Qualified: A Sports Romance (23 page)

Marc hadn’t realized how much the
apartment down the hall from Allie had started to feel like home until he was
away from it. When there had been nowhere that he cared about leaving, every
place that he went didn’t seem much different from the one in which he’d been.
But as he walked down the halls of the hotel they were staying in for the
qualifying tournament, for the first time in a long time he felt like he was
someplace strange.

When he was younger he’d have taken either the numb
sameness or the disconcerting difference as reason enough to dodge the staff
and make an escape. He’d catch a taxi into whatever passed as a town and find
wherever passed as a bar. Anything to avoid being alone in a cold bed staring
at cold walls decorated with nothing more than impersonal hotel art.

But he had promised Everett. And perhaps more
important was the promise never asked for and never spoken, but which was all
the more precious nonetheless.

Of course, not everyone was playing by the same
rules. When he turned the corner to the wing their block of rooms was in, he
nearly walked right into a girl heading in the other direction. Marc had to
catch her by the shoulders because her hands were too busy taming her sex-wild
hair into a braid.

“Excuse me.” She giggled as she curved her path
around him. When she glanced back before disappearing towards the elevators, it
was to an open doorway rather than at Marc.

Blake was leaning against the jamb on a forearm,
his other hand checking the sling of his boxer shorts like he wasn’t sure he’d
bothered to get dressed.

“Evening,” Marc said placidly as he continued down
the hall.

“Evening.” Blake lingered in the open door to watch
him pass. He reached a thumb up to scratch slow consideration along his jaw.
“You aren’t going to say anything, are you, Marc?”

Marc almost didn’t bother answering. “We’re
teammates.”

“You were teammates with Simon, too.”

Well if the smug kid was going to bring
that
up.
Marc scuffed to a stop, turning to square a narrow-eyed look on the blond.

“You know if you want to go for her, you’re welcome
to try. Though I don’t think she’ll be choosing you over me.” Blake’s blue eyes
flicked haughtily over Marc. “She’s a woman with taste, unlike that intern
girl.”

Marc was losing all sense of the long hall that
stretched quietly to both sides. There was just the pressure biting between his
teeth and the welling urge to break Blake’s smile. “You don’t know what the
fuck you’re talking about.”

“You have been fucking her, haven’t you?”
Unfortunately the snap of Marc’s reply had only deepened the insufferable
expression on the younger player’s face. “You like taking a good girl and
making her dirty.” Blake pushed himself carelessly out of the doorway. “That’s
what you did with Natalie, isn’t it?”

Blake shut up real quick when Marc surged across
the hall and slammed him into the wall. “Don’t talk about Allie like that.”

Unlike the night in the club, Blake didn’t put much
effort into breaking loose. He braced himself off of Marc’s wrists and
persisted with his too-clever grin. “You
do
like her, don’t you? You
dumbass.”

Marc blinked, wary of the unexpected turn of the
conversation. “What’s it to you?”

“What’s it to me.” Blake let bitterness escape into
his chuckle. “It’s that we fucking need you, Belmont. One hundred percent. And
if you’re too preoccupied stroking your dick over her, you’re not focused on
getting us our spot in the games.”

There wasn’t anything in what Blake said that Marc
could really argue with. It was a strange sensation. He let the other player go
with a final shove. “How about you worry about yourself, Blake. You were
lagging by the third quarter in the last game.” It was true, but it was hard to
pretend his critique was anything but a cover for how he’d been unsettled. He
flicked a look in the direction in which the girl had tottered off to throw up
another screen. “Your endurance isn’t what it should be.”

“Marc, I didn’t know you cared enough to notice.”

“You’re the one who seems all concerned with my
dick.” Marc snorted and backed off so that he could continue on his way to his
room. “Rest up. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, I’m going to sleep like a baby.” Blake seemed
determined to prove his moment of admitting imperfection was an anomaly. He
gave a waggle of fingers as he disappeared behind his door. “Night,
sweetheart.”

Fucking Blake. It didn’t help Marc
feel restful at all once he got back to the quiet of his room, knowing that
smug ass was sprawling in sweet relaxation after his illicit visitor. It wasn’t
even very late, but they’d be up early the next day. He stared at the clock and
found himself figuring the calculation for California’s time zone. He reached
for his phone.

Are you going to watch the game?

Maybe he did the math wrong. The red numbers
hovering at his bedside clicked through a quarter of an hour with excruciating
slowness. He thought she would have been awake, but maybe it was too early. Or
Allie didn’t have her phone. Or …

I’ve watched all of them

He
was
being a dumbass, smiling just because
she’d messaged him back.

How?

Streaming

Call?

Okay

Marc waited a moment, realizing he hadn’t clarified
who should call whom. He imagined Allie chewing on her lip and staring at her
phone in California. That made him smile, too. He dialed her number.

“Hi,” he said promptly when he heard the line pick
up.

“Hi.” Her voice sounded so good.

“Where are you?”

“In bed. It’s morning.”

