"Oh!" Annabelle leapt up off his lap in surprise as Chase re-opened his hand, dropping the remaining fragments down onto the dirty floor.
The stripper's expression, however, quickly shifted from true surprise to calculated sympathy. "Here, let's get you someplace where I can take care of you, so you don't hurt yourself," she cooed, standing up and pulling his hand. "We can go up to one of the rooms in the back, just you and me."
Chase saw through the transparent invitation, knowing that Annabelle just wanted to milk him of his money, but he didn't care enough to protest. "Whatever," he said, letting her tow him away from the broken bits of glass.
In the Champagne Room, Annabelle didn't waste any time in attacking him, her hands flying right to his pants and tugging them down to his thighs as she pushed him back onto the couch. He landed heavily, and she was on him a second later, her hands now sliding directly over his soft length, stroking him.
Even this lusty attention, however, didn't accomplish much for him physically. Annabelle dropped her mouth down, sucking him off, but when her efforts still didn't provoke any hardening of his long member, she finally raised her head and glared at him. She wasn't hiding her irritation with him any longer, Chase noted with a sardonic note of humor.
"What the hell's wrong with you?" she burst out.
"No more simpering, flirty attitude?" Chase replied, raising an eyebrow. He wished that he had another glass of whiskey, although the last few glasses hadn't done much for him so far.
"Not when you don't respond to it at all," she snapped back. "Jesus, I never thought that a big shot quarterback like you would suffer from whiskey dick!"
"Trust me, it's not the booze," Chase told her.
"Yeah? Then what the hell's wrong with you? You only get off to some sort of kinky shit?" She grinned mirthlessly at him when Chase again raised his eyebrows. "I've read all the shit about you in the tabloids. You don't give a fuck about anything but getting your rocks off, so tell me whatever twisted crap gets you off, and I'll do it. Wanna fuck me in the ass? Get another girl in here? Need someone rimming you while I'm riding you? Just tell me, so I can give you what you want?"
As the stripper ranted, Chase's look of surprise had shifted into one of thinly veiled disgust. "That's not what I want," he said.
"Then what the hell DO you want? What the fuck do you need to make you happy?"
The question made him pause, opening his mouth but not speaking. With a shock, Chase realized that he truly didn't have an answer.
He'd thought that this, being out in a club with plenty of money to burn, hot girls going down on him, and more booze than he could ever drink, was what he wanted. That was why he'd come out here, trying to forget about all of his problems.
But instead, all of this just reminded him of how much more he'd enjoyed the last few weeks, staying in with Katy. Katy understood him, laughed at his jokes, saw him as a deeper person than any picture of him that this stripper might imagine. She didn't see past his muscles and his money, but Katy knew all the stories of him as an awkward teenager, of how he'd been before he hit it big.
Suddenly, amazingly, Chase felt a pang of loneliness pierce through his mind. He didn't want any of this. He wanted to be splayed out on a bed next to Katy, listening to her tell him about some story from her past, laughing as she described a terrible previous date or some especially silly comment from a fan.
"Not this," he announced, standing up and gently pushing Annabelle off of his lap. He bent down and grabbed his pants, pulling them back up around his waist and refastening his belt.
Annabelle stared at him, shocked and unable to speak, so Chase reached into his pocket and pulled out the wad of money he'd been planning on spending to forget his troubles. He peeled off a couple twenties to pay for his cab back to the hotel, and then tossed the rest down at the stripper.
"Have a good night," Chase told her, and then headed out of the strip club. It took him a couple of minutes to recall his hotel's name for the cabbie, but as the vehicle speeded away from the club, he felt his heart lighten. It was tempered by the sobering knowledge of what he now had to do next, but at least he had a plan.
"I know what I want," he murmured to himself in the backseat of the cab.
Chapter twenty-two
The next morning, I woke up to find three new emails:
The first one contained my flight information. Now that we'd played our game out in California, we were all being packed back into another plane and shuttled back across the country to the East Coast, where training for the next game would continue.
The second email made me much more worried. It came from Jed Benson the Third himself, the owner of the Hawks. "When you get back," the email's headline said, "see me IMMEDIATLY." Typo included, nothing else in the body of the email.
As soon as I read that email's title, I started to worry, but then I moved onto the third email, and my breath caught in my throat for a moment.
This third email came directly from Seth Chase. "I'm sorry," the title read.
I clicked on it to open it up.
"Don't worry," I read from the body of the email. "I'm going to keep you out of trouble. I declare it."
I lingered on those last three words. I'd told Chase about my various declarations, of course, although he immediately laughed at how quickly I ended up violating most of them. I tried pressing him to make a declaration of his own, and he declared, "firstly and lastly, I will never make a declaration."
It seemed, now, he'd broken his only vow.
I considered the three emails as I packed up my stuff. I had to squish most of my clothes into one side of my suitcase in order to make room for the game ball, but I couldn't leave it behind. I'd already posted about auctioning it off, created the online auction listing, and bids were streaming in from fans around the country.
My phone starting ringing as I rode the elevator down to the lobby. I quickly scrambled to answer it.
