Page 37 of Unexpected Shot
When it comes to Shelby? I have no damn clue…
CHAPTER 9
SHELBY
“Damnit…”
I watch as the ball sails through the air, hitting the Nashville sunset at just the right angle. It’s going to land around the two-sixty mark, meaning I’ll get a little roll after that.
I should be happy. That’s where I want my drive to be. Sure, it’s with my old swing, but my doctor assured me that playing it for a few tournaments wasn’t going to land me back in the operating room. Eventually I’ll need to truly lock in and figure out a way to not tear through the shoulder I just had repaired, but that’s a problem for future Shelby.
With that pressure relieved for now, I should be in good spirits going into this week. Except, I’m not. Because tomorrow I’ll be back in Las Vegas. The city I used to call home. The place where I built my career and became one of the best women golfers in the world. I bought my first home there. I established a life. Or at least I thought I did.
And then it all fell apart.
It’s been months since I’ve thought about my ex. When your professional career is on life support, your brain can only handledealing with one catastrophic occurrence at a time. He became the low rung on the chaos ladder.
Now, with my swing back to semi-normal, my brain is finding plenty of spare time to fixate on what I left in the city I used to call home.
On Michael—the reporter I stupidly fell in love with.
I’ve always hated reporters and interviews. Even as a kid I remember thinking “this is the best question they can come up with?” But, when you’re one of the top-ranked golfers in the world, interviews are a part of the job.
That didn’t mean I had to like it.
I always gave the shortest answers possible. Call it my way of staging an internal protest. If they asked me a yes or no question, I gave them just that. I never elaborated. And I never did it with a smile on my face. I think I was always hoping if I gave enough shitty answers, they’d stop asking me questions and I’d never have to do an interview again.
Little did I know, Michael Stevens was on a mission—to get me to crack.
And apparently crack me.
Who knew he’d succeed at both.
If anyone on the golf journalism beat could do it, it was going to be him. As much as I hated interviews, Michael’s questions were always smart. Well-thought-out. And he never asked me the same thing twice.
It also didn’t hurt that he’s drop-dead gorgeous. Sometimes I curse myself for having a basic-bitch type when it comes to a man. And maybe this is because I grew up on a golf course, but give me a man in a well-fitted polo shirt, pants that hug the thighs and butt just right, and a dimple when he smiles…and I’m fucking gone.
That was Michael.
Our relationship didn’t happen right away. No meeting in a bar after a tournament sparking an instant connection. He’s a national golf writer for a popular website, so he splits his timebetween the men’s and women’s tours. But, he lived in Vegas as well, which meant doing one-on-one in-person interviews wasn’t hard to coordinate. It started with one. Then another. Then it became “let’s talk over drinks.”
Then I fucked him.
I’m not proud of it. But at the end of the day, I was just a woman, he didn’t have a ring, and I’m a sucker for a man in khakis.
We dated for a year in secret, and the ironic thing is that it wasn’t even his idea. It was mine. There’s a fine line between athletes and reporters dating. It’s not barred per se, but it’s a gray area for both parties. Plus, I’ve never been one to broadcast my life, especially my private life. It made sense that we kept our relationship between us.
And explains why I thought everything was great. Until it wasn’t.
We saw each other enough between our travel schedules, but those schedules also meant there were never any long stretches of time together. Looking back, the only red flag I should’ve recognized was that in a year of dating, we never spent the night at his place. In his words, “I live in a shitty condo.”
Oh the things a woman will ignore for better-than-average dick…
And that was the problem. I was rendered stupid by a man who didn’t take five business days to find the clit.
I’d dated off and on for years, but each man was more mediocre than the last. So when Michael came along with his deep thoughts, a love for the same game that consumed me, and could actually make me orgasm, I became blind to everything else.
Which is why when he ended things, admitting to me that not only did he have a wife, but that she’d found out about us, I was floored. Stunned. I didn’t get out of bed for two days because of the pure shock that was my life.
