What He Bargains (What He Wants, Book Nineteen) (83 page)

His first play of the second half, the defense rushed again and chased him out of the pocket, but he scrambled out of bounds having gained three yards. Faith began clapping, shouting her approval at the TV.

“You’ve really lost it,” Krissi said, shaking her head sadly.

Faith didn’t care, she was so proud of Chase for continuing to fight even after having such a bad start to the game.

The next play, Chase faked the pass and handed off to a running back, who gained minimal yardage.

“Okay,” Faith said, putting her hands out as if to calm an imaginary crowd down. “Okay, it’s third down and we only need six yards. Six, any short pass will do it.”

“I’m rooting for Green Bay to stop him,” her sister announced.

Faith ignored her. She had tunnel vision now, watching the TV, willing chase to do this—to turn things around.

The ball was snapped into his hands, and Chase faked a handoff to the running back, and then cocked his arm to throw.

“There’s an open man!” Faith yelled, pointing.

But Chase hesitated, and then the rush was on, and he was forced to move, as one of the defensive players began chasing him furiously. Chase faked left, then right, causing the main defender to dive and miss him.

“Shit!” Krissi said, pounding her fist on the arm of the couch.

Another defender was in hot pursuit though, and Chase was running again, and getting perilously close to going out of bounds and losing precious yardage.

But at the last second, Chase cocked his arm and threw downfield, a pass that was shocking in its power and distance, given the fact that Chase was on a full run towards the sidelines when he made the pass.

“Come on!” Faith shouted, jumping to her feet, arms outstretched.

The receiver was wide open on the Green Bay thirty-yard-line by the time the football reached his outstretched arms. It was a perfect pass, a thing of beauty, a spiral that landed in the New England receiver’s outstretched hands as if it had been magnetized to him.

“Wow!” Krissi yelled. In all of the excitement, she’d forgotten her pledge to root against Chase Winters.

And then, just as the New England receiver started to pull the ball in to run for the easy touchdown, the unthinkable happened.

One moment he had the little brown football in his hands, and the next, it had popped out, and he bobbled the thing for an unspeakably long, drawn out moment of horror.

The ball dropped to the ground and the referee waved the pass off as incomplete.

The announcers were beside themselves, their voices raised as they said how bad the drop had been, how deflating for New England. The camera cut back to Chase, standing there with his head bowed, and Faith couldn’t believe it.

New England was forced to kick off, so instead of having scored a touchdown to bring the team within three points of Green Bay, they’d had to punt from inside their own territory with no points scored.

It was a horrible comedown, and it was also the beginning of The Nationals unraveling.

From that point on, Green Bay took over, scoring on their next drive, and then stopping Chase and his offense within the next set of downs, forcing them to punt yet again.

By the time the fourth quarter started, Green Bay was up by a score of 20-0 and Chase’s offensive line was consistently letting the Green Bay defensive rush in, which forced Chase to make more bad passes and scramble so as not to get sacked.

He made one last, long drive downfield in the closing minutes of the game, when it was clear the Nationals no longer had a chance of winning. Now, they were just trying to salvage a little bit of dignity in the loss, having been shut down and shut out thus far.

By now, Faith’s sister was fully rooting for Chase and the team. Both she and Faith were yelling, cajoling, pleading with the gods of football to let him get this touchdown.

After a long and persistent drive downfield, during which Chase was sacked once, harassed by multiple defenders chasing him almost every time he attempted a pass—he’d finally brought New England within fifteen yards of the goal line.

The clock was winding down now, and Green Bay had won, but it was obvious they hadn’t let up. Chase Winters had made the other team angry. They wanted to hurt him, they wanted to beat him into the dirt and expose him as being all hype.

There had been articles and news stories about the resentment around the league that was felt towards Chase. Resentment that he’d gotten a windfall of a deal—not to mention endorsements and publicity—before playing a single professional game. Resentment that all anyone in the media talked about was Chase Winters. There was anger and resentment that he’d gotten an easy ride to the top.