"So? What happened?" Miranda asked eagerly, as soon as I answered.
"Um, hi-"
"No, don't give me that," she demanded. "What did you do? Did you take my advice and confront Chase about the whole deflated football deal? I've been reading more about this, and I think that this could be a really big scandal!"
"Not so loud!" I hissed, distinctly aware that I would very shortly be climbing onto first a bus, and then an airplane, filled with football players who would have a very good reason to want this secret suppressed. "But yes, I did tell him that I knew."
"And? What did he do?"
"He... he exploded," I said shortly, thinking back to the last interaction I'd had with Chase before he stormed off. "I had to ask him flat-out if he was cheating, and he just shouted and stormed out."
"And then what? Did you hear from him again?"
"Nothing-"
"So you haven't seen the papers yet?"
Oh god. "Is he in the papers?" I burst out, no longer caring about the curious looks I attracted from the other men and women in the elevator. "What did he do? Oh god, what sort of damage do I have to fix now?"
"Um..."
That was odd. Miranda never said 'um.' For as long as I'd known her, she always cut straight to the point. It made her sometimes feel a bit cold and calculating, but it also made her a good friend when I needed her.
"Um what?"
"Maybe you ought to see for yourself," Miranda said, and hung up.
The elevator dinged at the lobby level. I hurried out of the metal box and up to the front desk, grabbing a paper off of the stack on the counter. I flipped through the sections, searching for Chase's name.
"Please, not the Entertainment section," I prayed aloud.
But his name wasn't in a headline on the arts and entertainment section. Neither was he in the sports section. What was Miranda talking about?
Finally, I spotted the announcement, down at the bottom of the front section on the Sports page. "Hawks QB Seth Chase announces new information to be released," said the sh
ort little blurb. "More information to follow."
I frowned. What in the world was Chase up to?
I hoped to spot him on the bus or on the plane, but I was out of luck. He'd apparently caught an earlier flight back, DeShaun told me when I cornered the wide receiver and asked where the quarterback had disappeared off to. "Had to talk to the coaches about something, I guess," he added before heading through security.
This just made me feel even more confused. Clearly, Chase was planning to do something big. But what would it be? Was he going to come clean about the cheating, or was this all part of a ploy to get rid of me?
I didn't have any answers. All I had was his email, telling me not to worry. Those words didn't do a good job of bringing about their intended effect on me.
I sat through the airplane ride back, staring at my open laptop screen in front of me and trying to think of anything else to distract me. After spending a good forty minutes trying to write a single tweet, however, I gave up on the effort as useless and shut the computer. Clearly, work wasn't enough to distract me.
Instead, leaning back in my airplane seat and trying to ignore how my knees bumped up against the seat in front of me, I let my thoughts wander. I needed something else, a more interesting and happy train of thought.
Unexpectedly, I found myself thinking of Chase.
I didn't think of my last encounter with him, however, when he'd yelled at me and stormed off, his eyes blazing. Instead, I thought of him earlier, of all the nights we'd spent together over the last couple of weeks, how we'd stayed up late, talking and laughing and sharing all the little details of our lives.
I'd never told some of those details to anyone else, I now realized. Even Miranda didn't know some of the secrets I'd shared with Chase.
And although I couldn't say for certain, I suspected that the feeling went both ways. he'd told me private things about his high school and college days, about how crazy he found the abrupt transition from high school football to being a college star. Would he have shared those with anyone else?
I didn't think so.
But everything he'd told me so far painted a picture of a man who cared about the game, about succeeding, about doing the right thing. Sure, Chase was unrepentant about his skirt-chasing and heavily drinking nature, especially when he went out to party, but he insisted to me, over and over, that none of that bled into his game. "I might be a douchebag off the field," he'd told me at one point, "but on the field, I'm all business, playing to win."
Did that match with my newer picture of him - my mental idea of him as a cheater?
Somehow, the two pictures didn't line up. That made me more worried. One of those two pictures had to be a lie - but which one?
I didn't have any more answers when the plane touched down, back on the East Coast. I collected my bags, stupid toilet seat shaped airplane pillow, and headed out to catch a cab to the Hawks stadium, where Jed Benson the Third had his office.
"Immediatly," he'd said in his email, which meant that I'd be there immediately.
Hawks Stadium was build in three main levels. Down on the first level, the pathways were large, cavernous, and industrial, with exposed pipes running along the ceilings. Down here were the entrances to the team locker rooms, as well as access to the field.
The middle level was where most of the fans hung out, and the interior was lined with stalls and stands. All of those shops were closed, now, but during the games, they supplied food to thousands of hungry spectators, as well as caring for their other needs. Passages led from the second level out into the middle of the stadium, to the stands.
The third level was largely off limits to most of the fans, at least those who didn't pay for the privilege of access. Up on the third level, private staircases led up to the sky boxes, and the floors were thickly carpeted. Unlike down on the main level, where everything had a coat of paint that was, first and foremost, easy to hose off, the third level felt rich and luxurious, with lots of exposed wood grain.
Halfway around the stadium, a set of wide stairs led up from the third level to the largest of the sky boxes - Jed Benson's personal box, and his office.
