The Debt 12 (Club Alpha) (4 page)

Relief flooded through her, but that was
quickly followed by a fresh burst of anger.
 
He once again hadn’t called or texted
her—he didn’t give a shit about her feelings or her concerns.

Faith got out of bed and walked
downstairs, finding Chase standing in the kitchen with the refrigerator door
open, his back to her.

“You scared me,” she announced, as she
came into the room.

“I figured you were gone by now,” he said
flatly.
 
He didn’t sound drunk
anymore, but he also didn’t seem to care that she was there, waiting for him.
 
He was staring into the fridge, finally
grabbing a carton of orange juice and pulling it out, opening it and guzzling
from the carton directly.

“Maybe I should go,” she said
softly.
 
“You don’t care either
way.”

Chase finally turned around and looked at
her.
 

Instantly, she saw that he had an
enormous gash running along his hairline.
 
It wasn’t bleeding, she saw.
 
The cut was crusty with dried blood.
 

“Oh my God!” she cried, her hand rising
instinctively to her own head.
 
“You’re hurt, Chase!”

He smiled grimly.
 
“I’m fine.”
 
He took another swig of OJ and then
wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“What happened to you?”

“Nothing,” he said, waving the question
off dismissively, shoving the carton of orange juice back into the refrigerator
and then shutting it.

“I’m so sick of you keeping things from
me,” she said, her voice shaking with anger.
 
Her hands curled into tight fists.
 
“What is wrong with you?”

He stared at her evenly.
 
“I told you already that I’m fucked
up.
 
I never pretended I was some
squeaky clean guy.”

“Oh, so that makes everything okay.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You’re just full of shit,” she replied.

He grinned.
 
“Everyone has an opinion, don’t they?”

She glared across the room at him.
 
“Why are you punishing me, Chase?
 
Is it because I was dumb enough to let
myself actually care about you?”

Chase shook his head.
 
“You’re the one coming up with all this
stuff.
 
I never said any of that.”

She felt a sob starting in her chest and
held it back.
 
She refused to cry
anymore over this.
 
He was juvenile,
infantile, and he was a selfish jerk.

Enough was enough.

Faith felt her shoulders sag as she gave
up on the entire thing.
 
“You know what,
Chase?
 
I can’t be the only one
trying to believe in the good person inside of you.
 
It’s just too much work when you don’t
even believe it yourself.”
 
She
turned and went to gather her things.

Inside, she felt empty and cold and
lonely.
 
But she knew that ending
this was the right thing to do.
 
Chase had made it clear what his priorities were, and they weren’t her
or this relationship.

He was too busy feeling sorry for himself
about whatever demons that haunted him—and since she couldn’t know
exactly what they were, she was lost.

She was defeated.

Purse on her shoulder and her bag in
hand, she made her way to the front door only to find Chase standing in front
of it.

“Don’t go,” he said.
 
His eyes were steadier.

“You must’ve sobered up,” she said.
 
“But it’s too little too late,
Chase.
 
I need to go.”

“You can go—“

“I know that, thanks.”

He smiled sadly.
 
“I just want you to listen to something
I have to say before you leave.”

“No.”
 
Faith shook her head and gripped her bag
more tightly.
 
“I’m done hearing
your excuses.”

“It’s not an excuse,” he said.
 
“It’s an explanation.”

“Same difference.”

Chase’s jaw worked as he took in her
anger.
 
“Sit down for ten seconds so
I can tell you what happened.”

“No.”
 
She glared at him.

“Why, are you afraid I might make too
much sense?”

“I’m afraid you’ll try and manipulate me
again.
 
It’s what you do.”

He flinched a little.
 
“If you would just hear me out—“

“Why should I hear you out?” she said,
her voice rising, and she felt heat blossoming in her face.
 
“Do you ever stop and think that maybe
everyone hates you because you’re an asshole who only thinks about himself and
his own problems?”

Chase’s face paled.
 
“Yeah, I’ve thought that.
 
I know I’m not a nice guy.”

“But you’re content to be an entitled,
spoiled jerk who treats the people around him like they’re disposable,
interchangeable.
 
I could’ve been
anyone,” she said.
 
“You just wanted
a girl who’d cater to you, worry about you, and let you fuck her whenever you
felt like it.
 
I could’ve been any
one of a thousand girls.”

“That’s not true,” he insisted.

“But I got lucky,” she said, her voice
sounding more and more bitter.
 
“I
won the Chase Winters lottery.”
 
She
rolled her eyes and laughed at her own sarcasm.

“Stop it,” he said.
 
His voice had taken on a desperate quality.

“Why should I stop?” she asked.
 
“You didn’t stop when I asked you
to.
 
When I asked you to stay home
with me you didn’t listen.
 
When I
begged you not to go with Boogie, you ignored me.”
 
Tears blurred her eyes.
 
“But now you want me to stop.
 
Isn’t that convenient.”

“I know I fucked up,” he told her.
 
“And if you’d listen to what I have to
say, I could explain why—“

“No!” she screamed at the top of her
lungs.

