by Croix, Ada
“Do they really?” Allie laughed, cheered into smiling by her supervisor’s kindness. “I think I’ll have to check that out. If you’ll be fine herding the larger animals. Adam was …” She exhaled her helpless exasperation, turning a glance towards the otters like that could explain. “Being Adam.”
“I’ll man the fort.” Lindsey chased her off with a grin and a swing of her own bottle. “Get out of here.”
It was nice to get some time on her own. It was even better when a hand caught the first of the entry doors as she was going in and Allie looked up to find herself staring into the most familiar dark eyes. “Hi.” In her surprise she was awkwardly abrupt.
“Hello.” Marc was smooth as ever, slipping into the airlock space with her so they could let one door close before going in to where the birds flew freely.
“Shouldn’t you be …” Allie couldn’t really bring herself to finish the protest as she led the way inside the park. Bright-blooming foliage was planted along the edges and even brighter wings fluttered through the air.
“I want to be here,” Marc answered simply. He touched a palm to the small of her back as he stepped around Allie to see about getting a pair of cups to feed the birds. “I’ve never been about shilling for money or magazine covers,” he said as he handed over her portion of bird banquet. “I hate that stuff. I’ll leave it to the team captains and the people who enjoy the song and dance.”
He said it so casually, but Allie knew that the sentiment was based on more than the obviousness of Chad’s unabashed pursuit of publicity and sponsors. She searched Marc’s expression for cracks that would let her beneath the surface. “Why did you let them get away with it?” The question floated to her lips before she could think better of it.
A crease formed between his eyebrows. “Let who get away with what?”
“The … dance.” Allie shook her head, berating herself for being dumb. It was too late to take her words back. “Why didn’t you tell people the truth about Natalie?”
The easiness was starting to evaporate from Marc’s posture. His gaze sharpened but his voice was still relaxed. “Everyone whose business it was knows.”
Allie bit her lip, nervous about pushing him. “But they let Simon … You lost your place on the team. It’s not fair.”
Marc exhaled a bitter chuckle through his nose. “It’s been a long time since I’ve believed life is supposed to be fair.” He looked away to busy himself with adjusting the cup of nectar in his fingertips. “Everett has saved my ass so many times. More than I’ve deserved. He asks me not to talk about something, I don’t talk about it.” A hard curl turned up at one corner of his mouth. “Maybe I hold my tongue a little better than my temper.”
The long breath Allie took shuddered through her lungs. She couldn’t take her eyes from Marc. There didn’t seem to be a lot of company on his side, but maybe quantity didn’t matter. “You knew before, didn’t you? Before you … Before the other girl.” She had to know. “You found out about Natalie and knew it was over. And it must have been you, who told Simon’s wife.”
It took a moment for Marc to respond. “We didn’t always have it so easy, when I was a kid.” The fact that it hardly seemed an answer didn’t matter to her at all, because he’d won Allie’s heart-paused attention. “But my parents were crazy about each other. They would have done anything for each other. I guess I’ve always thought—that’s how it should be.”
Marc turned his chin to steadily meet her gaze. “Yeah. I told Lydia. She deserved to know who she was living with.” He laughed, but it wasn’t funny. “When I asked Natalie, when I noticed she and Simon had disappeared after the opening ceremonies and she was acting weird, she said no one would care what I thought I knew. No one would believe me over her. Well, Lydia did. And I knew never to believe Natalie again.”
Allie’s mouth had gone dry. She was staring. She figured she probably was supposed to say something. But she was thinking about how frigid air had spilled into her car after Blake’s name appeared on her phone, and the ruthlessness of Natalie’s clawing hands. She remembered the warmth of the sunset on her face and the weight of Marc’s hand on her thigh. That look he would get in his eyes, like he thought she could do anything. She was wondering what his bookshelves had looked like, and where they had gone.
While she was thinking all that, like clouds clearing, Marc smiled. “I see you have a new friend.”
“… What?”
His chin nudged to her left in gesture. “Didn’t you feel him land?”
Allie nearly startled the bird away by looking too quickly. “Oh my gosh.” She grinned and held very still, turning just enough to peek a sparkle of her delight back at Marc. “Look,” she whispered. “One’s checking you out, too.”
The bird hopping along the top of the railing soon flicked its wings to rise to a perch on the athlete’s thick wrist. The two were the vanguard for what must have been close to a dozen small bodies which soon flickered daringly around them to sample the offered feast.
Two rounds of nectar later, the both of them had forgotten tournaments and teammates and finally aimed their wandering steps towards the exit of the aviary. Marc caught her hips as they paused between the airlock doors. Laughter was still vibrant on Allie’s breath when he pulled her outside and into a secluded corner. In the shelter of palm fronds with the songs of birds in their ears, he kissed her.
“Let’s go back to the apartment.” His suggestion vibrated against her cheered pulse. “Now, while everyone is out.”
Allie had lost all her resolve to avoid further trouble with him. She threaded her fingers into Marc’s hair and balanced on her tiptoes to nod yes against his cheek.
