Qualified: A Sports Romance (18 page)

Allie wasn’t thinking what it might
mean for her employment, to leave him there. It didn’t make much sense, but she
wasn’t thinking clearly. Like she told Violet, she was
never
thinking
clearly when he was around. All she knew for sure was that she didn’t want Marc
to witness her falling apart.

And yet, through her tears and her clumsy stumble
down the steps, it was inevitable that he caught up with her. Maybe it took him
a minute to decide to follow, because his longer stride didn’t overtake hers
until Allie had made it to one of the winding paths that led back towards the
garage. His hand slid along her arm, but it was more a check of his own speed
rather than a genuine attempt to stop her. He swiveled his steps, walking
half-backward in order to peer at Allie’s face with his frown still in place.

“What’s wrong with you?”
That
was the first
thing Marc asked, and the aggressive demand did nothing to stop her flight.

Allie shook her head and kept plowing on towards
the garage and the car and escape. Maybe she couldn’t stop crying, but at least
she could try to be quiet about it. She choked on her sobs and hid the horrible
wet smear of her face in the cup of her palms.

“What happened?” Marc sounded less annoyed. A hint
of what seemed like actual concern leaked into his voice. “Allie.” He pivoted,
looking forward then behind and eventually falling into matched step with her.
“Did … did you get a phone call?”

“What? No. No, it’s—it’s nothing,” Allie managed to
blurt out between the uncontrollable jumps of her diaphragm. “I’m so stupid,”
followed in a moan. She swiped her wrist angrily beneath her eyes.

“Allie … Allie.
Hold on
.” They walked
from sun into shade and Marc swiveled to block her path. He had his hands up,
like he was showing a referee that he wasn’t committing a foul, but there was
still no way to get around him.

She pulled up short so they wouldn’t collide …
and then collapsed against him anyway. In that moment, she couldn’t care that
Marc was trouble or that he was angry with her. He was solid and he was there
and she so desperately needed something to grab onto for support. For a second
it seemed like he might pull away, but then his palms cupped over her shoulders
and he let her cry into his chest.

When she finally rocked back to the balance of her
own feet, Marc did so as well. He adjusted the waist of his jeans and looked
around, like he was worried about getting blamed for her state.

Allie did blame him. Would she even be there, if it
weren’t for him? Marc was the one who had volunteered for the extended study.
Without that, she doubted that she would have been offered the position in
California with the team. If she had stayed in Colorado, she could have been
working more closely with Doctor Kaitech and his graduate student at the
training center. Maybe then she could have been included in work that would
have won her authorship.

On the other hand, Allie couldn’t hold him
responsible. No one had threatened her or forced her to accept the relocation.
She had followed him in the stupid hope that … what?

A small voice whispered in her heart but she
couldn’t even admit it to herself.

She had to stay focused on her education, she just
had to. As her hopelessness turned to self-reproach, at least Allie could get a
little better control of her breathing. She wiped her fingers at the mess of
her face. Her nose was runny and she sniffed against the stuffy congestion of
her sinuses. Balancing the strap of her bag on her shoulder, Allie rummaged for
the little pack of tissues she always had. The law of such things meant it was
in the last pocket she checked.

She could see Marc’s toes at the edge of her
downcast gaze. He hadn’t budged from his position a few inches in front of her.
“You want to tell me what this is all about?” He sounded wary.

“Not really.” Allie sniffed and kept her face
tucked down. She found the tissues and tugged too many out from the little
plastic sleeve. Her fingers were thick and slow to separate out one so she
could dab at her eyes and blow her nose. Once the first was used and wadded up
into her palm she started to unfold the next one. Her nose was still running.

She sniffed again. “It’s about the manuscript.”
Daring to flick her eyes upward, Allie found Marc watching her skeptically. His
knuckles popped faintly at his sides.

“They said I—I can’t be an author.” Allie struggled
to keep ahold of her wavering voice.

“This is the thing you’ve been working on this
whole time?”

Allie shrugged up one shoulder and dropped her gaze
again. “I thought I would be an actual contributor.” She fussed with refolding
her tissue to find a dry spot. “But I guess I’m just a brainless pair of hands.
They don’t even have to acknowledge me. I mean, I should be grateful.” Sobs
started to choke out again between her words. “I don’t know why I ever thought
anyone would want me as part of their research program.” It didn’t matter if
the tissue was already damp, it was a lot drier than her eyes.

“Fucking hell.” Marc’s feet scraped against the
pavement as he shifted his weight. “Is that what the guy you went to see said,
up in his fucking office? You want me to go up there and smash his face in?”

The offer startled Allie enough that she forgot to
worry about her blotchy face and glanced up to meet those steady, dark eyes.
“No,” she said, breathless. “Marc.” She looked at him and didn’t want him to be
the man who threw Blake against the wall. “No,” her expression crumbled
further. “That won’t … that won’t fix anything.”

The muscle along Marc’s jaw ticked. He didn’t look
away from her. “You want me to say they can’t use my data?”

Allie’s mouth dropped open. “You’d do that?”
For
me?
She couldn’t quite make the words form on her tongue.

