The Debt 9 (Club Alpha) (5 page)

Hey.
 
Did you just call me?

After hitting send, she squealed and then
ran back to the bedroom and dove face-first onto the bed.

She could hardly take the waiting for a
response.
 
It must’ve been a
mistake—there was no way he’d have called her again so soon—or ever,
for that matter.

Why was he calling her, anyway?
 
Was this some kind of weird mind game or
something?

And then a text came through.

Yeah.

That was it.
 
Just one word.
 
Yeah.
 
No follow up.
 
Nothing explaining it.

So she started typing again.

Did
you want to talk to me?

She hit send again.

Faith’s cheeks felt flushed and her body
temperature was rising.
 
She
wondered where he was, what he was doing right then, who he was with.
 

His response this time was much quicker.

I
was going to invite u over.

Faith stared in complete and utter shock
at what he’d sent.
 
Everything was
tingling now, like her skin was on fire.
 
 
Already, she was half-crazy with
desire and excitement, anticipation and fear, and nothing had really even
happened yet.

But she kept picturing him in that towel,
and his strange tattoos, the look in his eyes, the way his lips had felt when
he’d given her the sexiest, hottest kiss of her life, bar none.

She’d been about to reply to his latest
text, but it had been taking her a moment to come up with the right mix of
flirty but not desperate banter.

Only in that time, he’d written her again.

Text
me ur address

Faith’s eyes felt like they might just
come out of her head.
 
Chase Winters
wanted to know her address.
 
This
couldn’t be real, he had to be messing with her.
 
And what would he do with the
information if she gave it to him?

She was so scared of everything, and him
most of all.
 
Chase wasn’t safe, he
wasn’t some normal guy, and she couldn’t be sure of his intentions.
 
But at the same time, Faith knew that
she was powerless to resist him, she knew that ultimately she’d give him
whatever he wanted.

If there had ever been a chance for her
to get away from him unscathed, that had all ended when he’d given her that
kiss yesterday.
 
After that one
kiss, all hope of escape had vanished.

She already knew she was caught, trapped
like a scared little rabbit.
 
Faith
texted him her address against her better judgment.
 

“Oh my God,” she muttered, trying to calm
her nerves and failing miserably.
 
She stared at her cell phone, her eyes glued to the screen, waiting for
his next volley.
 
She could hardly
sit still, trying to anticipate why he’d asked for her address.

Well,
obviously he wants to know where you live, maybe in case he decides to make a
booty call one of these days.

Or
perhaps he wants to send you flowers.

Don’t
be an idiot, don’t be naïve.
 
Chase
Winters doesn’t seem like the “sending flowers” kind of guy, does he?

No, he didn’t seem like that kind of guy,
she decided.
 
But then again, she
barely knew anything about him, other than what she’d gleaned from a quick Google
search and some of the discussions about his life on sports radio.

Supposedly he’d grown up in a rough part
of Detroit without a father, his mother had been addicted to drugs.
 
Chase had been forced to care for his
younger brother and had used football as a way out of a tough situation.

Apparently, he was now even putting his
younger brother through college.

Faith related to some of Chase Winters’s
story, as did many others who loved him for what he represented, what he’d
overcome in his young life.
 
They
said he was even religious, although he tended to keep his religious upbringing
and convictions largely to himself.

But none of these details had much to do
with the attraction Faith felt to him, because up close yesterday, all she’d
felt was the pull of his body, his intense animal charisma and power.

He was all brute force, muscle and
masculine energy, coiled and tied up in that phenomenal physique with a face that
was already gracing magazine covers from Sports Illustrated to GQ.
 

Chase Winters had officially arrived, and
somehow he’d arrived not just in the public consciousness, but in Faith’s life
as well.

Still, she hadn’t heard anything back
since texting him her address.

After a few more minutes of endless
waiting, she texted him and asked why he’d wanted to know where she lived.

There was no reply for a long time, so
she held onto her phone as she went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth,
brushed her hair a little more, and then got into her shorts and t-shirt for
bedtime.

She’d been checking her cell phone every
minute or two and still there was no response from Chase, so Faith figured
she’d better not bother him again.
 
He was busy, after all, a superstar who had lots of demands on his time.

It was crazy enough that he’d texted her
a few times tonight, no matter how brief.

And
he asked where you live, don’t forget.

There was that, too.
 
Faith wished she had someone she could
talk to about this.
 
Definitely not
her sister, Krissi.
 
That would’ve
been weird.

But maybe one of her friends from back
home.
 
Most of her old friends from
high school had stuck around, just like so many did who came from Newburg.
 
It was a small town with middle-class
folks who were proud of their community and their roots, like her dad and mom.

She was still pretty good friends with a
few of them, girls like Haley and Jena.

But if Faith had told either of them,
they’d have flipped out and made her feel completely nuts, or nervous, or
both.
 
Haley’s brother was a huge
New England Nationals fan and Jena was a gossip.

