by Croix, Ada
Allie searched her brain for the right thing to say to him, and then berated herself for trying to fix … what? Marc would be gone in a few days, and on top of that, he was her patient.
“I’m doing exactly what I want.” Allie forced herself to smile and to let go of him. She couldn’t quite walk away. “I’m glad you didn’t choose something else.”
Marc blinked at her with incomprehension.
“From Everett’s list,” Allie explained.
Marc chuckled and started for the dormitory’s door. “It really means a lot to you, this experiment.”
“I guess you could say it’s my qualifying game.” Allie fell into step beside him, her gaze on their feet. “I need every boost I can get, to get into one of the top programs. I’m just lucky that Doctor Kaitech chose me to assist with the study. If I can get my name on a publication, it’ll help me file my applications next fall. And besides that, it’s just really interesting.” She reached to catch the door when Marc got it open and held it out for her, motioning him through first so she could offer a more genuine smile up at him. “Getting such comprehensive data on a specimen with fine-tuned health, it’s a real opportunity.”
“I don’t know that I’m so fine a specimen.”
“You are.”
Marc clamored into the stairs ahead of her without further comment, but he seemed to be suppressing a smile instead of simply being unsmiling. “I’m glad to be advancing the field of medical science,” Marc said as he paused on the landing for his floor.
Leaning on the door’s half-open edge, he looked between his hall and the stairs that led upward to hers. “You were going to go meet Violet,” he said more subdued.
“Yeah.” Allie ground to a halt, rocking on her feet.
Marc’s brow shaped silent question.
In that moment, Allie wanted nothing more than to find a reason to go through the door with him. All she found was a smile to paste onto her face. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He nodded. “Have a good night, Allie.”
“You, too.” It was too late. “Thank you, Marc.” She made herself turn, then, and not look back while she clomped up the stairs to the top floor.
10
The next day Violet was busy with the PR event she had helped organize, which was good because Allie needed some space to get over the embarrassment and confusion of the previous night. With her time off, Allie stuffed her bags with her materials and laptop so that she could escape to the nearby university. Quietly studying for the MCAT was much preferable to the risk of seeing Blake and having to explain why she ran away from him. Worse would be getting caught in conversation with Marc. The way she felt around him … she didn’t trust herself at all.
As the week started, the grueling schedule of the water polo team’s camp thankfully prevented much awkwardness even though she was still shadowing Lindsey. The guys woke up early to start their first pool session before day lit the sky. After a short break for lunch they had dryland training in the gym, and following that they assembled again at the pool for their second big workout.
Allie was due to collect another sample set from Marc after his practice. He was even quieter than she had come to expect while he sat in the office chair. She noticed him rubbing at the top of his shoulder while she bustled about with her routine. When the team was in the water she saw that he and Blake had been on opposite sides for the scrimmage and had gotten into it pretty bad. She bit her tongue against the impulse to explain away the text message from the other night.
Her foolish guilt would have to be eased another way. “I can book a massage appointment for you at the clinic,” Allie noted as she secured the salivary sample brush into its little shipment vial.
“It’s fine.” Marc offered out his hand with his wrist turned up for her, well used to all the steps of her protocol. He was a quick learner. As he watched her fingers against his skin, his brow quirked. “You do that, too?”
“The booking? Yeah.” Allie flickered a smile at him. “Not the massage itself. Although after my time here, maybe I’m considering that line of work.”
“I wouldn’t complain,” Marc let slip in reply.
Her imagination instantly went wild with thoughts of running her hands over the muscled bulk of his body. Allie was terrified that her fingers holding his wrist were about to go rogue. Keeping on task was a difficult exercise in willpower which she succeeded in only by pretending to misunderstand. “I’ll see when I can get you scheduled tonight. Or tomorrow morning, if you’d rather.”
Marc started a protesting breath but swallowed it before it could turn to words. His jaw flexed. “Thank you,” he said instead. “Tomorrow.”
“Okay.” Allie brightened a smile. “You should make use of all the amenities before you go. They’re going to work you hard, right until the end. Have you been to the recovery center yet? I’ve heard rave reviews about the plunge pools.”
“Will you be there?”
Allie shook her head as she started to put things away into her kit. “I have a seminar this evening in one of the presentation rooms.” It would be so much better to watch the water polo boys jumping from pool to pool in their little suits. She was going to miss the view once they left in two days. She bit her lip and cast a sideways look at Marc. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”
“Yep.” Just like their first appointment, he stood up without concern for her space to duck into his shirt and grab his gear to go.
She tried not to think about how, in a few days, the only time she’d see those abs again would be on television.
Allie used to love the seminars. Medicine had been her field and her focus and her love for so long. But instead of being distracted by sports medicine’s frontiers, all she could think about was her subject.
Leave it to Violet to read it on her as they met up for dinner. “Hey there, disappearing act.”
Allie rolled her eyes and flopped into her seat.
“Come on, don’t look like that.” Violet nudged at her foot from under the table. “I’m not the one who torpedoed our chances for winning the trivia trophy.”