“You’re not
just
anything, Allie, and if
that asshole …” He emphasized the pointing of his arm, glowering off at
the building a moment before drawing back his hands to comb through his hair. 
“He’s just an ivory tower asshole, Allie. Fuck him.”

Allie stared at Marc a shocked moment, unsure of
what she was seeing. She didn’t know. She didn’t know anything. For all of her
adult life, all that she had wanted …

Her mouth wavered with another relentless welling
of tears. “But I want to be an ivory tower asshole.”

Marc looked at her and held his breath a moment,
and then he sighed it out into an anemic laugh. “Allie …”

It was ridiculous, but Allie couldn’t bear to find
it funny. Not yet, not when it sounded like he was laughing at her. She shook
her head like she could so easily fling everything troubling away. “I can’t. I
can’t, Marc. I … I have to get out of here.” She pushed past him to
continue her retreat to the car, nothing as important as escaping. How could
she expect him to understand? How could she hope for him to believe in her?

Marc didn’t try to stop her again on her route to
the garage, but Allie could feel his presence shadowing her. Each step she took
was echoed with his one-below tread as she fled up the metal stairs to the
parking level where she had left the car. He made his move when she was
fumbling Everett’s keys out of her purse. His deft reach over her shoulder
snatched them from her fingers before she realized what he was doing.

Allie’s breath caught in her throat and she spun
quick, laying her back against the car. Her wide eyes turned up to Marc, unsure
what was happening.

“I’m not letting you drive like this.”

“… What?” Allie’s voice was still cracked from all
her crying. She dragged her tissue across her nose.

“I’m not letting you drive,” Marc repeated
patiently. “You can get in the passenger seat.” He gestured over the hood of
the car but his eyes didn’t leave hers.

She pinched the tissue at her nose and slanted an
unsure gaze up at Marc. “But … but, you don’t have a driver’s license.”

Marc’s mouth thinned. “You can stay here, or you
can call a taxi, but I’m not letting you drive.”

The tears threatened to break loose again. “I just
want to go home.” Allie hugged her bag to her chest. “I don’t know what I’m
doing here. I just … I just want to go. Please.”

“Get in the car.” Marc tucked a hand beneath her
elbow to help guide her around to the passenger side.

“Marc, you can’t drive.” Allie could speak with
panicked quick, but she didn’t have enough fight to try and steal back the keys
as he reached to open the car.

“Wanna bet?” Marc stood with his hand holding the
door, unflinching.

“Marc, you’re already in trouble because of what I
told them. What if you get pulled over?”

“What if I don’t.”

Allie held her uncertainty in her chest, her
tear-hot eyes searching over him. “I don’t know if I can get in a car that
you’re driving.”

Tension worked briefly along the line of his jaw.
“Because of the license, or because of me?”

“Yes.” Allie’s voice cracked miserably. Her hands
fisted tighter around her wadded tissue. She wanted to trust him, but all the
stories she’d heard gave her reason to doubt. She treasured all those moments
when she’d had him to herself, her heart never feeling more alive than when his
pulse sang beside hers, but Marc was the one who had told her not to count on
him sticking around.

“I don’t know who you are.” It was like he was
always on defense, never letting her get through, so how could Allie know? “I
don’t know where you’ll go.”

Marc considered her a long moment. Then he gave a
nodding tip of his chin. “If you want to find out, get in.” With that he left
the passenger door open and circled back to the driver’s side. He slid into the
seat and put the keys in the ignition. The radio came on, playing out the end
of the last song from their drive while he worked the latches and switch for
putting the top down.

Allie stood indecisively beside the open door,
sniffling.

Marc jumped her playlist back to the track they’d
danced to in the club. He slung his right arm onto the shoulder of the
passenger seat and swiveled his gaze up to her. “That door’s gotta close. Are
you in or are you out, Allie?”

Once her sunglasses were on at least
the red of Allie’s eyes wasn’t so obvious. She relaxed into her seat and curled
with her left shoulder dug into the leather. That way she could watch Marc’s
profile as her songlist played and the world rolled by. They headed west past
road signs familiar from music and movies until the freeway faltered before a
line of palm trees. There the breeze rushed cooler, direct off the water.

By the time they turned onto surface streets she
was brave enough to let her fingers trace the shape of his knuckles while he
gripped the shift lever in their wait at a stoplight. Marc looked down at the
sight of her skin on his and then up to her eyes. They wore matching mirrors
and she had trouble telling if he were smiling.

“Where are we going?” Allie wondered.

“I know a spot up in the hills.” Marc had time for
a longer glance at her while he was turning onto the coast highway. “Still
worried?”

Allie shook her head
no
. She had even
forgotten to worry that Marc shouldn’t be driving. She was back in the dream
and it was more gorgeous than ever. The deep blue of the ocean was sparkling to
silver as the sun sank lower. The scent of sand and salt was thick on the air.
Palm fronds rustled above them as they passed through intersections that
stretched farther and farther apart.