The Green Bay players all had a chip on their shoulders and it showed in the way they talked smack to him after hitting him or making him miss a pass.

It showed and it made Faith want him all the more, want him to succeed, want him to prove that he was the real deal that she knew he was.

Fifteen yards from the goal line, Chase took the ball, dropped back, and prepared to throw a pass to the open receiver waiting to catch it. The receiver had gotten completely free of the defense and was inside the end zone, ready for the pass.

And Chase saw him—he was cocking his arm back again to throw.

At that moment, a defender that had broken into the backfield hit Chase from the blind side and Chase fumbled the ball as he went face first into the turf.

He lay unmoving on the field as the opposing team picked up the fumbled ball. One of the defensive players ran all the way back and scored a touchdown, making the final score 27-0.

But Faith was only concerned about what thing. Chase was hurt.

He didn’t move for what felt like forever.

“I think he might have gotten paralyzed,” Krissi said somberly.

“Krissi, shut up.”

“Did you see how hard he got hit, Faith?”

“Yes, I saw,” Faith said, tears coming to her eyes.

But Chase did start moving, and eventually he got up, looking worn and beaten, limping off the field to a chorus of boos and chants raining down on him.

The announcers weren’t flattering either.

“This was a game that really illustrated the difference between a seasoned NFL quarterback and someone coming in from college…”

“A very good player,” the co-host interjected.

“Yes, a good player, but one who clearly lacked composure and the ability to read what the defense was showing him. They cleaned his clock and it wasn’t pretty.”

“No,” the other announcer agreed. “It wasn’t pretty and you can bet what we saw today has all the other teams around the league salivating and wanting to get their paws on Chase Winters.”

“He’s a marked man.”

F
aith hadn’t been
able to stop thinking about Chase, or the way he’d been hurt at the end of the game.

She’d just barely restrained herself from texting to ask if he was okay, and all night long, into the morning, she’d listened to every bit of sports radio and watched football highlights to get any news or discussion of Chase Winters.

Even at work, while scanning, she’d plugged in her ear buds and listened to streaming satellite from her cell phone.

Greg hated it when workers listened to music, and normally Faith tried to please her thoroughly un-pleasable boss, but this time she just had to listen to the radio at work.

The absolute destruction of Chase and the vaunted New England offense was basically all anybody wanted to talk about in the sports media world. Chase hadn’t been able to go to the post-game presser because he’d been getting checked out for a concussion at the hospital.

But Coach Ryan “Buck” Dennings had talked at great length about how he wasn’t at all discouraged by the team’s performance as a whole. He’d called the game a “learning experience” for everyone, and claimed that nobody was taking the loss so hard as to believe it said anything about Chase’s future.

Still, Faith thought that at times, Chase’s coach had voiced notes of displeasure about his quarterback’s performance.

“He needs to learn that composure, that ability to be the eye at the center of the hurricane,” Buck had said at one point in the press conference.

Faith hated him a little for saying that, because it wasn’t Chase’s fault his offensive line had been caving in play after play, down after down, giving him no time to complete a pass.

The media was so quick to blame Chase for the result, when she thought it was obvious that his team simply was overmatched by Green Bay.

She took a long lunch at Panera and listened to even more talk radio, before finally returning to work at well past one o’clock, determined to buckle down and scan more efficiently for the rest of the day.

Faith took out her ear buds and got to work, noticing that Greg kept passing by the cubicle and giving her the evil eye every fifteen or twenty minutes. She tried to ignore him, but it was hard because she knew he was just waiting for an excuse to lay into her about something. It didn’t matter what she did, he would always find a way to criticize her for it.

At around three o’clock, she was finally sinking into the rhythm of scanning, her mind on the task at hand, mercifully not worrying about Chase or Greg or Krissi or her parents.