“I’m sorry I’ve deprived your bookshelf of holding that honor.” Allie slanted an uneven smile across at her friend as she twirled at her pasta with her fork.
“Don’t you worry, hon.” Violet winked at her around a bite of salad. “I got the score I was looking for the other night. Hot water polo player, check.” Violet swayed as she mimed drawing the mark into the air between them. Grinning, she nudged her toe at her friend. “But I want to know what happened to you.”
“I should be mad at you for saddling me with Blake like that,” Allie said down to her plate, her shoulders hunching.
“You should be thanking me, you mean.”
“He started to put on the moves,” Allie confided. “But I couldn’t do it.” She was blushing just thinking about it. “He is gorgeous,” she admitted.
“I’m not sure I could say no to a man with a private jet, especially when he looks like that, that’s all I’m saying.”
“He wasn’t offering me a ride in his jet.”
“A ride on his jet,” Violet amended her words slyly. Allie threw a grape at her.
“Well I didn’t go jetting anywhere.” Allie couldn’t look at Violet. She picked at her grapes. “And I don’t know what Blake did, but I drove downtown and bought overpriced tea in Starbucks so that someone could have the room for her nefarious purposes.”
Violet cackled. “You make me sound like some villain. It’s not like there’s anything evil about sex, Allie. Some of us enjoy other people.”
“I do, too,” Allie said defensively. She shrugged one of her shoulders up towards her ear and peeked across at her friend. “Just. With my clothes on.”
Violet gave her a look like she was hopeless.
“I ran into one of the other players on the way driving back.” Maybe it wasn’t the best defense to hold up as an example to Violet. Especially when recalling the previous night
made Allie’s smile spread beyond her control. “Marc.”
Violet stuck her tongue in her molars and made a humming noise of tentative approval as she scanned a new look over Allie. “Your lab rat.”
“There’s more to him than that.”
“He’s a world-class athlete,” Violet stated as one other obvious thing, but that wasn’t what she cared about either. Her eyes were sparking wicked as she licked at her fork. “More to him, hmm? What’s the story on Marc’s jet?”
“I don’t think he has a … Oh my gosh.” It took her a moment to get her friend’s meaning, and then Allie dropped her forehead into the brace of her palm as her cheeks colored. “Why do I tell you anything?”
“Because I love you and I want you to be happy,” Violet chirped in quick reply. “Now fess up. Did you go at it in the back seat? Fog up the windows?”
“I didn’t even kiss him.” It should have just been a fact. Allie didn’t know how her voice came out sounding regretful. She took a deep breath and shook her head to put logic back into place. “He’s in my study, Violet. I can’t be … hooking up with him.”
Violet looked at her for a narrow-eyed moment. “Well I don’t know how else you’re supposed to enjoy him. Maybe it’s all for the best.”
“What do you mean?”
“I came across some old stories when I was putting together documents for the PR event.” Violet rearranged what was left of her meal with her salad with her fork. “There was a piece about his hard partying lifestyle. Apparently there was some drama with one of the girls on the women’s water polo team. I didn’t really dig into it, but … maybe it’s better to keep professional distance with that one. You could use an intermediary step between Jimmy and the level of player that Marc looks to be. I mean, a guy like Blake might buy you dinner. I think with Marc, you might just get tetanus.”
“He doesn’t have tetanus.” Allie barely realized she was answering like a clinical robot. “The study pre-screens demand a healthy baseline.”
There was no reason for Allie’s heart to be sinking. “It’s not like Jimmy was such a great guy.” It had taken her a while to get over her college boyfriend after he made it clear that his moving on to med school also meant moving on from her. But that wasn’t what was aching in her chest. It had been nearly a year since they’d split, and when she’d seen Jimmy around town over Christmas with his new girlfriend, Allie knew that she was well and truly over him.
“Well sure. But my point is that you’re kind of lacking in experience doing anything more than some jerk-face’s homework, right? It’s a big leap to some dick that’s not friendly and offers no benefits.”
“I’ve done stuff.” Allie was too self conscious to meet her friend’s eye. Certainly Violet was close enough to the truth and besides, nothing she’d said about Marc should have felt surprising. Allie knew better than to go looking for a relationship amongst the athletes. Of course Marc Belmont was a player and his singular focus was the game.
“Anyway, you’re right, I’m better off not getting involved. With any of them. And they’ll all be leaving soon.” So it hardly mattered. Putting on a smile that wasn’t as effortless as she would have hoped, Allie made a change of subject. “So what’s this thing I heard about, with Adam and the shrimp cocktail?” With Violet telling the story, maybe she could ignore the distraught churn of her stomach long enough to finish her meal.
11
After the weekend of the PR event, the days slipped by fast. Lindsey had been relying on Allie more and more, so she began to assist with the dailies and be responsible for all inter-department appointment scheduling within the training center. It only worked in conjunction with the workload at the sports clinic because they had gotten Tracey back after winter break.