He could picture her there. Light streaming in the
window. Her packed book shelves and the framed pictures filled with an actual
family. Marc closed his eyes and lay back against the hotel’s high threadcount
sheets and thought about being beside her. “It can’t be that early. Have you
been dreaming of me?”

“Marc.” She sounded indignant, but he knew her too
well to really believe it. “I don’t remember.” He could tell Allie was lying.

The curve of his smile was so broad she could
probably hear it over the phone. “Are you wet?”

She gasped at the question. One of those shaky half
breaths that would herald the most delicious of her moans. It sent his hand
skimming to reach beneath his waistband.

The moment it took Allie to answer was filled with
maddening possibility. “You’ll just have to come back here, if you want to find
out.”

It was the kind of manipulative bargaining that had
often made his skin crawl. But when Allie said it, Marc had no hesitation about
his answer. “You can count on it.”

“You’re confident about the last game, then?”

“I think so.”

“Your hand isn’t bothering you?”

There was a way she spoke to him like no one else
did. The muted worry in her voice. Like she truly cared. About him. Marc flexed
through the reminiscent soreness of his knuckles and it was a reminder that
things didn’t last forever. Not an easy thing to think about. Not a good thing,
before a big game. So he tugged his grip around his cock instead. “It’s been
getting a bit of a workout. Afterhours.”

The breath of her shy laugh made static over the
phone. And yet he hadn’t succeeded in distracting Allie from her concern. “Are
you all right?”

Marc drew his palm back to rest on the flat of his
stomach and felt the fill of his breath beneath it. He opened his eyes to stare
at the blank ceiling in the dimness. “Yeah,” he answered with quiet honesty.
“I’m fine. I just.” He frowned at himself and gave a pointless shake of his
head. “Wanted to know if you were rooting for me.” Yep. Dumbass.

“I am,” Allie answered quickly. “I will be. Go
shred them to pieces, Marcosaurus.”

It might have been the lamest thing anyone had ever
said to him, and the most wonderful. Marc laughed. “Yeah. I should get going.
Get some sleep.” He looked to the side and swept his arm out to turn down the
edge of the covers. He wished she were under them. “I’ll see you soon.”

“You better.”

Their last game ended up close but
Marc’s confidence proved justified. Allie watched on her laptop as he powered
through the final quarter, helping the team reverse the score and pull out a
two-point lead by the last buzzer. She and Kelsey had champagne on hand to
celebrate from their living room. With the bubbles tickling happily in her
stomach, Allie snuck off to her room to leave Marc a breathy message about how
much she was looking forward to congratulating him in person.

The next day, Allie would have liked to stay up and
wait for Marc to get home from the airport but the team’s flight got back late
and she had to be in bed early. Violet was in town for an event with the
national beach volleyball league. As part of their obligations to their
internships, both of them were committed to helping set up the next morning.
They had to leave plenty of time to get down to the next big beach town where
it was being held.

It meant that Allie didn’t get to respond to Marc’s
sent message of arrival with much more than a cursory
Yay!
while she and
Violet dragged down to the car before dawn.

Her friend, however, had plenty of opportunity to
amuse herself once Allie was behind the wheel.

“Allie, this dude is so on your jock.”

“What are you …” A quick glance over found
Violet smirking while she tapped out something on the stolen phone. “I should
have buried that thing in my purse. I’m not sure I want you reading what’s on
there.” When Allie peeked again, Violet was not only texting but was holding up
the phone to snap a picture of her driving. “Violet, I’m going to kill you.”
Allie fussed at her no-nonsense braid self-consciously. 

“You are going to do no such thing.” It should have
been no surprise that Violet was undeterred. “I think you’ll need to save all
your energy for this.”

Allie glanced over again. “Why is that water polo
ball wearing a speedo?”

“Oh, wait. I meant … this is the one.”

“There’s more than one?” Allie couldn’t even
pretend to be upset when she saw what was on her phone screen. The worst part
was that she couldn’t look long enough to appreciate the detail of a shirtless
Marc mugging for the camera.

“I’m having to inform him,” Violet put on arch
airs, “in my official capacity, that photo-documenting such lewd intentions for
his tongue is discouraged.”

Allie nibbled on her lip in a futile effort to
contain her spreading smile. She looked at the clock in the dashboard and
calculated how many hours she had left until she was done with work and could
return to the apartment to find Marc.

By the time her shift ended, all Allie was thinking
about doing in bed was sleeping. She’d been running throughout the morning,
making sure all the volunteer badges were distributed and then going on a mad
hunt for a lost microphone. After that, she’d been on her feet staffing a booth
with her smile for hours upon hours.

It wasn’t actually that hot since the breezes were
coming off the spring-chill ocean, but between the sun and the sand Allie was
feeling sapped. She said her goodbyes to her shiftmates and headed out into the
crowd to look for someplace to get a drink and a seat. There was some time to
kill because Violet had texted saying she’d be tied up for a while longer with
her assignment.

