Qualified: A Sports Romance (16 page)

Leaving the party behind, the three
girls drifted together to the stairs where a new bouncer had taken up the
station. They smiled faintly at him as they passed to start their descent.
Below the crowd writhed in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of interactions.

“Why did Natalie say Marc needed help with drug
testing?” Allie blurted over the music as she watched people dance down below.
The shape of his mouth and pressure of his fingertips still felt imprinted on
her skin. Being with him was a dream she was scared to believe in. She worried
that the nightmare that followed might have been a better glimpse at the truth.

Candace sighed and shook her head before turning
her chin back to answer. “It’s one of the rumors. From his time in college.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Kelsey recommended
with a pat on her arm. “If it was a problem, they wouldn’t have him on the team
now. You know better than us how strict the anti-doping committee is.”

“But there was something.” In her wooziness Allie
was like a dog with a bone. “Is that why he didn’t finish school? Because of
drugs?” She planted her feet halfway down the stairs, realizing she had no idea
who Marc was.

Her roommate was elbow-linked at her side, but it
took Candace a second to realize they’d stopped. She returned the three steps
to them, sharing a look with Kelsey before reaching to squeeze Allie’s other
hand. “You’d have to ask Everett, babe. No one else went to college with him.”

“But weren’t Chad and Vince …?”

“They were all on the national team in two thousand
four, but not from the same university.” Kelsey shrugged a shoulder. “I guess
that year in Athens is where Belmont picked up his reputation for partying
hard. He’d left school and gone pro by Beijing. All I know is that’s why Marc
and Natalie grabbed so many headlines in two thousand eight. She was the
fresh-faced All Star and he was the dropout who had trouble keeping the
fighting in the pool and himself out of hot water.”

“Do you know what happened with Simon?” Candace
asked about the old men’s team captain.

Kelsey tilted her head, non-committal. “I never
knew them that well. Simon and Chad and Natalie … they were always really
keen on building their personal brand.” Her elbow bonked into Allie’s breast as
she put air quotes around the phrase. “I always had the sense that Natalie was
a stealth bitch.”

“Well she’s not so stealthy anymore.” Allie’s face
twisted with unmasked disgust as she rubbed at the scratches on her arm.

Candace’s bitten lip only held back her bittersweet
laugh for a second. “Oh, Allie.” She squeezed her hand once more before giving
a tug to urge them to keep going. “Let’s get you home.”

Once downstairs, Allie stood inside
the ropes with Kelsey and Candace while the girls got out their phones and
tabbed open their Uber apps. “Do you think we can fit in one car?” Candace
shared a glance with Kelsey then leaned over the ropes to find the boys on the
street.

With the time it took them to make it out of the
club, the guys had gotten a chance to cool off in the dropping temperatures of
the night air. They’d moved off a ways, probably directed down the block by the
bouncers.

The bouncers didn’t waste much time before
prompting the three of them to complete their departure, anyway. “Ladies, I’m
going to have to ask you to clear the way.”

“Just a sec,” Kelsey said with a bright flash of
smile to the bouncer before answering Candace. “It might be a tight fit. We can
get our own car, Allie?”

Allie was still feeling a little shell-shocked. She
hugged her purse to her stomach, looking along the sidewalk to where she could
see Marc’s shoes as he sat in a doorway. “I should look at his hand,” she
decided after a shaky moment. Regardless of everything else, she’d feel awful
if he ended up on the injured list because of her. “If you want to stay …”
She looked back to Kelsey. “I’ll be all right.”

“Don’t be silly,” Kelsey curled a hug around her
waist. “I’ve got your back.”

Candace was nodding too. “It’ll be all right,
Allie. I’ll get an UberXL.”

“Ladies …” The bouncer was trying to get them
out of the doorway and away from the glares of the people still in line.

“On our way,” Kelsey flicked a last smile at the
bouncer as she took Allie’s arm to lead the way down the sidewalk.

Marc pushed himself up from his seat on the curb
once he saw them coming.

“Please don’t let me do anything stupid,” Allie
whispered to Kelsey as they closed the distance. After the fighting, despite
the rumors, her heart still clutched with anticipation as she walked towards
him. She thought, maybe, he looked worried about her.

“If you insist.” Kelsey was scanning her eyes over
Marc.

“I’m getting a car for all of us,” Candace said to
the guys as she finished clicking at her phone and caught up with them.

“You all right?” Marc only had eyes for Allie.