Her voice had never been so loud in all
of her life.
 
It felt, in some
strange way, as if she was saying no to much more than Chase Winters and his
behavior—she was saying no to all the things that had happened in her
life that she hadn’t been able to defend herself against.

To her mother and father being drunks.

To living a life that made her
feel
like a loser.

To feeling less than everyone else, like
she didn’t matter.

To being judged for what she had or
hadn’t done right.

To having to watch her sister go through
all the same things and being powerless to stop it, to being powerless to help
her.

No.

For the first time, it felt as if her
voice had come out, fully and completely.

Chase looked down at the floor.
 
“Please,” was all he said, his voice a
husky
whisper.
 
“I…I can’t lose you.”
 
He
swallowed and when he looked at her again, his eyes were also filled with
tears.
 
“I’m in love with you.”

“Then don’t treat me like shit,” she
said, and her voice had stayed strong.

“That wasn’t why I did what I did.”
 

“Fine,” she said, relenting.
 
“I’ll stay for a few minutes and
listen.
 
But after that, I’m still
going home.
 
I can’t do this
anymore.”

“Okay,” he said, agreeing to her
terms.
 
He walked away from the
door, looking bent over, as if he’d aged a decade in the last ten minutes.
 
He made his way to the couch and sat
down.

Faith put her bag down and stood where
she was, her arms folded.
 
“I’m
listening.”

He sighed deeply and ran a hand through
his hair, revealing the gash on his hairline once more.
 
It was swollen and some of the blood
crusted around it looked fresh.

“I did go to Coach and tell him what
happened with Velcro and Monique,” Chase said.
 

“You did?”

He nodded.
 
“You seem surprised.”

“I’m not surprised.
 
I just didn’t know, because you never
told me.”
 
She met his gaze,
refusing to back down.

He smiled ruefully and nodded his
head.
 
“Point taken.”
 
He sighed again.
 
“I met with Coach and then he made a
call to the head office and it must’ve made them nervous.
 
Because within minutes, Joe Stallsworth
himself showed up to meet with me.”

Joe Stallsworth was the owner of the
entire team—notoriously hands off and reclusive.
 
He wasn’t well liked by fans, media, or
players.

“That
is
serious,” Faith admitted.
 
“What
did they tell you?
 
Are they going
to do anything about Velcro?”

“Well, that depends on your definition of
doing something.
 
If covering up the
problem and sweeping it under the rug is doing something, then yes—they
are.”

“They’re covering it up?” she said, her
stomach twisting.
 
“They told you
that?”

“Not in so many words,” Chase said,
smiling bitterly.
 
“But they brought
in some big-shot lawyer and the three of them basically made a case that people
in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
 
And the team knows that I live in the biggest glass house in the entire
state.”

“You didn’t beat a woman and knock her
unconscious,” Faith said, her blood boiling.

“I’ve done plenty of bad things,
though.
 
Things that the public
doesn’t have a clue about.”
 

Faith walked a little closer to where he
was sitting.
 
“What’s so bad,
Chase?
 
Tell me.”

“That’s not the point,” he muttered.
 
“Even if I tell you every
sin—every person I robbed, every guy I smacked around for a few bucks,
every time I helped Boogie move drugs—that’s not going to change anything.”

“I never said it would,” she replied,
softly, realizing he had just told her…some of it, anyhow.

“The owner of my team and Coach made it
clear to me that if I go tell anyone—the cops, media, even confess to my
priest—they’ll come after me.
 
They’ll let loose all the dirt they have on me, and I’ll be a bigger
story than Velcro by the time they finish with me.
 
So in the end, they’ve got me by the
balls and they know it.”

“They’re just trying to intimidate you,”
she said, but in her heart—she knew that it was likely more than just
intimidation.
 
They wouldn’t let
Chase Winters get away with airing their dirty laundry in public.

“They kept talking about how we don’t
want to give the league a black eye, that we need to keep it private, let the
team handle it internally.
 
Coach
kept telling me that they would get Velcro help, counseling—all
bullshit.”

“Oh Chase,” she said, feeling sorry now,
despite herself.
 
He looked so
broken-down and fragile.
 
His large,
muscular body seemed to be not enough to protect him against the ravages of
this cold, hard world he lived in.

“It’s finished,” he said.
 
“So I let it go.”

“What about the video tape from the hotel
elevator and the hallway?
 
What
about hotel security and what they saw?” Faith asked, feeling like there must
be some way to make it better, to prove to Chase that he hadn’t lost the battle
so soon.

But he just laughed hopelessly.
 
“I mentioned all of that, and Mr.
Stallsworth told me that they’d checked with the hotel and the cameras had
malfunctioned somehow during that timeframe.
 
He told me there’d been some glitch and
they hadn’t recorded anything—what a coincidence--but he assured me the
team was investigating the incident.”

Faith went and sat down on the couch
beside him.
 
She put a hand on his
shoulder—his muscles felt as tense as a coiled piece of steel.

“So they’re denying the whole thing,” she
said.
 
“Is that it?”