Qualified: A Sports Romance (22 page)

For the rest of the afternoon Allie
couldn’t stop worrying. It didn’t even help when Marc seemed to make a point
between practice sets of catching her eye and giving a flickering suggestion of
the smile he’d shared with her in her room. It just made her look to see if
Everett were watching them. Her infatuation had already impacted her efforts to
get into graduate school. She couldn’t bear to think that something she did
might jeopardize Marc’s spot on the national team’s roster.

The days were getting longer and the trips home
from the pool quieter as the teammates soaked up what moments of rest that they
could. Allie assumed that Marc wasn’t going to pay her any more attention than
he had that morning until he turned left with her when they reached their
floor. She nearly startled at the sound of his voice at her side.

“I’ll see you later,” Marc responded to Adam’s
quizzical grunt. “There was something I had to talk to Allie about.”

Flashing a quick smile over her shoulder to Adam,
Allie fumbled with her keys and wondered how the hall could have gotten so
short since the last time she’d walked down it. Which was last night. Last
night, with his hands sneaking under her skirt, it had seemed like miles before
they got to her door.

“Everett mentioned he spoke with you,” Marc said
when he fell into stride beside her.

“He did.” Allie took a breath. “Marc.” She looked
up at him to find a faint frown folded onto his forehead. Her heart was
screaming all the foolish things and all the fearful things she didn’t dare
give voice. She put on a smile. “It’s really okay. I’m not going to cause any
trouble. I know … I know. You have more important things to focus on.”

His dark eyes never left her. She thought she saw
something change in them—like a reaching hand snatched back from a slamming
door. “Yeah.” An unfinished expression twitched at the edge of his mouth. Marc
continued on a half step so that he could twist and face her when they stopped
in front of her apartment. “I shouldn’t let myself get distracted by anything
just now.” It sounded like a hollow echo of Everett.

Allie wasn’t sure he meant it. Maybe it didn’t
matter, because she was sure that Everett did. “It’s okay, Marc. You don’t have
to explain to me. I understand.”

Marc still had that faint frown tugging between his
eyebrows.

Allie ducked away from his scrutiny and focused on
fitting her key into the lock. She shook her head and ironed her voice to
sensible evenness. “I’m not going to be like Natalie. I’m not going to ruin
this for you.”

“You’re nothing like Natalie.”

Her hand clutched desperately at the doorknob as
she fought against falling into the magnetism of his gaze. Allie didn’t know
what to make of his quickly-snapped reply. She didn’t dare indulge her hopes.
“I mean that I’m not going to cause a scene.” She was terrified that she was
simply
nothing
, unlike Natalie who had been important enough to Marc to
hurt him. Maybe he was just making sure Everett hadn’t gotten her hopes up. “It
was fun, and … maybe we should just leave it at that.”

“Can I come in?”

Allie was already cracking the door open in an
attempt to flee before she crumbled. She could hear her roommate moving around
in the kitchen. “Kelsey is home.” She couldn’t avoid sliding a glance to Marc.
She prepared her answer first so she wouldn’t lose it in the captivating dark
of his eyes. “I think maybe it would be best if you didn’t.”

His jaw was tight. Like his picture from his file.
Like when she first met him. “If that’s what you want.”

Allie made herself nod. She painted on a smile and
poured lighthearted cheer into her voice despite how the center of her chest
ached. “I want to see you guys kick ass in two weeks. I’ll be watching.”

“Yeah.” Marc pushed away from the wall. “I’ll see
you tomorrow, Allie.”

Kelsey was sharp enough to pick up
on the significance of the exchange in the hallway. Her brows were raised even
though her eyes were fixed on her continued assembly of a salad to go with the
spaghetti that was waiting on the stove.

Allie watched her roommate warily as she came over
to put her purse on the counter and slump into a chair.

“I won’t pry,” Kelsey declared after a minute of
Allie remaining silent. She finally looked up, licking a splash of stray
dressing off her thumb while she stepped to get plates out of the cupboard. “Do
you want dinner?”

