City of Champions (10 page)

She looked down and saw there was no masculine head between her thighs — only her own pajama bottoms, slightly damp from her arousal, matching the sweat that had collected across her face and throughout her hair.

She slapped the alarm clock off and threw her head back against her pillows with a huff.

It was the Monday after Wyatt had shocked her with a text message saying that he'd tapped her to perform a follow-up consultation on his shoulder. She'd gotten the text during Light Up Night, right after Griffen proposed to Tea, and it had taken all of her self-control not to let her upset show too strongly on her face. There was no way she was going to let her own personal drama distract from Tea's special night.

Jenna had spent the weekend trying to convince herself she could face this consultation as though Wyatt were any other person. But her dream proved that was very far from the truth. The appointment was mere hours away, and unless she could convince her boss to get her out of it, she was going to be smack-dab in front of the man that had been occupying her thoughts and nighttime fantasies for a week now.

She'd tried to forget about him — told herself it was merely sexual frustration and boredom after so many wasted dates with boring men. Yet, no matter what she did, her mind kept wandering back to the sound of his recorded voice on her phone, or his eyes, boring into hers as he leaned into her body…training his eyes on her lips…

Enough!
She ordered to herself. 

The only solution was to avoid ever seeing him again. Keep him out of her life until his memory flushed itself out of her bloodstream like a mind-altering drug.

She could only hope Richard would see things her way. Which meant she needed to get her act in gear, and to work — fast.

Jenna had made it to the hospital in record time — even with the delay Aubrey caused by relentlessly teasing her about the incessant moaning that had emanated from her bedroom most of the previous night. Apparently Jenna had sounded like a cat in heat during her erotic nighttime torment. That was certainly mortifying, but thankfully Aubrey hadn't made out anyone's name through the thin wall separating their bedrooms.

Her roommate and dear friend was loyal and loving to the end, but she was also like a bloodhound after a scent when she suspected something interesting — particularly something sexual — was going on within her vicinity.

The mortification she experienced was intense, but blessedly brief. Nothing would arouse Aubrey's curiosity more than knowing Jenna had been dreaming nightly about Wyatt. He was a man whom some dark force had apparently crafted in a black-market-laboratory hot-man workshop, with the sole purpose of including every trait Jenna had tried to avoid her entire adult life, all wrapped up into one spectacularly sexy Mexican-Irish package.

Aubrey had just begun inquiring after the identity of Jenna's "dream man" when Jenna stuffed a piece of toast in her mouth and hightailed it out of their apartment. She felt compelled to escape Aubrey's eagle-eyed presence quickly, as she mumbled through a full mouth about a meeting with Richard.

It wasn't a lie — she did have one with him, even if he didn't know it yet.

Jenna didn't even stop by her office as she rushed to meet with Richard, still in her heavy winter coat. Time was of the essence if she was going to get out of this assignment.

With her heart pounding in her chest, Jenna lifted her fist to knock on Richard's door, but she let it fall to her waist before making contact.

Reality quickly took hold of her as she admitted to herself that this consult was exactly the kind of high-profile opportunity she needed to show Richard that she deserved the fellowship. No matter how much the thought of being near Wyatt McCoy again bothered her, she had no choice but to do it.

Just as the adrenaline ebbed away, Richard opened the door and he jumped a bit at the sight of her.

"Hi Jenna, you're just the person I was coming to see. I have good news."

"I'm going to do a follow-up consultation on Wyatt McCoy today."

"That's right, you must be psychic."

"I just wanted to tell you that I am so grateful for the opportunity. I know you must have pulled strings to get me on the list of options for him. I won't let you down."

"That's great to hear, because he'll be here in an hour."

"What?" she gasped out, then recovering quickly. "That's wonderful, then I can dive right in. Thanks," she said forcing a smile before heading to her office.

Dammit!
Jenna thought to herself, throwing her purse and coat down on the spare chair in her office, with a huff. She took a breath and smoothed some stray hairs off her hot forehead with a hand quivering from an overwhelming sense of frustration.

Jenna swallowed hard and sat at her desk. She didn't have much time to collect her composure before Wyatt would be in her fully equipped office, so she reviewed Wyatt's chart that had been left in her in-box.

It was quickly clear to her that her instinct after watching him play had been correct. This was certainly more than a simple impingement in the right shoulder joint.

God, he must be in serious pain,
she thought.

With her review of his chart complete, Jenna was left with far too many empty minutes. She tried cleansing breaths, reviewing old emails, and filing away documents, but she couldn't shake her restlessness. Every moment her brain kept desperately rushing back to the memories she'd done such a good job of pushing down for so many years — ones she'd almost convinced herself were gone.

But she'd been kidding herself. The specter of Chase Matthews — and everything he represented in her life — would never leave her.

No boys had ever shown any interest in her growing up. She'd always just been Coach Sutherland's awkward, motherless, tomboy daughter. She had a head full of frizzy hair and dressed like a guy, because she didn't know how to be a girl. Her life had been football season on the sidelines with her dad, then her own basketball season, and always loads of studying. It was as though no one even knew she existed.