Their hands rested entwined on the middle seat as they rode together in the taxi. Outside the window, rows of palm trees ticked by and seagulls hung effortlessly in the air. Allie’s worries about checkered pasts and lucky charms seemed as distant as the unknown shores beyond the shining ocean’s horizon. The only wings fluttering in her stomach were bright with expectation.
The door to her apartment couldn’t open fast enough. They spilled through in a tangle of limbs and left a trail of clothes across her bedroom floor. When Marc was inside of her it was too easy to forget that there was anything else. In the gauzy light filtering through her drawn curtains, he looked at Allie as if she were his entire world.
In the drowsy afterwards, Marc lay in her arms with all that muscle unwound in heavy satiation. Her fingertips slid smooth through their shared sweat as she traced his solid lines like she was memorizing them. Allie whispered kisses at his hairline and his arms tightened around her waist like he’d never let her go.
He would have to. She knew that Everett was probably wondering where he was, and that the team had plans for the evening. She knew Marc would be flying soon, and she couldn’t keep him. This time, Allie made sure to be the first to suggest that he ought to go before anyone came home to see him leaving from her apartment. As if bringing it up herself would make it feel less like he was leaving her. Like some sense of control would mean she wouldn’t miss him so badly when he got on the airplane with his team.
It didn’t work.
42
Marc hadn’t realized how much the apartment down the hall from Allie had started to feel like home until he was away from it. When there had been nowhere that he cared about leaving, every place that he went didn’t seem much different from the one in which he’d been. But as he walked down the halls of the hotel they were staying in for the qualifying tournament, for the first time in a long time he felt like he was someplace strange.
When he was younger he’d have taken either the numb sameness or the disconcerting difference as reason enough to dodge the staff and make an escape. He’d catch a taxi into whatever passed as a town and find wherever passed as a bar. Anything to avoid being alone in a cold bed staring at cold walls decorated with nothing more than impersonal hotel art.
But he had promised Everett. And perhaps more imp
ortant was the promise never asked for and never spoken, but which was all the more precious nonetheless.
Of course, not everyone was playing by the same rules. When he turned the corner to the wing their block of rooms was in, he nearly walked right into a girl heading in the other direction. Marc had to catch her by the shoulders because her hands were too busy taming her sex-wild hair into a braid.
“Excuse me.” She giggled as she curved her path around him. When she glanced back before disappearing towards the elevators, it was to an open doorway rather than at Marc.
Blake was leaning against the jamb on a forearm, his other hand checking the sling of his boxer shorts like he wasn’t sure he’d bothered to get dressed.
“Evening,” Marc said placidly as he continued down the hall.
“Evening.” Blake lingered in the open door to watch him pass. He reached a thumb up to scratch slow consideration along his jaw. “You aren’t going to say anything, are you, Marc?”
Marc almost didn’t bother answering. “We’re teammates.”
“You were teammates with Simon, too.”
Well if the smug kid was going to bring that up. Marc scuffed to a stop, turning to square a narrow-eyed look on the blond.
“You know if you want to go for her, you’re welcome to try. Though I don’t think she’ll be choosing you over me.” Blake’s blue eyes flicked haughtily over Marc. “She’s a woman with taste, unlike that intern girl.”
Marc was losing all sense of the long hall that stretched quietly to both sides. There was just the pressure biting between his teeth and the welling urge to break Blake’s smile. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“You have been fucking her, haven’t you?” Unfortunately the snap of Marc’s reply had only deepened the insufferable expression on the younger player’s face. “You like taking a good girl and making her dirty.” Blake pushed himself carelessly out of the doorway. “That’s what you did with Natalie, isn’t it?”
Blake shut up real quick when Marc surged across the hall and slammed him into the wall. “Don’t talk about Allie like that.”
Unlike the night in the club, Blake didn’t put much effort into breaking loose. He braced himself off of Marc’s wrists and persisted with his too-clever grin. “You do like her, don’t you? You dumbass.”
Marc blinked, wary of the unexpected turn of the conversation. “What’s it to you?”
“What’s it to me.” Blake let bitterness escape into his chuckle. “It’s that we fucking need you, Belmont. One hundred percent. And if you’re too preoccupied stroking your dick over her, you’re not focused on getting us our spot in the games.”
There wasn’t anything in what Blake said that Marc could really argue with. It was a strange sensation. He let the other player go with a final shove. “How about you worry about yourself, Blake. You were lagging by the third quarter in the last game.” It was true, but it was hard to pretend his critique was anything but a cover for how he’d been unsettled. He flicked a look in the direction in which the girl had tottered off to throw up another screen. “Your endurance isn’t what it should be.”
“Marc, I didn’t know you cared enough to notice.”
“You’re the one who seems all concerned with my dick.” Marc snorted and backed off so that he could continue on his way to his room. “Rest up. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, I’m going to sleep like a baby.” Blake seemed determined to prove his moment of admitting imperfection was an anomaly. He gave a waggle of fingers as he disappeared behind his door. “Night, sweetheart.”
