The Debt 9 (Club Alpha) (2 page)

She was all too aware of the skirt she’d
worn today, which, given the chilly weather, she’d almost decided against.
 
Now she wished she’d listened to her
instincts and put on jeans or sweats or anything else.
 
And her sweater showed way too much
cleavage.

She’d dressed up nicely because of the Meet
and Greet (before she’d known what it really meant).
  

But as it turned out, she was alone with
Chase Winters and he was half naked and she felt as though he was in the
process of stripping her bare with his eyes from across the room.

I’m
not his type anyway
, she
thought, turning the figurine over and over in her hands, pretending to be
interested in it.
 
Meanwhile, every
part of her was noticing him out of the corner of her eye, feeling his presence
and his gaze upon her.

I’m
just a normal girl, with curves that some boys happen to like, but just as many
don’t.
 

She imagined that Chase tended to like
the extra skinny ones, not to mention the supermodel types.

Still, she felt electricity in the air and
wondered if it could be just her imagination, or whether it might be real.

There was silence too—a lot of
silence considering this was supposed to be some kind of official contest meet
n’ greet.
 
And the silence only
added to the electricity, as though each and every word uttered between them
held all kinds of extra meaning.

“Are you nervous?” she asked him, finally
daring to look at him.
 

“Nervous about what?” he said, placing
his tiny bottle of water on the counter and stepping towards her.
 
“Meeting you?”
 
He challenged her with his dark, ferocious
eyes.

“Of course not,” she said, licking her
lips.
 
“I meant about the game.”

“Do I look nervous?”

“Not particularly,” she admitted.

His smile grew wider.
 
“How about you, cutie?” he said, his
voice lowering.
 
“You seem kind of
skittish.
 
Feeling some pre-game
jitters?” he teased.

“I don’t…I don’t think so.”
 
Her breath came in short gasps as Chase
walked closer to her.
 
“I’m just
confused about what I’m doing here.”

“You’re here because you won some contest
and I’m the grand prize.”
 
He kept
coming towards her, looming larger and larger.
 
He was a towering image of perfection—a
man who looked the way statues “tried” to look—resolute, strong,
unwavering and unafraid of anything the world had to offer.

 
“I probably should let you get ready for
the game now,” she whispered, her voice starting to fail her.

Chase was just a few feet away.
 
Close enough for her to reach out and
touch his stomach.
 
The top of her
head came up to right around his shoulders, and she could have leaned forward
and kissed his bare chest.

The thought of that was almost enough to
make her laugh—except she hardly felt like laughing.
 
In fact, she was terrified.

“The game’s not for awhile,” Chase said,
looking down at her.
 
“I don’t see
why you’re in such a rush.”

“Don’t you want to go to your locker room
or something?
 
Hang out with the
rest of the team?”

For the first time, he seemed to lose
focus on her.
 
His smile became a
sneer.
 
“The team,” he said, shaking
his head.
 
“Yeah, I guess you don’t
know much about sports at all.”

“No, I don’t.
 
Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Suddenly, his large hand reached out and
gently touched her chin, his thumb caressing her skin briefly, as his eyes
bored into her.
 
“I’m not really
interested in talking about the team,” he said, his voice almost a whisper.
 

“What are you interested in, then?”

He smiled, not needing to say the
words.
 
And then he was stepping
closer, and she could smell his soapy fresh scent, and a tiny hint of sweat
that actually smelled even better than the soap did.

Chase leaned into her, and Faith was
surprised at how smooth he was, given their size difference.
 
His lips touched hers and she felt all
of her fear recede as the warmth of Chase’s lips delivered the best kiss she’d
ever had in her entire life.

Despite her anxiety, his lips were as
expert at coaxing her lust out of her as he was at coaxing the football into
the hands of his teammate and scoring a touchdown.

But the kiss didn’t last nearly long
enough, and then he was pulling away from her.

She opened her eyes, not even knowing how
they’d closed in the first place.
 
She felt confused, dazed almost.
 
“That was surprising,” she said, swallowing.

“Good,” he replied, turning and walking
away from her.
 
“So, you’re going to
watch the game along with everyone else,” he said.
 
“But then I want to see you afterwards.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?” he asked,
giving her a look.

“Not really,” she admitted.

A brief smile flickered on his face and
then disappeared.
 
“You’ll know when
I’m joking because it’ll make you laugh.”

Faith couldn’t make sense of any of
this.
 
“Wait—so I don’t
understand how—“

“What’s your phone number?” he asked her,
picking up his water bottle again and taking a sip.

She stood there, her mouth just hanging
open.
 

Chase
Winters kissed me, and now he wants my phone number.
 
This is getting seriously weird.
 
Like, impossibly, ridiculously, insanely
weird.
 
Am I on a hidden camera show
or something?
 

But she told him her number just the
same, and he nodded his head as if this sort of arrangement was the most normal
thing in the world.
 
Which she
supposed, for him, it probably was.
 
“Cool,” he said.
 