With her schedule pulled in so many directions, it also meant that Allie had hardly any time to worry about Marc’s questionable past. She sat on the bleachers beside Lindsey during practices and watched all that bare muscle collide and tried to enjoy it for what it was and not as something that she would ever be a part of. The team would soon leave Colorado and be given the rest of the week off, and then they would be flying to their training center south of Los Angeles where the heat would gradually rise as the team primed themselves for their last chance to qualify for the summer games in August.
The final day of the water polo team’s camp happened off-site, pushing their altitude training to the max with the big grade climb in the mountains. Allie had to wait until Marc came back from the excursion to collect the last of his “post-exercise” samples. Half of the guys had fallen asleep on the drive. They were all muzzy with exertion and eager to get into the dining hall to refuel. Lindsey had sent her a text message to say they were on the way, so Allie was ready by the curb with her kit when the van pulled up. She did her sampling while Marc sat alone on one of the bench seats after the others cleared out ahead of him.
It went too quickly. Their choreography was down pat by now. Marc had to know Allie was lingering for no reason when she zipped her bag up slow.
“Don’t worry, I won’t disappear tomorrow without submitting myself to your full lab rat routine. You’ll have your data.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Allie lied with a smile. “Now go get some rest so your immune system can do its thing, yeah?”
“You won’t find a better defense,” Marc drawled as he hooked his arms on the seats’ headrests to drag himself up out of the van.
Allie didn’t doubt it. She waited a moment, drinking in the sight of Marc before she turned to walk in the other direction to the clinic.
The morning of the water polo team’s departure, Allie went out to the parking lot to see Adam and some of the younger guys off. They were flying into San Diego to spend a few days’ down time. From there they’d drive up to Los Angeles where their training pool was located. Adam caught her in a hug and she returned it.
“Thanks for being my water polo coach,” Allie teased him with a ruffle at his hair. “Stay out of trouble. And good luck.”
“I guess I’ll try,” Adam replied dubiously. “Anything for you, Allie.”
Allie snorted at his puppy dog look, not believing it for an instant. “All right, get out of here.” She fondly shoved him towards the van.
“Thanks. Take care, huh?”
“You, too.” Allie smiled more warmly as she watched the pack of young men tumble into the car. “Have a safe flight.” She waved them off, watching the van bounce on its shocks as they settled into their seats before it started rolling.
The veteran team members left about an hour later. Allie begged off being dragged out to the airport by Violet, saying she had too much paperwork to do. The rooms in the dorm were already being turned over and more teams would start coming in that night for their training camps.
“Don’t you want to see the jet?” Violet asked as her final bargaining chip, figuring it was inarguable. For a day and a half, all the gossip had been how Blake’s family plane would be taking the guys who were over twenty-one to Las Vegas for their long weekend.
“Maybe next time.”
“Allie. I’m not sure this is a thing you can count on having a next time.”
Allie just shrugged. “I’m optimistic?”
Violet sighed, long suffering. “You’re a workaholic.” But she must have known it was futile. She threw up her hands. “All right, all right. I’ll take pictures for you.”
“Deal.” Allie shifted on her feet. It was tempting, but she still had one more very important appointment that afternoon. “I’ll see you at dinner.”
“You know it.” Violet blew her a kiss before leaving.
When Marc came into the clinic, Allie didn’t know if it was more or less awkward than his first appointment. No matter how much she told herself it shouldn’t matter, her stomach felt carved out by the knowledge that it would be the last time she’d see him.
At least she had a better appearance of professionalism. She was composed at her desk before
he arrived. When she saw Marc turn the corner from the reception area she picked up her clipboard smoothly and smiled, her motions familiar instead of flustered. He gave her a little check of fingers that was close enough to a wave.
“Last time you’ll have to put up with me.” Allie was proud of how lighthearted she sounded as she motioned for him to follow her back to the patient room she’d prepared.
Marc scraped out a distracted chuckle. She could see that his headphone cords were curled into the outside mesh pocket of the backpack slung over his shoulder. She wouldn’t be driving him for his return trip to the airport, but she wondered if that would be a repeat too—would he be any more talkative than when he arrived? Surely his mind would already be on to the next thing.
Allie tried to put it out of her head and focus on collecting the metrics which were now routine. Then came the litany of additional basic measures which they didn’t bother with during the week so as not to hold up the team’s training schedule. Drawing blood wasn’t really the kind of thing one could linger over. She made do by being careful not to tape over the hair of his forearm as she secured the little cotton ball over the puncture point. Maybe she dragged her fingers a little wistfully over the smooth of his inner arm where his veins tracked strong beneath his skin.
Violet had cast doubt on what kind of life he had led, but Allie saw little evidence of it on his body aside from the tattoos which stained his shoulders. Marc was in peak health, which was unsurprising for a man who’d been making a living playing a sport that demanded both stamina and strength-burst power. She thought back to the night when she found him alone downtown and wondered why she had pulled away from him.