The Debt 11 (Club Alpha) (11 page)

During halftime, Faith left the box and
wandered the bowels of the stadium, watching fans stand in line to use the
bathroom, to buy hot dogs and pretzels and pizza and beer.

She felt lost, like a ghost, slightly
numb to it all.

She wondered what Chase was thinking
right now, what he was doing this very second.
 
What were the coaches saying to the
team?

Was Velcro going to tell Chase to get it
together and throw him the ball?

Having no idea of what might be happening
behind the scenes, Faith found herself conjuring up all sorts of bizarre
fantasies.

But more than anything, she wished she
could talk to him.
 
More than that,
she just wanted Chase to be okay.

Would he be okay if things continued on
this way?

Halftime ended and she went back up to
the VIP box, hoping against hope that maybe things would change and the first
half would be nothing more than a bad dream.

This time, New England kicked off to
Miami, and Miami made a great run back all the way to the fifty-yard line.
 
The New England fans moaned and groaned
in disgust.

The mood was getting ugly, and it made
Faith increasingly nervous.

Every boo, every insult thrown in Chase’s
direction felt like it hit her in the stomach, a body blow.

None of these people knew him or what
he’d had to go through to be in this place, with the entire world virtually
against him making anything of his life.

Faith’s whole body was tight with tension
and worry.
 
She just wanted to see
Chase do what he was capable of and play with the brilliance he had inside him.

Miami scored on a long pass and now they
were ahead 14-3.

“Fuck you,
Winters
!”
the man next to her screamed, as Chase and the offense took the field again.

The man who’d just sworn at Chase was the
same guy who’d been repeating how strong Chase was over and over again in the
first half.

Faith blocked him and all the others out
and just focused her attention on Chase.
 
You can do this
, she thought,
trying to send him her positivity.
 
You know this is what you were made to
do.
 
Come on, Chase.
 
Come on.

And for a little while, it seemed that
he’d heard her.
 
Chase came out
firing
short,
sharp passes to a multitude of different
players (but never Velcro).

He’d completed almost a hundred percent
of his passes in this half, and they made their way to the thirty-yard line
again.
 
 

This time, they ran the ball twice and
failed to get anywhere, and now it was third down.

The fans were screaming at top volume,
and when the ball was snapped, there was a fumble and Chase had to recover the
football off the ground, scooping it into his hands as the Miami defense
converged on him for the sack.

But somehow Chase used his considerable
size and athleticism to break free of the Miami players trying to tackle him,
and he ran out of pocket and downfield.

There were two Miami players between him
and the goal line.
 
Normally a
quarterback would run out of bounds so as not to risk getting tackled hard and
hurt.

As it was, Chase had made more than a
first down and saved the play.

But he didn’t run out of bounds, and the
crowd built to a hysteric pitch as Chase headed straight for the defenders
between him and the goal line.

When he got to the first defender, Chase
juked from side to side, faking the defender nearly out of his shoes.
 
The Miami player dove and Chase was
nowhere to be found.

“Did you see that shit?” someone
screamed, their voice so high they might have been male or female.

The crowd roared and Faith felt her heart
soar.

Tears came to the corners of her eyes as
she realized that this was what Chase was capable of—pure, God-given
talent and beauty.
 
Watching him
like this was akin to watching a dancer, or a painter, an artist.

Yes, a true artist.

But he wasn’t just an artist—he was
a fighter, too.

And Chase showed his fighting spirit when
he came face-to-face with the last Miami player standing between him and a
touchdown.

The player was waiting on the ten-yard
line, and Chase wasn’t going to fake him out.
 
 

Chase didn’t bother even trying to get
past him by trickery.
 
Instead, he
went right toward him, putting his head down, tilting forward and ramming into
the larger defender.

The Miami defender tried to wrap his arms
around Chase and throw him down, but Chase lowered and rammed him again, and
the defenseman fell backwards, arms pin-wheeling as he smashed into the turf.

A deafening roar welled up from the crowd
as Chase ran in for the touchdown, and around Faith, men were literally hugging
each other, near tears, raising cups of beer and toasting.

She laughed as a stranger gave her a beer
drenched hug.
 
“Did you see that
guy?”

She nodded, laughing.
 
“I saw him,” she admitted.

And
I love him
, she wanted
to tell the drunken fan, but kept her mouth wisely shut.

The score was now 14-10 and Miami was in
front, but there was plenty of time left in the game.

Everyone’s spirits had lifted, and it
seemed almost inevitable that New England would take its momentum and win the
game.

But something strange happened.

Miami took over and marched downfield,
eating up valuable clock time and scoring yet another touchdown.

Now they were up 21-10.
 

New England got the ball back and Chase
threw two incomplete passes, ignoring a wide-open Velcro Jones, and then a
failed run and they had to punt the football.

In the fourth quarter, Miami scored
again.

Now it was turning into a rout, and Miami
was up 28-10.
 
Fans were booing all
over the place and many of them were beginning to filter out of the stadium to
get out ahead of the traffic.

It was a slow, ugly death, in a way.

Faith watched as the air and hope slowly
left the New England fans, and the stadium got progressively emptier.

The final nail in the coffin was when
Chase finally threw a pass to Velcro downfield, and the Miami defender easily
intercepted the ball and ran it back for yet another touchdown.

The pass was so awful that it almost
seemed as if Chase had intended to throw it to the other team.

The fans were disgusted, booing New
England roundly, and the air stank of beer and all on the floors were discarded
programs and crumpled pictures of Chase’s smiling face, with a short biography
about the number one draft pick.

The game was all but over, and now even
the fans in the VIP box were gathering their things and leaving.

Faith watched them go with a strange
feeling inside.
 
It was as if she
wanted to ask them to come back—this must have been a mistake.
 
Somehow Chase would fix this, he’d make
it right.

But as each person left the room, it hit
Faith that the game really was over.
 
It was over and it had been something terrible to watch.
 

Knowing what the world would be saying
about Chase after this performance was physically painful to consider.

She put a hand to her forehead, trying to
calm herself.
 

Pieces of the game floated back through
her consciousness, like a video replay in her mind.

Chase refusing to throw to Velcro.
 
Chase throwing over his head at a key moment.

What could explain his behavior? She
asked herself.

Nothing made any sense.

It was as if Chase was purposely
sabotaging his own career.
 

Or maybe there was something else going
on, Faith thought.
 

A chilling thought ran through her mind.

What if someone had forced Chase to throw
the game—to purposely lose it?
 
That would explain why he kept making mistakes at key moments.

A wave of nausea rolled through her
stomach at the mere consideration of the idea.

She thought about all the cash in Chase’s
home.
 
She thought about his history
of crime and his insistence that he had dark secrets she could never
understand.

Faith ran out of the VIP room and into
the bathroom, getting into a stall just in time to be sick in the toilet.

“Oh, God,” she muttered, sitting on the
floor afterwards and wiping her mouth with a piece of toilet paper.
 
“Oh, God.”

As her stomach calmed down, Faith caught
her breath a little bit.

What had come over her, she didn’t really
know.
 

But she did know one thing. She knew that
whatever secrets Chase was hiding were going to come out.
 
And God help them, because she feared
that neither she nor Chase could withstand the cold storm that was blowing
their way.

THE
END OF THE DEBT BOOK 11

Stay tuned for book 12 in the series,
coming soon!