“That’d be great,” Allie said with a thankful sigh.
She stood to help get the silverware and water glasses to set at their places.
It wasn’t until she was too-diligently folding paper napkins for the both of
them that she worked around to confiding in her roommate. “It was Marc. In the
hall.” She adjusted the point of her geometric creation so that it was square
with the table’s edge. “And last night.”

Allie didn’t really know how she expected her
roommate to react. Maybe Kelsey wasn’t sure, either. She just wore that vaguely
loft-browed silence again as she got herself settled into her chair.

“You won’t say anything to your brother, will you?”

That caused Kelsey to snort. “I think it’s safe to
say that this is one of the many conversations I am not excited to have with my
little brother.” She undid all of Allie’s care with the napkin when she
transferred it unceremoniously into her lap. “He might ask me,” she supposed as
her study scanned over Allie. “Or maybe not. There may have been plenty of
rumors about Marc Belmont, but I don’t think Marc was ever the one who helped
start them.”

“There’s not much of a rumor to start now. It’s not
like we’re …” It stung too much for Allie to finish. She sampled a bit of
spaghetti to cover the thickness of her swallow. “Everett pulled me aside
today,” was where she chose to pick back up. “Because I got his car back late.
Because I reported Marc’s fighting, before. He mentioned Natalie. Sort of.” Now
it was her turn to study Kelsey’s paused expression. “I still don’t really
understand what happened between the two of them. Marc said she cheated on him,
but if that’s what happened then why does she still seem so angry?”

Kelsey let her fork clatter to rest across her
plate while she puffed a sigh through her cheeks and reached for her water
glass. “First off, I was barely twenty at the time and feeling pretty lucky to
have made it to the games at all. I was only vaguely aware of who Marc Belmont
was, and Natalie was definitely too cool to be friends with me.” Eight years
later and she was still rolling her eyes. “I mean, I wasn’t getting any extra
media attention or event invites, so who was I.”

That all said, Kelsey tipped her hand to relent to
the question. “The drama was that on the night of Natalie’s most important PR
event, Marc was seen out cheating on her with the biggest media darling from
Australia. It totally ruined her
human interest
story,” heavy air-quotes
were wielded, “of being the perfect princess who stole the heart of the wild
boy and all of America. She flipped out, there was ugly crying, and it was a
real bad look that I’m sure haunts her to this day.”

“But.” Allie was frowning. “Then why did Marc tell
me she cheated on him?”

“Well that’s the thing.” Kelsey picked up her fork
again to make a flourishing point. “The team managers sat us all down to
discourage us from adding any fuel to the fire. But the rumor that they hoped we
didn’t know, which I didn’t at the time, and that they
really
didn’t
want getting out? Was that Natalie had been fucking the married captain of the
men’s team for months.”

“Chad?” Luckily Allie had long since stopped
chewing because her mouth gaped open.

“No.” Kelsey shook her head and her smile was
lopsided. “Simon was the captain back then. I don’t think you got a chance to
meet him at the club night. Whoever thought it was a good idea to have both him
and Marc in the same zip code ought to have their head examined. Even Blake
should have known. He was around the year when Marc and Simon couldn’t get
through a whole practice without being at each other’s throats.”

“You mean twenty-eleven,” Allie realized. “Marc
said he was dismissed for fighting.” Her forehead tightened in a frown. “I
guess he was still upset about Natalie.”

“Or Simon was still pissed that Marc told his wife.
They divorced not long after we all got back from the games.”

“But why did they make Marc leave?” Allie wanted to
know. “If Natalie started it, then why doesn’t anyone seem to trust him?”

“Allie.” Kelsey leaned to squeeze at her arm. “I
know you must like him. But you have to know that Marc comes off as kind of a
dick.” Her nose wrinkled apologetically. “I’m sure he’s given the team’s staff
headaches on multiple occasions. I mean, you had to report him to Everett this
year, right? And he used to be worse.”

It’s true, you know.
Marc had told her
himself. Allie couldn’t argue even if it made her feel sick. She nodded
reluctantly to her roommate’s point.

“And everyone loved Simon. He was the heart of the
team. So.” Kelsey shrugged and rocked back into her seat. “Sacrificing the
college dropout to the news cycle was unfortunate, but it probably seemed like
the best option. As for the team’s roster—who would you want on your side? The
guy who gets along with everyone, or the one who only seems to care about
himself?”

