The Debt 11 (Club Alpha) (5 page)

Faith felt her breath coming quicker, and
her pulse starting to race, as she walked away from the two of them and headed
for the elevators.

“Wait up,” Chase said, catching easily up
to her as she got to the elevators.
 
“What’s the rush?” he asked, trying to press the room key into her palm.

Faith took it and stuffed it into her
purse without looking at him.
 
She
breathed out impatiently through her nostrils,
then
folded her arms, waiting for the doors to open.

When they finally did open, she stepped
in and pressed her back against the wall, as Chase came inside, watching her
with a bemused expression on his face.
 
He turned and hit the third floor button.
 
“I don’t get you, Faith.
 
One second everything’s fine, and the
next you act like I threw you over my shoulder and brought you here against
your will.”

“Did you sleep with her?” she said, her
voice sounding strangled.

“Sleep with who?” he asked, his
expression puzzled now.

“You know who.
 
Little Miss Friendly at the front desk.”

His puzzlement turned to surprise, and
then absolute hysterical disbelief.
 
He started laughing and laughing, shaking his head.
 
“That’s what you’re pissed about?”

“It’s not funny.
 
And you didn’t answer my question.”

“First of all, what if I did sleep with
her?
 
It would’ve been before you
and I were exclusive.”

“Are we exclusive?”

He stopped laughing.
 
“You better decide which question you
really want an answer to, because I’m not going to be interrogated.”

Faith felt her cheeks flame with
embarrassment.
 
“I hated watching
her flirt with you,” she admitted.

“A lot of women flirt with me,” he said without
apology.
 
It was just a statement of
fact.

“I know.”

“If we’re together, you’re going to have
to find a way to deal without freaking out on me.”

She realized then and there that she was
being ridiculous.
 
She couldn’t
expect Chase to be a
choir boy
or somehow prohibit
women from flirting with him.
 
And
with that, Faith let out a breath and let the jealousy die.

At
least for now.

The elevator doors opened and Chase got
off, hefting both their suitcases as if they were nothing but a couple of
feathers.
 
When they got to the
room, he put one suitcase down and grabbed the key from his pocket.

“Hey,
Winters
,”
a gravelly voice called from down the hall.

Chase and Faith turned to look, and there
was a short, round figure approaching.
 
He was dressed in ill-fitting slacks and a sweater with the New England
logo embossed on the front of it, and his potbelly protruded down below.

“Hey Coach,” Chase greeted the man.

As he got closer, Faith realized it was
the head coach of the team, William Hugo.
 
William “Willie” Hugo had coached the team for the last couple of years,
and was now under intense pressure to rebuild the team or be fired.
 
All of the news media constantly
speculated on whether or not he’d be replaced if the team didn’t make the
playoffs this season.

“Everyone’s going to be eating in the
hotel restaurant in about an hour,” Coach Hugo said, his trademark gravelly
voice sounding even lower and more intimidating in person.

He didn’t even look at Faith.

“I was thinking that I might just hang in
the room, focus on the game,” Chase said.

Coach Hugo’s furry brows dipped and his jowls
shook a bit.
 
“This isn’t the time
to hole up in your cave,” he growled.
 
“The team needs to be like a family.
 
We eat together the night before a game.
 
I made that clear last week.”

“Yeah, I know,”
Chase
muttered.
 
“I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll damn well do it,” the diminutive
coach barked.
 
For a moment, his
cheeks were purple and a vein pulsed in his neck, and then, just like
that—he gave a quick grin.
 
“See you in half an hour with your beautiful young lady friend.”
 
He turned and walked away.

Chase opened the door to the hotel suite
and let them in.

The room was gorgeous and state of the
art, with a wonderful view of the stadium nearby.
 

But Chase wasn’t interested in the
beautiful room or the view from its window.
 
He threw his suitcase halfway across the
room, where it collided with a small footstool.

“Fucking asshole,” he swore.

Faith drew in a breath.
 
Even when it wasn’t directed at her,
Chase’s intense physicality and anger were frightening.
 

“He just wants you to eat with the team,”
she offered.

Chase nodded.
 
“Sure.
 
Just eat with the team like a good
monkey.”

“It’s his job,” she said.
 
“Isn’t it?
 
To make you guys into a tight unit?”

Chase laughed at that.
 
“They like to spout that line, about us
all being a family.
 
They try and
play it up, act like we’re all in this together.
 
But the truth is, it’s a bunch of
professional athletes fighting to survive.
 
Some of us are in direct competition with each other.
 
Some of us even hate each other.
 
Next year, half of us might be playing
for totally different teams.
 
This
‘aint Pee Wee football, Faith.”

She knew he was right.
 
He was living this life and she’d only
just been introduced to his problems.
 
“Sorry,” she said.
 
“I have
no right to judge what’s going on.
 
I was just trying to help.”

He smiled at her, his dark eyes
softening.
 
He put his hands on his
hips and sighed.
 