Fucking Blake. It didn’t help Marc feel restful at all once he got back to the quiet of his room, knowing that smug ass was sprawling in sweet relaxation after his illicit visitor. It wasn’t even very late, but they’d be up early the next day. He stared at the clock and found himself figuring the calculation for California’s time zone. He reached for his phone.
Are you going to watch the game?
Maybe he did the math wrong. The red numbers hovering at his bedside clicked through a quarter of an hour with excruciating slowness. He thought she would have been awake, but maybe it was too early. Or Allie didn’t have her phone. Or …
I’ve watched all of them
He was being a dumbass, smiling just because she’d messaged him back.
How?
Streaming
Call?
Okay
Marc waited a moment, realizing he hadn’t clarified who should call whom. He imagined Allie chewing on her lip and staring at her phone in California. That made him smile, too. He dialed her number.
“Hi,” he said promptly when he heard the line pick up.
“Hi.” Her voice sounded so good.
“Where are you?”
“In bed. It’s morning.”
He could picture her there. Light streaming in the window. Her packed book shelves and the framed pictures filled with an actual family. Marc closed his eyes and lay back against the hotel’s high threadcount sheets and thought about being beside her. “It can’t be that early. Have you been dreaming of me?”
“Marc.” She sounded indignant, but he knew her too well to really believe it. “I don’t remember.” He could tell Allie was lying.
The curve of his smile was so broad she could probably hear it over the phone. “Are you wet?”
She gasped at the question. One of those shaky half breaths that would herald the most delicious of her moans. It sent his hand skimming to reach beneath his waistband.
The moment it took Allie to answer was filled with maddening possibility. “You’ll just have to come back here, if you want to find out.”
It was the kind of manipulative bargaining that had often made his skin crawl. But when Allie said it, Marc had no hesitation about his answer. “You can count on it.”
“You’re confident about the last game, then?”
“I think so.”
“Your hand isn’t bothering you?”
There was a way she spoke to him like no one else did. The muted worry in her voice. Like she truly cared. About him. Marc flexed through the reminiscent soreness of his knuckles and it was a reminder that things didn’t last forever. Not an easy thing to think about. Not a good thing, before a big game. So he tugged his grip around his cock instead. “It’s been getting a bit of a workout. Afterhours.”
The breath of her shy laugh made static over the phone. And yet he hadn’t succeeded in distracting Allie from her concern. “Are you all right?”
Marc drew his palm back to rest on the flat of his stomach and felt the fill of his breath beneath it. He opened his eyes to stare at the blank ceiling in the dimness. “Yeah,” he answered with quiet honesty. “I’m fine. I just.” He frowned at himself and gave a pointless shake of his head. “Wanted to know if you were rooting for me.” Yep. Dumbass.
“I am,” Allie answered quickly. “I will be. Go shred them to pieces, Marcosaurus.”
It might have been the lamest thing anyone had ever said to him, and the most wonderful. Marc laughed. “Yeah. I should get going. Get some sleep.” He looked to the side and swept his arm out to turn down the edge of the covers. He wished she were under them. “I’ll see you soon.”
“You better.”
43
Their last game ended up close but Marc’s confidence proved justified. Allie watched on her laptop as he powered through the final quarter, helping the team reverse the score and pull out a two-point lead by the last buzzer. She and Kelsey had champagne on hand to celebrate from their living room. With the bubbles tickling happily in her stomach, Allie snuck off to her room to leave Marc a breathy message about how much she was looking forward to congratulating him in person.
The next day, Allie would have liked to stay up and wait for Marc to get home from the airport but the team’s flight got back late and she had to be in bed early. Violet was in town for an event with the national beach volleyball league. As part of their obligation
s to their internships, both of them were committed to helping set up the next morning. They had to leave plenty of time to get down to the next big beach town where it was being held.
It meant that Allie didn’t get to respond to Marc’s sent message of arrival with much more than a cursory Yay! while she and Violet dragged down to the car before dawn.
Her friend, however, had plenty of opportunity to amuse herself once Allie was behind the wheel.
“Allie, this dude is so on your jock.”
“What are you …” A quick glance over found Violet smirking while she tapped out something on the stolen phone. “I should have buried that thing in my purse. I’m not sure I want you reading what’s on there.” When Allie peeked again, Violet was not only texting but was holding up the phone to snap a picture of her driving. “Violet, I’m going to kill you.” Allie fussed at her no-nonsense braid self-consciously.
“You are going to do no such thing.” It should have been no surprise that Violet was undeterred. “I think you’ll need to save all your energy for this.”
Allie glanced over again. “Why is that water polo ball wearing a speedo?”
“Oh, wait. I meant … this is the one.”
“There’s more than one?” Allie couldn’t even pretend to be upset when she saw what was on her phone screen. The worst part was that she couldn’t look long enough to appreciate the detail of a shirtless Marc mugging for the camera.
“I’m having to inform him,” Violet put on arch airs, “in my official capacity, that photo-documenting such lewd intentions for his tongue is discouraged.”
Allie nibbled on her lip in a futile effort to contain her spreading smile. She looked at the clock in the dashboard and calculated how many hours she had left until she was done with work and could return to the apartment to find Marc.