“I’m fine.” Allie was sure to keep her posture
straight and her words professionally clipped. Her eyes dodged to Troy and
Austin to see if they were watching. If they saw her as some girl getting
played, chasing doe-eyed after Marc, she’d lose all credibility. “I need to see
your hand.”

Marc hadn’t quite been smiling at the sight of her,
but those words darkened his expression to something more guarded. The
approaching sway of his steps halted.

Allie disentangled from Kelsey with a thankful
squeeze and finished closing the distance. She swallowed against the conflicted
churn of her stomach as she reached for Marc’s wrist to hold his knuckles up
for inspection. “If you’ve aggravated the soft tissue before it’s healed …”
she tried to scold as she prodded carefully along the heavy bones of his hand,
feeling for heat and swelling. The cool of the night air mostly kept her blush
at bay as she thought of how his fingers had touched her such a short time ago.

“Are you going to bench me?” Marc’s voice was
nearly monotone, but that didn’t completely hide how much more he was asking.

Allie could hear his disbelief. And his anger. Her
chest ached with the need to tell him that it would be fine, that she was on
his side. But it wasn’t sensible. She should have known better than to get
tangled up with him in the first place. Now both their dreams could be at risk.

She could know all that, but it didn’t change the
fact that she was too scared to look up and see what was in his eyes. Instead
she glanced along the street to where a convenience store was lit up. “I’d like
to get some ice,” Allie said to Candace.

“We can have the car pick you up in the parking
lot, once it arrives,” the other girl offered.

Allie nodded and started walking. Marc shifted to
follow her.

She turned and put a palm up, backing away to avoid
touching him. If she felt his heartbeat under her hand her resolve might melt.
“No,” she said firmly. “No more chances for trouble from you tonight.”

Marc jerked his chin up like she’d slapped him. It
delayed his argument for a moment. “You shouldn’t be walking alone around
here.”

“Why, are there drunk assholes out tonight?” Allie
retorted sarcastically. She was rewarded with the visible clenching of Marc’s
jaw.

“I’ll go with you, Allie,” Troy offered before
there could be further argument. He was already sidestepping Marc with a wary
glance.

“Thank you, Troy.” Allie turned and walked off
without another look back.

They split up in the convenience store, though
there were barely enough aisles to make it worthwhile. In the end, it was
easiest to buy candy from the counter so the attendant would let them get a Big
Gulp cup full of ice from the fountain machine.

Allie and Troy made it out before the minivan had
time to pick up the rest of the group and roll down the block. When the driver
pulled up and her roommate opened the side door from the middle bench seat,
Allie saw that they’d left the spot next to Marc open in the back. She met his
eyes for a moment and then deliberately took the seat beside Kelsey even though
it meant Troy had to crawl half over her to sit beside his teammate.

Marc’s expression went from vaguely grim to
distantly blank.

Allie tried not to think about it. Once she had her
buckle on she twisted in her seat and rolled her fingers in beckoning at him.
“Your hand.”

Marc stared at her a second before complying. She
could feel the weight of his scrutiny prickling along the back of her neck even
though she wouldn’t look at him. While Candace chatted with the driver from up
front and they eased into traffic towards the freeway onramp, Allie picked the
tape loose from Marc’s knuckles.

She felt along his fingers one more time once the
binding was off. He twitched slightly as she dragged her fingers against the
tips of his with soft-graze slowness. Finally, with the others at least
feigning distraction, Allie allowed herself to meet his eyes.

For a long moment she was lost in the darkness.
Allie was barely aware of the slow run of her tongue along her lip, chasing the
memory of how he had kissed her. She was still stung by the rough of his
bristles and the force of his wanting her. Never had anyone made her feel so
desired.

His hand started to twist in hers, to pull her
closer.

Allie snapped out of her enchantment with a soft
noise of negation. She couldn’t afford to let herself be drawn into his game.
She was sure to lose. How could she possibly expect to be anything special to
him? Her gaze dropped to the business of reaching the cup of ice over the back
of her seat.

“Troy,” she had to ask when Marc didn’t accept it.

The other player was more obliging, taking the cup
and holding it perched on Marc’s knee. Troy looked at Marc in cautious aside.
“Doctor’s orders, man,” he explained himself with a shrug.

“Twenty minutes,” Allie said firmly as she passed
Marc’s hand back over the seat, pointing a finger towards the cup commandingly.

Marc sighed and dunked in his hand.