Chase must've sensed her loneliness, because when he zeroed his attention on her at preseason training before the beginning of her junior year of high school, she'd been a goner. As the backup quarterback on her father's team, he had plenty of time to chat with her — he made her feel special and beautiful, despite her baggy tee shirts and profound lack of experience with boys.

Every moment they were together were blurs of excitement and happiness. She never questioned why he never spent time in public with her, or why he seemed always so eager to talk about the team, her father, and how much he wanted to be the starting quarterback for his final high school season. There was no room for doubt when he single-handedly was so many of her firsts — first crush, first kiss, and one hot Georgia night — the biggest first of all.

She wanted him to be happy, and he really did have a lot of potential. So when he asked her to persuade her father to give him a chance at starting quarterback, it seemed completely natural.

For a brief time there, Jenna had been so happy. She actually thought that the life all those normal girls she saw in the halls at school got to live could be hers, too.

Chase had said he loved her and she believed it with all the exuberant glee imaginable in her young heart. That glorious happiness made the crushing realization of the truth all the more disturbing when she came upon Chase talking to a cheerleader in a darkened corner, only weeks into school.

"Brittany, come on, of course I'm not really with her. Are you fucking kidding me? I have the starting position now, I just need to string her along until the end of the season."

And then, he kissed her, and the sight of it knocked the wind out of Jenna. She dropped her backpack and ran as hard and as fast as she could, anything to get away from this horrible moment. She rushed to the boys’ locker room, desperate to make it to her father's office, when Chase was upon her.

He leaned against her, caging her in with his body, as he placed one hand on the metal of the locker above her head and stared hard into her eyes.

"Let me go," she said with a quivering voice.

"Calm down, Jenna. You know I love you."

"No you don't, I heard what you said. I saw what you did." She looked down and whispered out, "You never really liked me. I'm so stupid, you just used me, and you were ashamed of me this whole time."

"Fine," he answered roughly, grabbing the tops of her arms with clenched fists.

"Chase, you're hurting me, let me go."

"I'm not hurting you, Jenna…yet," he said, with a twisted smile on his face, lifting a hand up and placing it loosely around her throat, sending her insides into a panic that she willed herself to control. He used his hand to push her harder against the locker behind her. "I'm not letting you go anywhere until you listen to me."

Chase squeezed her throat with his hand, until stars appeared in front of her eyes.

"Chase, stop, please."

He pushed her back hard until her head bounced hard on the metal of the locker.

"I mean it, you need to relax," he said to her coldly.

"I-I can't…" she gasped out roughly.

"I wanted to just do this the nice way — the fun way," Chase added. He loosened the grip on her throat and she gasped for air. With a leer he looked down at her breasts, sending her stomach into a twisting battle against itself.

"But now you're gonna cry like a spoiled brat and run to Daddy."

"I will tell him what you did," she whispered.

"You do that and I'll ruin him."

"What?"

"Your dad likes to gamble, doesn't he?"

"You know about that?"

Fear gripped Jenna's heart. Her father did like to gamble, especially on sports. She believed it helped him deal with the pain of losing her mother, but she mainly just tried to ignore it.

"I do. And I have proof he bet on football games."

"He never bet on ours, that's insane."

"All it takes is the suspicion, Jenna. And I have enough dirt on him, pictures, too, to create that suspicion. Do you want to see him lose everything?"

Her shoulders slumped. Coaching was all her father had. The mere thought of him losing that would destroy him.

"No, of course, I don't," she whispered.

"Good, then you're going to leave me alone to do whatever the fuck I want to do and you'll keep your mouth shut. Right?" he asked, moving his hands away from her neck to squeeze the top of her arms again.

Jenna couldn't find the words to speak until he shook her and shoved her against the locker behind her, sending a clatter of clanging metal echoing through the room, as pain shot across her back.

"Right, Chase. Right," she answered, tears suddenly sprouting from her eyes.

"Good, glad you understand me. And stop crying. You weren't too terrible when I fucked you. You should be thanking me for doing you the favor," he sneered out, releasing her roughly.

He walked away and Jenna slid down the cool metal until she was sitting on the floor of the empty locker room and cried by herself. She wrapped her arms around her knees and allowed herself a moment of sheer painful sadness before collecting her emotions so she could be prepared to act as though nothing had happened.

Jenna did a great job of pretending that everything was fine for that whole school year, even if she was hurting and terrified inside. Chase got his scholarship to the University of Georgia, after making sure Jenna got her dad to put in a good word for him.

No one but she and Chase knew what he'd done to her. She'd worked as hard as she could to take the opportunity to graduate early and go to Duke. Her father didn't understand why she wanted to leave him so quickly. Why she wouldn't go to the University of Georgia and stay nearby. Yet, the mere idea of another year at the site of her ultimate humiliation, or of going to the same college as Chase, made her feel sick to her stomach. So she ran the first chance she got.