I climbed those stairs now, looking up at the frosted glass doors above me. Already, I could hear voices coming out from inside that big office, and I could see shadowy and indistinct forms moving about inside the box. Jed must already be there - and he clearly wasn't alone.
I reached the doors and knocked, holding my breath.
"Come in," came a gruff shout from the other side. I opened the door and stepped inside.
I was right - Jed wasn't alone in his office. In fact, the office appeared quite crowded already, even before my entrance.
Jed Benson III sat behind his desk, big and chubby and pompous and imposing. He held an unlit cigar in his mouth, and occasionally chewed furiously at the tip. If I squinted my eyes at him, he looked a bit like that tycoon guy from Monopoly; he just needed a top hat and a monocle to complete the illusion. His reddened face didn't look happy, but I couldn't ever remember seeing him looking truly happy, not even after his team won a game.
Three chairs sat in front of Benson's massive wooden desk. Two of those chairs were currently occupied, although the middle one sat open and empty.
On the left side, I saw short, balding, steaming Terry Muskgrave, the head offensive coordinator of the Hawks. Muskgrave kept his hair buzzed short, and whenever I laid eyes on him, I always felt uncomfortably reminded of a bulldog. He had the same big jowls and angry, slightly short-sighted squinty glare, and the liver spots that were visible through his short-cropped hair just made him appear as though his fur had spots. I'd never seen him wearing anything other than a too-large and rumpled windbreaker with the Hawks colors pulled over an incredibly wrinkled suit, and sure enough, he wore the same thing now. I didn't know how the pudgy man wasn't sweating in his getup.
My eyes moved over to the right chair, and my breath caught for a moment in my throat.
Seth Chase sat in the other chair, his eyes cast down at his lap. His clothes looked messy, as well, but although he didn't look up at me when I entered, I sensed his focus. He had something on his mind, and he wasn't going to let it go.
Benson, Muskgrave, and Chase weren't the only three people in the room. An assortment of other coaches and assistants stood around the edges of the room, either leaning up against bookshelves or tables or just standing and waiting. I didn't recognize any of them in particular, but they all wore expressions ranging from nervousness to boredom.
I stepped forward, and as the door to Benson's office closed behind me, Chase's eyes flicked up to meet mine. He only held eye contact with me for a split second, but I sensed powerful emotions behind his blue eyes.
Everything's going to be okay, he'd said in the email.
Please, I prayed to myself as I stepped forward, let that be true.
Chapter twenty-three
"Ah, Miss Tense," Benson acknowledged me as I let the door to his office close behind me.
"Um, it's Tenner, actually." Oh god, I was starting off the meeting by correcting the owner of the football team. Probably not a good move, but the words were already out of my mouth.
He frowned. "What?"
"Katy Tenner. That's my name. Um, sir." Well, at least I might get the right name printed on my severance checks.
"Right. Now, I don't know what the hell you're doing here, but my star quarterback has been keeping us all waiting for some sort of announcement, and he insisted that you have to be present." Benson slapped a meaty hand on his desk. "Now that you're here, maybe we can finally get this thing going? I've got a tee time that I don't want to miss."
Chase nodded, and he glanced up at me again. His eyes flicked from me over to the chair in the middle of the room, and I obediently took a seat. Chase nodded, a single nod as if he was glad that things were going according to his plan so far, and then turned back to Benson.
"I'm here," he said in a clear voice, "to talk about cheating."
>
From the reaction of everyone else in the room, he might as well have told us that he was planning on amputating his throwing arm.
"Like hell!" Muskgrave roared, as the other coaches and assistants around the periphery of the room murmured and exchanged worried looks with each other. "Chase, what the fuck has gotten into you? This isn't the time or place to-"
Benson brought his hand down on his desk again, the thundering smack cutting through the other noise. "Shut up!" he roared, his bass tones drowning out even Muskgrave. He glared around the room, his eyes burning, demanding silence.
He got his demand. Benson might be rotund and a caricature of a monopoly tycoon, but the man had presence, and he commanded respect when he wanted it.
Only after everyone had closed their mouths, very reluctantly in Muskgrave's case, did Benson shift his eyes back over to Chase. "Young man, you better have a very good story to tell me, ya understand?" he said, taking an angry chomp on his cigar.
"I do, sir," Chase replied. "But it will take some time - and if you want to really understand, I have to start all the way back at the beginning."
Benson looked steadily at the quarterback for another minute. "Gimme a second," he said, reaching for the phone on his desk. He picked it up and began punching in a number with his thick fingers before waiting for an answer.
Amazingly, everyone in the office remained quiet, watching and listening as Benson dialed the number, held the phone up to his ear, and waited. "Yeah, Beth, dear?" he said, once the person at the other end picked up. "This is Jed Benson. You're gonna need to go ahead and cancel my golf time for today. I think I've got another issue on my plate. Yep. Yep. Yeah, that sounds good."
After another moment, Benson dropped the phone back down into its cradle. He returned his full attention back to Chase, interlacing his thick fingers on the desk in front of him. "Go," he commanded.
SACK: A Football Bad Boy Romance Page 13