Allie made a show of setting the timer on her
phone. Then she turned resolutely around to watch out the front window.

She tried to pretend she didn’t notice how Marc was
watching her in the dark glass reflection.

“Good morning, sunshine.”

For one sweet second, Marc believed that it was
Allie shifting the covers back so cool air hit his skin. Then reality came
crashing in with the pounding throb of his headache. It wasn’t her voice, the
face leaning over his bed was bearded, and she’d never be able to shove his
shoulder that roughly.

Marc groaned and flopped over on his back. He
tested the curl of his right hand’s fingers. They felt stiff, but they were
just buddy-taped. He vaguely remembered Adam doing it after Allie refused to
come over to their apartment. Her hard-to-get act was frustrating as hell. It
was probably just a phase before she settled down in med school, but she was
obviously interested in him. Or she
had been
, anyway, before he stupidly
agreed to go back upstairs at the club.

“Hungover?”

Marc cracked his eyelids further to frown at
Everett. “Thought we had today off.”

“You want more days off?” Everett stripped the
covers the rest of the way from Marc and smacked backhanded at his knee. “Get
up or we’ll be late for your appointments.”

“What appointments?” Despite the question, Marc
rolled himself to sit at the edge of the bed. He rubbed at the ache of his
head.

“Since you decided to revive your boxing career,
we’re going to take you into Lindsey’s clinic to have your hand looked at.”

Marc was almost too distracted to snatch the
t-shirt out of the air when Everett chucked it at him. “Fucking Blake,” he
snarled. He might have expected the prissy little rich boy to say something to
staff, but arranging a morning wake-up call was some impressive efficiency in
screwing him over.

“What did I tell you, when we talked about you
being on this team? Be civil, stay sober, stay out of fights and any other
Jerry Springer shit. And you get the bright idea to go roughing up the biggest
prima donna on this team. Who’s not the one who told me, by the way, so don’t
get carried away with any vengeful bullshit.” Everett knew him too well.
“Dammit, Marc, you should be this team’s biggest asset, not its worst
liability.”

Marc got his shirt pulled over his head but he was
still scowling. “I don’t know what you want me to do when Natalie starts going
after me. You know how she is.” An evil mastermind with a world-spanning
vindictive streak. He knew she’d never forgive him for making her look bad in
two thousand eight. It didn’t matter to her that the unreported truth of what
she
was doing was worse—if it wasn’t a headline, it didn’t seem to count. She
must have really thought he was stupid if she believed he would agree to
whatever story she wanted to cook for Valentine’s Day.

“If you stuck to focusing on practice, not playing
grab-ass, this wouldn’t be an issue for you, Marc. Are you going to get your
pants on?” Everett paused to huff from where he stood in the doorway with his
fists balanced at his hips. He scanned a look over his player. “Natalie was
involved with this?”

“Natalie wasn’t the one who told you either?” Marc
frowned. It was taking most of his focus to get his feet stepped into his jeans
since his head felt like it was splitting open. His belt was still in the loops
of his pants from the previous night.

Picking them up from their pile on the floor made
him think of how Allie’s hands had felt sliding at his waist above their band.
She was everything his ex had tried to pretend to be, except she was the real
deal. As much as Allie talked about her career, Marc couldn’t imagine her
hurting anyone just to get ahead. She was the opposite of cruel.

“Well fucking great. I’ll prepare myself for an
earful from her,” Everett was still muttering. “You gonna take a piss? Hurry
up, I’m serious about being late.”

“Does Coach know?” Marc asked warily as he edged
through the door.

“I thought I’d figure out how big a fucking
disappointment you are before bothering him with the news. It’s not just your
ass on the line, Marc.”

The number of living human beings Marc gave a shit
about was so low that it probably didn’t qualify as a list. Whatever it was,
Everett’s name was on it. He had to grind the words between his teeth before he
could swallow them.

Bitterness lingered in his hangover-dry mouth.
“Yeah, well, you can’t rely on anyone.”

“Boo fucking hoo.” Everett hurried him down the
hall with a push at his shoulder. “And this is why your second appointment is
with the shrink. This isn’t swimming, Marc. We’re a team sport, and we need
team players. As good as you are, even you can’t win gold on your own.”

“Fucking watch me,” Marc grumbled as he shuffled
down the hallway to use the bathroom before meeting Everett in the living room
to head down to the car. One thing was for sure, he wasn’t ever going to be on
the same side as someone who ratted on him.