Neither one of them could be counted on
to keep this big a secret.

As she was going over this in her mind,
lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, she heard a buzz and felt the phone
shaking in the palm of her hand.

Eyes wide, she lifted her head to look at
the screen of her cell.
 
The words
were absolutely horrifying.

Out
front now.

“What the hell?” she yelled, as if the
phone could answer her back.
 
She
jumped up, like she’d been given an electric shock, then ran to her bedroom
window, crouching down and peeking down at the street, trying her best not to
be seen.

There was limousine parked in front of
her apartment complex.

It had to be a coincidence.
 
Had to be.

And then she looked at her cell phone,
where the text stood out in stark lettering against the white background.

Out
front now.

Faith peered down again at the stretch
limo, in all its black glittering slickness, like a reflecting snake, poised
outside, waiting to strike.

Why would he have shown up unannounced
like that?

Faith slid down to the floor and felt
herself beginning to hyperventilate.

Her phone buzzed again, and she almost
couldn’t look at it, but finally she squinted at the cell phone.

U
home?

Faith typed a quick reply.
 
Yes.

Come
see me.

He was chatting with her now in real
time.
 
Faith’s nipples hardened
beneath her t-shirt, and she felt her clothing rubbing against her bare
skin.
 
She wasn’t wearing a bra, or
panties.
 

And Chase was down there right now while
she was semi-naked.

Her lips formed an involuntary smile as
she texted him back immediately.

I’m
not dressed to go out.

There was a slight pause and then:
Come now.

It was statement, but more than that, it
was a warning not to play around.
 
Faith’s smile dwindled as she studied his text.
 
Should she push back, play hard to
get?
 
Refuse?

He hadn’t given her any time to prepare,
to get ready, choose an outfit, nothing.
 
And she’d have needed like a week minimum to have gotten even close to
ready to go out on a date with Chase Winters.
 
Maybe even a year wouldn’t have been
enough, because Faith would have ideally liked to spend at least that long
training, toning up, tightening her butt and thighs and stomach to try and be
worthy of his time.

As it was, he hadn’t even given her long
enough to do her hair, makeup, and perhaps wash one of her better outfits.

This simply wouldn’t do, she
thought.
 
It was late at night and
he’d sprung this limousine on her as—what?
 
Some kind of sick prank?

Was he trying to make a fool of her?

Was this like one of those movies where
the popular guy goes after the dorky girl on a dare or a bet or something?

She hated this.
 
She was scared, as usual, and her hands
were shaking.

And then, to top it all off, he texted
her again.

Limo
departs in 5 minutes with or without u.

What the heck was he doing?
 
Threatening her?
 

And then she realized, that was exactly
what he was doing.
 
He was the one
holding all the cards and he was giving her a choice to either get on the train
or it was going to depart the station without her.

“Fuck.”
 
She stood up and stared down at the
menacing black automobile.
 
“Fuck,”
she said again, and then she began running around like a madwoman, trying to
make herself presentable before the limousine took off without her.

As she was rummaging through her closet,
the phone shook again with a new text.

4
minutes.

Great, now he was giving her a countdown
on top of everything else.
 
This was
probably just hilarious to him, she decided.
 
Maybe he was even telling some of his
football buddies about how he was torturing this poor, dumb girl into thinking
she actually had a chance with him.

But there was no time now to pause and
think, or complain.
 
Faith took off
her shorts and t-shirt and put on a pair of skinny jeans and a white blouse
that she had gotten as a birthday gift and still hadn’t worn yet.
 

No
time like the present,
she
thought.

And then a new announcement courtesy of
her cell phone and Chase Winters.

3
minutes.

“Shit.
 
Shit.
 
Shit.”
 
She slid on a pair of heels and ran into
the bathroom to try and apply some lipstick.
 
No time for much else.

When she was done, she looked at herself,
made a smile, a sexy face, and decided that as horribly unprepared as she felt,
there was simply nothing to be done about it.

Faith turned and ran out of the bathroom,
grabbed her purse, and nearly fell in the kitchen as she continued running.

Stumbling, a new text from Chase alerted
her to the fact that she now only had two minutes left.

“Shut up!” she screamed at the inert cell
phone, and then bolted out of the apartment, locking the door as quickly as she
could, before sprinting down the two flights of stairs.
 
As she ran down, she was still holding
onto her phone, glancing at it to see any texts that might come through.

At the second to last step, she tripped
and the cell phone flew out of her hand and smacked the floor, sliding and
coming to rest up against the wall.

Faith couldn’t believe her bad luck, as
she knelt down and picked up the phone, seeing the inevitable spirals of jagged
cracks in the face of it.
 
Her eyes
began filling with tears.

It was broken and she didn’t have the
money to replace it.

But a moment later, as she hesitantly
used the very tip of her finger to gently tap the cracked screen, she saw that
somehow the phone was still working.
 
It was just obscenely difficult to read and if she wasn’t careful, she
could cut herself on the cracks in it.