And that was when her phone started to buzz, a series of buzzes, which meant someone was calling her.

She reached into her purse and pulled out her cell phone. Faith’s eyes widened with shock.

It was Chase Winters, calling her. Not texting—calling.

She wasn’t supposed to answer the phone in the office, and she wasn’t really allowed to even talk unless on break, so Faith got out of her seat and grabbed her purse, walking down the aisles of cubicles.

Answering the phone before Chase hung up or went to voicemail, she muttered a strained hello.

“Faith, is that you?” Chase asked, his voice deep and sexy hot, sending a shuddering vibration through her entire body.

“Hold on,” she whispered, hurrying down the aisles and finally scooting out the door and into the main common area of the building.

“I’m waiting,” Chase replied.

“I can talk now,” Faith told him, breathing a sigh of relief. The common area of her building was shared by a few different businesses, so she wasn’t likely to get in trouble for being on the phone.

“Come outside,” he said.

“Wait--outside where?”

“I’m waiting for you outside your work.”

She stopped dead still. “How could you know where I work? I never told you that.”

There was a long silence. “I needed to see you, so I looked you up and found your LinkedIn profile.”

Chase Winters was online stalking her. She shook her head in complete disbelief at this new turn of events. Her heart was pounding with excitement, and she found herself wanting to shout for joy.

He came all the way here just to find me. He’s been thinking about me, too
.

But her naturally cautious nature reasserted itself. “You haven’t tried to talk to me in a week,” she said.

“Just come outside and I’ll explain everything.”

Faith knew she wasn’t going to refuse to see him. Although she wished she would’ve known he might show up—she’d have dressed nicer and made sure her hair and makeup were perfect.

Still, she walked toward the front door. “Okay, I’m coming out,” she said.

“Cool.” He hung up.

Faith approached the door, oblivious to the other people coming and going. There was a gym in their building, too, so there were people in suits and ties, and also people in workout clothes loitering about.

She opened the door and walked outside, her eyes scanning the parking lot. That’s when she saw him, standing towards the back of the lot wearing faded jeans and a red sweatshirt, the hood over his head to make it harder to notice him.

He stood out anyway, because of his height and build, but with the hood over his head it would have been nearly impossible to know who he was.

She took a deep breath, her legs shaking a little beneath her. In the stillness of that moment, seeing him there in the lot waiting for her, Faith understood that she was falling for him in a major way.

It was a heart-stopping realization, and there was the strongest sensation of sinking, of being lost in a limitless ocean.

And then she started walking towards him, knowing she could never in a million years resist anything Chase Winters asked of her.

A few feet away, she stopped again, this time shocked by seeing what had happened to Chase’s perfect face. His bottom lip was split, the cut healing, scabbed over but still painful in appearance. And he had bruises under both of his eyes that were deep, black and blue and shades of yellow.

“Oh my God,” Faith said, putting a hand up to her chest. “You’re hurt.”

Chase smiled bitterly. “I wish it was worse,” he said. “They told me I might have gotten a mild concussion, but if it had been a serious head injury than my memory of the game would be erased.”

“Don’t even joke about that,” she said.

“The tradeoff would be worth it, if you ask me.” He wasn’t even smiling as he said this.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she said, hanging back.

Now it was his turn to approach her, and as he came closer, her entire body tingled with anticipation. “I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,” he said.

“I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true, though.” His dark eyes bored into hers.

“Why haven’t you texted or called me, then?”

He laughed. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been kind of busy lately, Faith.”

She looked down, embarrassed at seeming needy. “I just wish you didn’t kick me out of your house the other day.”

He reached out and grabbed her hand in his, encircling her entire hand easily, but gently. “I’m fucked up,” he said. “You get that?”

She continued to stare at the cement. “Everyone has problems.”

“Not like mine,” he said. “Look at me, Faith.”

She looked up, and their eye connected.

I love you, Chase
.

She thought the words but knew she could never, in a million years, say them.