I knew she'd seen my conquests splashed out across the covers of various gossip magazines. I hadn't changed my playboy ways until two years ago, sleeping my way through half of campus in college and the first five years of my N.B.A. career. I treated the women better than I did in high school, as equals. I didn't demonise them anymore or think less of them because they were sleeping with me. I respected them, was upfront about my intentions to have it just be sex. I'd still broken the occasional heart because every few months there was always a woman who thought she could be the one to change me.

They never could.

Tyler deserved better than me. And Reggie would cut my dick off if he found out I went anywhere near his sister. The irony that, in high school, when I found out about him and Val, he'd sworn up and down that he'd never treat Tyler the way I did Val. But that had changed basically the day she turned sixteen, and he'd seen someone check her out for the first time.

I'd laughed in his face, finally feeling justified in the reaction I had to finding out my best friend was sleeping with my sister all those years ago. It had worked out because they were still together, married, two kids. They had a great life. And it was one I was jealous of. It had taken me eleven years to realise that I wanted that type of life- a wife, kids, a family of my own.

Mine and Val's childhoods hadn't been horrible; our mom had been an excellent mother. But our dad was an asshole. He'd been verbally abusive of me for as long as I could remember. My only worth to him was if made it to the N.B.A. It was because of him that I struggled so much with misogyny and sexism. It had taken me years to undo that damage, and I still struggled with it sometimes, but I was working on it. When my mom had finally divorced him during our senior year of high school, I'd momentarily considered forgoing my basketball scholarship and quitting, preventing me from ever getting into the N.B.A. I felt like I owed it to myself not to be forced into the version of me that my father wanted me to be. But ultimately, I loved the game, despite how it was tied to my worth in his eyes. And it had worked out. I had an amazing career, more money than I could ever spend, endorsements with major companies. All that was missing was a wife.

Mom and Val didn't know, but after I'd been drafted, dad had contacted me. He'd offered to be my agent. Obviously I'd turned him down, but that didn't stop him from popping up every once in awhile and asking for money. I'd never given it to him, and his requests got bolder and bolder every time.