Page 8 of Striking Heat
Chapter Five
~MAC~
It took longer than I would have liked before I was finally able to dig into Danny Taylor. He felt like he could knock me down a peg or two, but now it was time for me to level the playing field. Let’s see what kind of performances of his I can bring up as lacking attack.
I know one thing: I would like to attack his name. What kind of a reporter calls themselves Danny? Shouldn’t he be going by Dan or Daniel? Something a little more respectable for someone who would like to be taken seriously in journalism. But maybe he doesn’t care about that. Maybe he only wants to write fluff pieces that tear people down.
I type his name into the Google search engine and hit enter. A flurry of activity pops up in front of me, along with thumbnail images of him wearing a swim cap, a few of him on a podium, and one in particular that catches my eye. He’s wearing a suit, and a bunch of other men in suits stand around him. There’s also a woman, who looks older than him by quite a bit. She has his dark hair and eyes that look similar to his, so I’m guessing it’s his mother.
It looks like Danny Taylor swam for Stanford. He is the son offormer NFL player Garrett Taylor, who has won many Super Bowls. The name is familiar to me.
Olympic swimmer and son of former Tampa Bay Bucs player Garret Taylor has received a favorable verdict in the malpractice suit he filed against Dr. Raymond. Dr. Raymond was supposed to be repairing his rotator cuff, but something went horribly wrong. Now the Olympian will never swim again.
The jury awarded Taylor $5.5 million in damages for the botched surgery he received from Raymond. Raymond was considered a world-renowned surgeon and the best in his field. He tried to cover up his mistake, but a second opinion found the issue and revealed that Taylor, who has two gold medals, four silver, and one bronze, will never swim again.
The Stanford standout was projected to have another run at the next Olympics, but now Taylor will have to be happy with all of the medals and honors he’s accumulated from college, the Olympics, and World Championships.
The article goes on to talk about what would become of Dr. Raymond and how much Danny had trusted him to fix his shoulder. I cringe wondering what it must feel like to have someone you trust destroy your chance at your Olympic dreams.
So, he was an athlete. I tap my fingers on the keyboard, thinking about what that means. Here I thought that maybe he was a wannabe who hadn’t had a chance at a professional career. He did; it just got taken from him. It’s every athlete’s worst fear—injury. A torn rotator cuff for a swimmer isn’t the best news, but you can come back from it.
Poor Danny never did.
I turn back to the Google search and find a bunch of other articles that mention Garret Taylor. The majority of them mention that he has a son, Danny. Scrolling through the pictures, I notice that there are no pictures of family with Garret when hewon. It only mentions them. But it doesn’t look like they were there for any of his presentations.
“Interesting,” I say out loud.
I click on an article titledThe Perfect Marriage is Over. They’re talking about Danny’s parents. There’s no reason listed that the marriage ended, just that it’s over and now Danny, who was thirteen at the time, will remain with his mother. Some of the reporters speculated that his mother had been fed up with the girls who always frequented Garret’s hotel room during away games and at the bars when the team was in town.
Other articles call out the mother, stating that she was the one who had run the father away because she was possessive and jealous of him and his fame. Of course they blame the woman.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I lean back in my desk chair. It’s the same chair I used at university. One of those viral TikTok chairs that allow you to cross your legs. It’s one of the most comfortable pieces of furniture I own. But right now, I’m anything but comfortable. I thought if I knew more about him, that I could use some of it against him.
But I don’t want to.
How could I?
He lost his shot at the Olympics. He was a promising swimmer, and someone he trusted put an end to that. There are so many articles that compare his career to his father’s. Of course, the football one comes out as the career that is worth celebrating to some. Other’s think that he should have played football like his old man. But he didn’t. He probably, much to his dad’s dismay, swam. And he did well, until the injury.
I click over to Google images and see hundreds of him in his swimming gear. He looks good. I hate to admit it, because I want to hate him, but goddamn the man looks mighty fine in a Speedo.
My eyes travel hungrily over his body. He’s all hard lines and muscles. Broad shouldered, like most swimmers, a muscular chest, an impressively defined six-pack, and thatVthat makes womengo stupid. I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. I can’t believe the body that man is hiding under those polos. Although judging by the muscular arms, he’s not hiding it all if I just looked a little closer. The muscles on his defined legs, the veins that you can see make my wonder what that khaki clad ass had looked like that night.
I swallow again, feeling a stirring in my belly. It has been too long. That is the problem. I tell myself. That is the problem. I repeat again and again in my head.
“Remember the things he wrote about you,” I tell myself. I bite my lip at the urge to moan at the sight of him with water dripping down his body. It’s not meant to be a pornographic shot, but damn, he’s grinning like he’s in on a dirty little secret that he wants to tell. It does things to me. Makes something stir inside me that hasn’t in a long time.
“Stop it,” I say out loud again. “The man wrote horrible things about you. Do not start looking at him like that.”
I slam the laptop shut because I can’t handle his smug smile staring back at me. At the press conference, his dark eyes looked a bit intense. They even lit up when I pushed back. I meant to look at his other articles, but I got sidetracked when I learned about his past and all of the struggles he had to overcome.
And now he covers sports.
I think back to my schooling. I received a marketing degree from Portland State. I couldn’t have cared less about the degree I was getting. All I wanted to do was play soccer and go pro. My coaches were all telling me that it was a possibility for me. All I had to do was get good grades and play hard, and the rest would take care of itself. After I went pro, my options for careers would open up.
I wonder if someone had promised Danny the same thing, because he ended up with a communications degree. He was redshirted one year and then used his remaining years of eligibility to get a Master’s. He was on the fast track to besomething in swimming, but then he got injured and had to use his degree.
Maybe that’s why he does it. Because he’s angry that he got his chance to live out his dream cut short, so he’s trashing anyone that didn’t. Or maybe he does it to get back at his dad.