In the days before the team left for
the qualifying tournament, Marc didn’t try to follow Allie back to her
apartment again. He did start sitting in the front passenger seat of the car
while she drove.

It was somewhat reminiscent of her first day with
him in Colorado. This time when he seemed self-absorbed, tapping away at his
phone, it was partly because he was sending her messages. Apparently Adam’s
singalong repertoire was quite extensive. She was informed that the sampling
she got in the car was nothing to the full performance set enjoyed in their
apartment.

It was almost like they were friends. Maybe it
wouldn’t be so bad if Allie didn’t ache at the memory of the glimpse of
more
which she thought she’d shared with him in her bed. But if she told him
about that, she was worried she would chase him away entirely. After what
Everett said, she was a little afraid to do anything at all but go along with
the fiction that they were casual associates.

But at night, she could still smell him on her
pillow and she would dream of him clutched between her legs.

The Monday before the team was scheduled to leave
for the tournament, there was an event at the city’s aquarium in conjunction
with some of the local schools. Allie had been helping Everett coordinate with
the sponsors so that the national water polo team could be a partner for the
day. They’d even arranged to have Chad fitted into the seal show for an act
involving a water polo ball.

Those seals were probably better trained than the
guys. Allie wasn’t sure how serious he was, but she put in real effort to talk
Adam out of his idea of diving into the otter enclosure. Just to be on the safe
side. It was while she was standing beside the large glass wall with her arms
crossed, making sure Kelsey’s brother was truly on his way somewhere else, that
Lindsey found her.

“You look like you could use a break.” The older
woman shared a knowing smile with Allie while she handed over a bottled water.
“I saw the way you were looking at the aviary earlier. Why don’t you spend some
time in there with some actual birdbrains? They have cups of nectar that you
can feed them so that they’ll come perch on your arm.”

“Do they really?” Allie laughed, cheered into
smiling by her supervisor’s kindness. “I think I’ll have to check that out. If
you’ll be fine herding the larger animals. Adam was …” She exhaled her
helpless exasperation, turning a glance towards the otters like that could
explain. “Being Adam.”

“I’ll man the fort.” Lindsey chased her off with a
grin and a swing of her own bottle. “Get out of here.”

It was nice to get some time on her own. It was
even better when a hand caught the first of the entry doors as she was going in
and Allie looked up to find herself staring into the most familiar dark eyes.
“Hi.” In her surprise she was awkwardly abrupt.

“Hello.” Marc was smooth as ever, slipping into the
airlock space with her so they could let one door close before going in to
where the birds flew freely.

“Shouldn’t you be …” Allie couldn’t really
bring herself to finish the protest as she led the way inside the park.
Bright-blooming foliage was planted along the edges and even brighter wings fluttered
through the air.

“I want to be here,” Marc answered simply. He
touched a palm to the small of her back as he stepped around Allie to see about
getting a pair of cups to feed the birds. “I’ve never been about shilling for
money or magazine covers,” he said as he handed over her portion of bird
banquet. “I hate that stuff. I’ll leave it to the team captains and the people
who enjoy the song and dance.”

He said it so casually, but Allie knew that the
sentiment was based on more than the obviousness of Chad’s unabashed pursuit of
publicity and sponsors. She searched Marc’s expression for cracks that would
let her beneath the surface. “Why did you let them get away with it?” The
question floated to her lips before she could think better of it.

A crease formed between his eyebrows. “Let who get
away with what?”

“The … dance.” Allie shook her head, berating
herself for being dumb. It was too late to take her words back. “Why didn’t you
tell people the truth about Natalie?”

The easiness was starting to evaporate from Marc’s
posture. His gaze sharpened but his voice was still relaxed. “Everyone whose
business it was knows.”

Allie bit her lip, nervous about pushing him. “But
they let Simon … You lost your place on the team. It’s not fair.”

Marc exhaled a bitter chuckle through his nose.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve believed life is supposed to be fair.” He
looked away to busy himself with adjusting the cup of nectar in his fingertips.
“Everett has saved my ass so many times. More than I’ve deserved. He asks me
not to talk about something, I don’t talk about it.” A hard curl turned up at
one corner of his mouth. “Maybe I hold my tongue a little better than my
temper.”