The beach was crawling with people. There were competing
athletes and young hopefuls, their family and friends as well as the general
public come out for a nice day at the shoreline with the added entertainment of
world-class sportsmanship. Announcers echoed calls over the speakers and music
blared between games.

In her time at Colorado’s training center Allie had
gotten used to the sight of fans circling athletes. It didn’t particularly
catch her eye, especially not at a venue where advertizing had emphasized the
international-caliber competition that would be on the sand that day. She had
to do a double take when she noticed that it wasn’t one of the volleyball
players being mobbed, but a more familiar figure towering above the crowd with
a bowed head of dark hair.

“Marc?”

There were a pair of bikini-clad girls making eyes
at him who pouted when Marc looked over their heads to focus on Allie. “My
cover’s been blown.” His mouth held only the slightest curve but she knew it
was merely the edge of a greater smile meant only for her.

“What are you doing here?” Allie turned her path to
approach him slowly. She tried to ignore the looks the girls were giving her.
She couldn’t quite refrain from tugging to be sure her polo collar was straight
and fussing needlessly with her braid.

“A day off. Old friends.” Marc shrugged, not even
looking at the girl whose red, white, and blue brochure he handed back. “Allie,
I’d like you to meet Doctor Seinder.” She hadn’t noticed the other man behind
him, but Marc brought him along to shoulder through the dispersing bubble of fans.
“I played with Chip at college.”

“Hi Ch— Doctor Seinder.” Allie put on her smile and
held out her hand, though it was difficult to refrain from slanting a curious
glance at Marc.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Allie. I’m afraid I
was partially responsible for the hold up. My son started the fuss over Marc.
The kid has caught water polo fever early I’m afraid.”

“Are you saying I can’t draw a crowd on my own?”
Marc was deadpan as he cocked a look at Chip.

His old teammate just chuckled, clapping a hand to
the taller shoulder beside him. He didn’t let his attention get distracted from
Allie. “I understand you’ve been interning with the national committee’s sport
scientists?”

“Yes, that’s right.” Allie tried not to let her
confusion knit too strongly on her forehead.

“Marc was telling me about a research project you
were involved with.”

Allie started to suspect the significance of the
man introduced as doctor. A brief dodge of her gaze picked out Marc’s close
attention. “I’ve been assisting on an inflammation study with Doctor Kaitech,
based out of Colorado. It’s a fascinating project. It’s really confirmed for me
that I want to work in research.”

Chip was nodding deeply. “I guess you’re looking to
apply for grad school?”

“That’s the plan. I thought it’d be good to get
some clinical experience first, and one of my teachers made me aware of the
training center’s internship, and …” Allie gestured out her hands.

She was interrupted from further comment on the
fatefulness of it all by a little girl in a rash guard who came bounding up
right in the middle of their conversation. “Daddy, Daddy. Momma says you have
to help take me swimming,” the child promptly demanded of Chip while tugging on
the cuff of his shorts.

“She did, did she?” Doctor Seinder took his
daughter’s hands, duck-walking so as to not tread on her feet as she pulled him
in the direction of the waves. “There’s no arguing with the boss.” He lifted a
rueful smile back up to them. “It was nice to speak with you, Allie. You should
come visit my lab sometime. I could show you what we’re up to.”

“I’d like that, thank you.”

“Marc has my number. Marc, make sure she gets it.
Now if you’ll excuse me.” Hand in hand with his little girl, Doctor Seinder
headed off down the beach towards where a woman in a broad-brimmed hat was
shepherding a pair of boys.

Allie watched them go for a moment, puffing a sigh
of air through her cheeks. She tilted a look up at Marc. “Hi.” Tentative
uncertainty kept her smile from its full bloom. She tucked her hair behind her
ears self-consciously. “So … where did that come from?”

“He sent me a text when we won. I hadn’t really
kept in touch after school, but he went on to get his PhD. Turns out he’s now
starting a lab up at the university. We were never all that close, but.” Marc
shrugged. “When your friend Violet let me know she could hook up extra tickets
for today, I gave Chip a call to see if he wanted to come out and meet up. He’s
angling to do a water polo clinic with a local kid’s league, so I maybe said I
could see about roping in a few of the other guys and make it a thing.”

“You mean you’re bribing him.”
For me
. The
last words stuck silent on her tongue. Allie reached a hand for his arm. “Marc.
But you hate all that promo PR stuff.”

Marc not only stopped, he turned to better face
her. “The point of being part of a team is to help each other out.”

The faint-knit edges of Allie’s wariness melted
away beneath the spread of her smile. She swept her hand over the muscled curve
of his shoulder until her palm rested over his chest. “You know, you didn’t
have to do all this to score with me.”

“I wanted to do it. I want you.” Marc looped his
arms around her waist. “I want you to be happy.”

The deep breath she took was shaky, but Allie’s
nerves rang purely with delight. “I’m happy you’re back.”

“When can I take you home?”

Allie smiled. Home. It didn’t matter if it were her
apartment or his. It was wherever they’d be together.