“It might be a
bunch of crap, but you’re right that it’s still Coach’s job to get us to act
like we give a fuck about each other.
 
So I suppose I should go down and eat with the team.”

“I’ll stay here and make myself
comfortable,” she said, walking over to the soft couch and sitting down, her
butt sinking into the material.

“Hell fucking no,” Chase chuckled.
 
“You’re not getting off that easy,
girl.
 
If I have to go, so do you.”

“Wait,” she said, nervously.
 
“Your whole team’s going to be
there.
 
This is for you guys, I’m
not invited.”

“You didn’t hear Coach specifically say
he’d see you there?” Chase prodded, walking closer to her.

“Well, he was being nice…”

“No, he was serious.
 
All the guys who are married or engaged
or have girlfriends bring them to the pre-game dinner.”
 
He reached down and extended his hand to
her.
 
“Come on, Faith.
 
Time to practice what you preach.”

She sighed, letting him pull her to her
feet.

“I guess we’re in this together,” she
said, looking up at him and smiling.

He leaned down and kissed her softly on
the lips, and then stared into her eyes.
 
“Yeah, we are.”

***

Not long afterwards, they arrived at the
hotel restaurant.

There was a large buffet set up in the
hotel restaurant, and it looked to Faith as if it would take a minor miracle to
keep the buffet stocked with food.
 
The room was filled with gargantuan men filling their plates with piles
and piles of steak, chicken, pasta, and the line to the tables stretched almost
to the door.

When Chase and Faith walked in together,
she expected people to at least acknowledge their quarterback’s presence.

But the few stray glances from his
colleagues seemed to look completely through them, as if Chase didn’t even
exist.

Nobody said hello to him.

Nobody waved.

Guys and their wives and kids walked
right past him without so much as a glance or a word.

She shivered a little as Chase sized up
the room and then sighed.
 
He
glanced down at her.
 
“Isn’t this
fun?” he said, raising his eyebrows sarcastically.

“I’ve felt more welcomed at the DMV
getting my license renewed,” she said, and then she grabbed his hand.
 
“But who cares?
 
We’re together.”

He smiled at her.
 
“I like your style.”

“What now?” she asked, still looking
around nervously.

“Let’s get ourselves some grub before
these animals leave us with nothing but scraps.”
 
He walked forward and she let him pull
her along.

They got into the line behind two
enormous black men that were even bigger and wider than Chase.
 
One of them leaned towards his buddy and
whispered something in his ear, and the guy started laughing, turning his head
just enough to glance at Chase and Faith.

He turned back, whispered a return
comment, and now both men were laughing so hard their enormous shoulders were
shaking.

Faith didn’t know what the joke was, but
she couldn’t escape the uncomfortable feeling that it was about her and Chase.

She looked at Chase to see his reaction,
and although he appeared not to be noticing what was going on, his jaw was
tight and his eyes were cold.
 
She
could sense that he was upset, but he was trying to stay calm.

The line inched forward, and Faith
started to wish she hadn’t pushed so hard for Chase to come to this dinner.

Why did she care whether he listened to
his coach or not?

“Hey,” she said to him.

He looked at her quizzically.
 
“Yeah?”

“I get it now,” she said, grinning a
little bit.

“You do?”

“Yeah.
 
Totally.”

He laughed and gave her hand a quick
squeeze.
 
“This is nothing.”

“No, it’s definitely something,” she
replied, as she noticed more eyes upon them now, and players exchanging
comments and glances from around the room.

Why did they hate Chase so much? She
wondered.

He was their teammate, their
quarterback.
 
She had always been
under the assumption that players revered their quarterback and considered them
leaders, almost as important as the team’s coach.

But maybe the reality was different than
the way the media portrayed things.

It certainly was in this case.
 
None of the articles she’d read or shows
she’d listened to
had
ever painted a picture of Chase
Winters being so despised by his teammates.

But now that she was in this restaurant
with him and feeling the icy response to his presence, it was clear that there
was no love lost between him and any of the other men who were his colleagues.

They
don’t just not love him.

They
hate him.

It made her sad to know that this was
what Chase was dealing with at his job, on top of all his other pressures.

Finally, they got up to the buffet table
for their turns.
 
The restaurant had
servers refilling the hot trays as fast as they could manage, and still it
wasn’t enough.
 

The two large men just in front of them piled
food high on their plates, chattering about how hungry they were as they took
every last bit from at least four or five different trays.

Really nice, she thought.
 
Talk about being greedy.
 
Didn’t it occur to any of them that
there were other people who were trying to eat?

Her annoyance was turning into something
like rage at the attitudes these young, wealthy athletes displayed.
 
They were simply rude.
 
They ignored the servers, took food
without noticing whether anyone else might want any or not.

And they made a mess doing so.

They simply expected that others would
pick up after them.

Faith knew she was being a little
ridiculous to be so upset about a buffet and how these men ate, but she
couldn’t help it.
 
Everyone in the
room just seemed rude and arrogant.