The long breath Allie took shuddered through her
lungs. She couldn’t take her eyes from Marc. There didn’t seem to be a lot of
company on his side, but maybe quantity didn’t matter. “You knew before, didn’t
you? Before you … Before the other girl.” She had to know. “You found out
about Natalie and knew it was over. And it must have been you, who told Simon’s
wife.”

It took a moment for Marc to respond. “We didn’t
always have it so easy, when I was a kid.” The fact that it hardly seemed an
answer didn’t matter to her at all, because he’d won Allie’s heart-paused
attention. “But my parents were crazy about each other. They would have done
anything for each other. I guess I’ve always thought—that’s how it should be.”

Marc turned his chin to steadily meet her gaze.
“Yeah. I told Lydia. She deserved to know who she was living with.” He laughed,
but it wasn’t funny. “When I asked Natalie, when I noticed she and Simon had
disappeared after the opening ceremonies and she was acting weird, she said no
one would care what I thought I knew. No one would believe me over her. Well,
Lydia did. And I knew never to believe Natalie again.”

Allie’s mouth had gone dry. She was staring. She
figured she probably was supposed to say something. But she was thinking about
how frigid air had spilled into her car after Blake’s name appeared on her
phone, and the ruthlessness of Natalie’s clawing hands. She remembered the
warmth of the sunset on her face and the weight of Marc’s hand on her thigh.
That look he would get in his eyes, like he thought she could do anything. She
was wondering what his bookshelves had looked like, and where they had gone.

While she was thinking all that, like clouds
clearing, Marc smiled. “I see you have a new friend.”

“… What?”

His chin nudged to her left in gesture. “Didn’t you
feel him land?”

Allie nearly startled the bird away by looking too
quickly. “Oh my gosh.” She grinned and held very still, turning just enough to
peek a sparkle of her delight back at Marc. “Look,” she whispered. “One’s
checking you out, too.”

The bird hopping along the top of the railing soon
flicked its wings to rise to a perch on the athlete’s thick wrist. The two were
the vanguard for what must have been close to a dozen small bodies which soon
flickered daringly around them to sample the offered feast.

Two rounds of nectar later, the both of them had
forgotten tournaments and teammates and finally aimed their wandering steps
towards the exit of the aviary. Marc caught her hips as they paused between the
airlock doors. Laughter was still vibrant on Allie’s breath when he pulled her
outside and into a secluded corner. In the shelter of palm fronds with the
songs of birds in their ears, he kissed her.

“Let’s go back to the apartment.” His suggestion
vibrated against her cheered pulse. “Now, while everyone is out.”

Allie had lost all her resolve to avoid further
trouble with him. She threaded her fingers into Marc’s hair and balanced on her
tiptoes to nod yes against his cheek.

Their hands rested entwined on the middle seat as
they rode together in the taxi. Outside the window, rows of palm trees ticked
by and seagulls hung effortlessly in the air. Allie’s worries about checkered
pasts and lucky charms seemed as distant as the unknown shores beyond the
shining ocean’s horizon. The only wings fluttering in her stomach were bright
with expectation.

The door to her apartment couldn’t open fast
enough. They spilled through in a tangle of limbs and left a trail of clothes
across her bedroom floor. When Marc was inside of her it was too easy to forget
that there was anything else. In the gauzy light filtering through her drawn
curtains, he looked at Allie as if she were his entire world.

In the drowsy afterwards, Marc lay in her arms with
all that muscle unwound in heavy satiation. Her fingertips slid smooth through
their shared sweat as she traced his solid lines like she was memorizing them.
Allie whispered kisses at his hairline and his arms tightened around her waist
like he’d never let her go.

He would have to. She knew that Everett was
probably wondering where he was, and that the team had plans for the evening.
She knew Marc would be flying soon, and she couldn’t keep him. This time, Allie
made sure to be the first to suggest that he ought to go before anyone came
home to see him leaving from her apartment. As if bringing it up herself would
make it feel less like he was leaving her. Like some sense of control would
mean she wouldn’t miss him so badly when he got on the airplane with his team.

It didn’t work.