“See you
later, then.”

“You didn’t even write my number down or
anything.”

He smiled.
 
“You might be surprised that some of us
jocks actually have a brain in our head and this other thing called a
memory.”
 

“I didn’t think you couldn’t remember it,
but I just figured—“

“Well I guess you figured wrong,” Chase
said.
 
“I keep hundreds of plays in
my head,” he said, turning and pointing his index finger at his temple.
 
“I know all the other teams’ defenses, individual
player tendencies, which guys like to rush the quarterback and when.
 
I think I can manage to remember your
phone number.”

Faith sighed.
 
“Well I came here with my family, so…”

“When the game’s over, lose them,” he
told her, like it was nothing.

“Ummm…okay, so….”

He turned his broad, heavily muscled back
to her and she saw there was a lot more ink there as well.
 
“Have fun watching,” he said.

As Faith left, she wondered just how many
meanings a sentence could have.
 

***

Faith had been in a kind of fog ever
since meeting Chase Winters, and time had seemed to go by both fast and slow,
all at once.

In her head, one thought kept circling
and circling over and over.

Chase
Winters kissed me.

She’d returned to the VIP clubhouse to
find her father swilling beer and eating from the buffet table as if it was his
sworn duty to consume everything in sight.

Her mother was drinking and occasionally
arguing with her father, and Krissi was morose and on her cell phone texting
for the most part.

They’d all asked her to describe the
“meet and greet”, and surprisingly, Faith had pretty much lied to their faces
about it.
 
Lying wasn’t usually her
style, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to confess anything about what had
really occurred.

She claimed it had been a boring,
run-of-the-mill kind of event where players had given autographs to fans and
then everyone had gone their separate ways.

Later, when the teams took the field, Dad
started to comment on Chase.

“Keep your eye on the new QB.
 
The guy is an animal,” Dad said, almost
reverently, before chomping down on a cheeseburger slider.
 
“If he can stay healthy, he’s going to
break every damn passing record in the league, just like he did in
college.
 
Remember I told you that.”

“Oh, you don’t know nothing,” Mom replied
from her seat, swatting at the air.

“I don’t know anything?” he retorted,
rolling his eyes.
 
“You’re the one
who can hardly dress yourself these days.”

“I dress fine.”

“Uh-huh.
 
Sure you do.
 
That’s why this morning you tried to
wear a pair of jeans with a hole in the backside.”
 
He shook his head and drank more beer.

That led to more yelling back and forth
between her parents, and Faith resorted to tuning them out and walking as close
as she could get to the window overlooking the field.

Everything was bright and crisp—the
green of the field, the colors of the players’ uniforms and helmets, the fans
dressed in team jerseys and hats, cheering a dull roar.

New York kicked off and then New England
received, running it to about the twenty-yard-line.
 
That was when Chase took the field with
the rest of the offense.

The roar from the crowd went from being
dull to absolutely ear-splitting, and Faith found herself captivated.
 
She looked at the enormous Jumbotron,
and the screen showed a close-up of Chase getting set to take the ball as the
offense and defensive lines crouched into position.

He
kissed me.
 
Chase Winters kissed me.

Her lips mouthed the words as Chase’s
helmet filled the screen, his eyes focused and unafraid, his lips moving as he
called out something unintelligible to her.

She was afraid of him and afraid for him,
too, because this was a violent, bone-crushing sport and it was his first game.

Suddenly, it all happened at once.
 
The football was snapped into Chase’s
hands and he dropped back to pass.
 
The defensive line of the opposing team appeared to be collapsing in on
him quickly, and two players closed in for a tackle.

“No!” Faith cried, squinting as she
prepared to see Chase hit and crushed to the ground beneath the opposing
players’ weight.

But he made a quick sidestep at the last
moment and then fired a pass to one of the receivers, who broke free for about
a twenty-five yard run before going down.

The crowd, ecstatic at the first successful
play of the game, erupted like they’d just won the Super Bowl.

“Didn’t I tell you about this kid?” Dad
shouted.
 
“Didn’t I say it?”

“Oh, shut up!” her mother screamed.

Faith would normally have been annoyed
beyond belief at how her parents were acting, even though she should’ve been
used to it by now.
 

However, not only was she calmer thanks
to having moved away from home six months ago, but she also was transfixed by
the game, and her connection to what was transpiring.

Chase had kissed her.
 
He’d gotten her number.

Everything he did out there seemed
somehow linked to what had happened earlier.
 
After all, he’d taken precious time out
of his day to be with her, to look into her eyes, and even to kiss her.

Something
had happened between them, and Faith
wanted desperately to believe it had been real.

But now she was scared that he was going
to be hurt, or that he might falter and the fans would start booing him.

Every time Chase went out to do his job,
Faith found herself secretly praying for his safety, clutching her hands close
to her chest, clenching her jaw and watching his every move.

And yet he was having a truly marvelous
game.
 
At least, that’s how it
seemed to her based on her limited knowledge of football and the crowds’
reaction.