Chapter 6 #2
By the time we made it home, it was 1:48 a.m. Mateo headed straight for the shower for a post-event ritual I used to find endearing, which he called “washing off the fake.” I heard him turn on the water as I removed my earrings.
Ten years together, and we moved like synchronized swimmers, knowing each other’s patterns so well.
I gathered his dirty clothes off the floor and headed to the laundry room opposite the kitchen.
I placed the garments on the table, and something hit the counter with a thud.
I checked his jacket pockets out of instinct, knowing his inability to empty them before taking his clothes off.
I pulled a phone out of his pocket, but it wasn’t the latest model iPhone.
This looked like a burner from the convenience store.
My heartbeat picked up as I examined it.
The screen was blank with no apps, messages, or contacts.
A factory reset, but it connected to our Wi-Fi, which meant…
I opened the settings, navigated to storage, and found the cloud backup.
It was still enabled and linked to an email address I didn’t recognize: [email protected].
A juvenile email for a grown man, but I realized anonymity was the goal.
The backup was minimal—only a few random screenshots, a voice memo from three weeks ago, and a note about basketball stats.
The date on the memo caught my eye. It was the day before DeAndre’s accident.
The shower was still running. I pressed play on the voice memo and held the phone to my ear.
“I’m not sure why I’m recording this, but maybe I’ll remember how it went down when the story starts changing. Coach said he wanted to make an example of DeAndre for making contract demands. It was supposed to be a warning. Not… fuck.” The recording ended abruptly.
I stood with my heart beating wildly, clutching the phone to my chest. The water shut off, and I had seconds to decide what to do—confront him, pretend, or hide the phone.
Instead, my instinct kicked in, and I quickly forwarded the voice memo to my own email.
Then I hit the factory reset to erase my digital footprint.
I slipped it back into the jacket pocket and continued sorting laundry as if nothing had happened.
When I returned to the bedroom, Mateo was sleeping in bed.
I climbed in after my shower, listening to his breath deepen.
Sleep didn’t come easily, and when I rolled over, I noticed Mateo watching me like a weirdo.
It made my skin prickle. I closed my eyes, pretending to go back to sleep, but I could feel his eyes on me long afterward.
An hour or two later, I awoke to a note on the pillow about an early training session.
I got dressed and headed to the kitchen to make coffee when the doorbell rang.
I didn’t see anyone in the peephole. I opened the door to a small envelope on the doormat.
I grabbed it and locked the door. It was a standard flash drive.
I grabbed my laptop from the island where I left it last and plugged in the flash drive.
There was no audio, and all I saw was them playing.
It happened so fast that I had to rewind.
It looked like Mateo drove an elbow into DeAndre’s body, but the angle was weird, and you couldn’t really tell.
DeAndre went down hard, clutching his leg until his head hit the ground.
The video was subjective, but I couldn’t decipher for sure.
The front door opened and startled me so bad I spilled my coffee on the granite countertop.
“Hey, I forgot my… What’s wrong?”
“Remi sent me security footage,” I answered.
His expression shifted. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t. I saw what you did.”
“Whatever she sent you has to be edited. Anyone can fake anything nowadays. I don’t trust it.”
“What about the voice memo on that burner phone?”
“You went through my phone?”
“Mateo, your career was coming along.”
“Coming along? I was rotting on that bench. Do you know what it’s like watching these young niggas getting opportunities I never got?”
“Are you admitting you did something?”
“No. I’m not. Things just went too far!”
“Mateo, you could be charged with criminal assault.”
“What are you going to do? Turn in your own husband? Have Mason grow up with his dad in jail? Break up our family? You better be careful about your next move, Danica.”
His threat sent a chill down my spine, and I thought about what Remi said. “You’ll be next if you get in his way.”
“So, you’re threatening me now?”
My comment hung in the air, and my throat tightened.
“You sound crazy. Next, you’ll be acting like those motherfuckers you know that’s how rumors get started.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“Then what the fuck are you saying, Dani?”
Before I knew it, Mateo’s fist connected with the wall. There was a sickening crunch of the drywall behind me. I stared at the dent—a jagged dent in our once perfectly painted wall.
“Shit,” he whispered.
I saw bright red blood beads along his knuckles.
“Let me see your hand,” I said, reaching for Mateo.
Mateo looked like he wanted to pull away, but he was frozen in place. Probably somewhere between defiance and shame. How did we get here?
“I’m sorry. Dani, you know I would never—I didn’t mean to.”
“I know. We need to ice this.”
Mateo teared up. “The pressure… Everyone is watching, waiting for me to fail… to prove I don’t deserve a spot on the team, and now you?—”
“It’s okay,” I said.
“I’m so fucking sorry. I would never—I can’t lose this. I worked too hard.”
“I know you wouldn’t hurt me. I just wanted you to talk to me.”
“We’ll talk later when we’re both calm.”
“I’ll fix the drywall this weekend,” he commented.
Mateo grabbed his bag and stared at me for a long moment. “That voice could have been anyone’s, and that footage is edited. Stop letting people get in your head.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“I’m going back to practice.”
After he left, I stood in the kitchen with coffee puddling around my bare feet.
Had I been so caught up in supporting Mateo’s dreams that I missed the darkness growing inside him?