The hillsides grew less populated and Marc turned
right onto a road which wound up into the cliff-rise bluffs above the
shoreline. Allie watched the twist and flex of his forearm as he neatly down-shifted
to power through the curves. There was something so mesmerizing about the
absolute physicality of him that pulled her from her abstract worries to the
sensation-full present.

They climbed steadily away from the pressing
insanity of Los Angeles. Marc slowed the car so that its wheels could crunch to
full traction as he took them down an unpaved road. There were horses in the
distance, so it could have been a ranch, or perhaps just a fire road serving
the maze of canyons that cracked the dry California coast. A low glow was set
in her belly and she had flutters in her throat.

Silence fell when Marc turned off the car. They sat
for long minutes while the dust cloud settled behind the wheels. Faintly, in
the distance, Allie could hear the rhythmic voice of the ocean.

Marc left the car first, flicking his door closed
behind him and walking out to the road’s edge. The soles of his shoes grit with
every step. She remained in her seat a moment, appreciating how the cotton of
his t-shirt strained as he stretched out the broad muscles of his shoulders.
She felt like she was walking on clouds, not gravel, when she got out and went
around to perch on the side where she could sit facing Marc and the waves far
below.

He wandered back to join her there. When he turned
to lean against the fender their hips brushed close. His eyes were on the view.
“I used to come out here, while I was in school. A lot of the guys liked to
surf.”

His hand reached to cap at her knee. His eyes
dropped to watch his fingers slide along the pale of her thigh until the edge
of her skirt started to fold back from his wrist. “I liked the drive. Getting
away. Getting perspective.”

Allie’s heart was battering in her chest. She
couldn’t look away from him. She couldn’t move. Not to shy away, and not to
reach out. “It’s beautiful.” She wasn’t even looking at the scenery.

“My dad was really into cars. He’d take me
sometimes, on the weekend. This same highway.” Marc nodded towards the strand
of road far below. “But up north.”

“My dad used to take me driving, too.” It seemed
the wrong memory to have while Marc’s palm was cupped so high at her thigh.
Fine hairs were standing all along her backward-braced arms, she was so attuned
to his proximity. “It was for his job, though. He had to check on the cows.”

Her smile didn’t stick. Allie was too intent on
searching what she could see of his expression. “I’ve never heard you talk
about your family.”

“I don’t have a family.” There wasn’t much to see.
His features seemed impassive and Marc continued his downcast focus. The graze
of his thumb painted invisible diagrams between her freckles. “They’re dead.”

Allie blinked, her surprise turning into sorrow.
“I’m sorry.”

Marc shook his head. “It was a long time ago. I was
a kid.”

He appeared calm, but she had trouble believing it.
Balancing her weight onto the prop of her far palm, Allie reached her timid
fingers to stroke the slightly caved line of his shoulders. “What happened?”

“Car crash.” Marc sounded matter-of-fact, but he
still wouldn’t look at her. “They were driving my little sister to this weekend
tournament thing. Basketball. She was just in middle school, but she was good.
Tall.” The curve of his mouth didn’t quite make it into a smile. “Anyway. The
fog …” His forehead tightened into a frown. With his tension came a
clipping of his words. “They call it tule fog. And the roads are fucked. It’s
one of those things. It happens.”

Allie’s mouth was dry and her throat was thick. The
motion of licking dampness to her lips seemed too much. “What was her name?”

She wasn’t ready for how he looked at her. She’d
never been ready. Those intensely dark eyes had lived with so much hurt that
his soul’s window was nothing but scar.

“Andrea. Drea.”

“Drea,” Allie repeated carefully.

Marc took a long breath. “Yeah.” His touch reanimated,
sweeping into a broader stroke down to her knee and back again. A shake of his
head turned his gaze out to the sea. “I had to live with my mom’s sister after
that, but she doesn’t count. I didn’t grow up around her.

“My mom had practically been disowned by her
family. They hated that she married my dad.” That was a memory Marc felt. She
could see the muscles bunch in his jaw when he bit down on his anger. “I think
every time they looked at me, it proved them right. That he was no good.”

Her hand had long since stopped moving, her palm
dwarfed by the powerful shoulder it rested against. Allie didn’t know how she
could possibly say anything that would make a difference. “That’s not what I
see.”

There was a weak chuckle in his exhale. Marc
glanced at her sidelong. “Do you think that I’m good?” Skepticism touched a
faint curl to his lips.

Allie slowly folded her hands into her lap, just
above where his hand still rested on her thigh. There was a tremble in her
aching chest. She must seem naive to him, but she couldn’t bear to have him
laugh at her. “I think … that you’ve helped me. When you didn’t have to.”
A close of her fist flexed her tendons beneath soft skin and she remembered how
the cruel dig of nails felt before he had stopped Natalie. She couldn’t hold
his gaze anymore so she looked down to the fold of her fingers.

“And you’ve shown me beautiful things.” Allie
should probably be looking at the view. It was gorgeous, but she wasn’t really
referring to the things she could see with her eyes. It was the way she felt
around him that was entirely new. “Things I wouldn’t have known about,
otherwise.”

“I’ve shown you,” Marc scoffed in disbelief. “I’m
not
good, Allie.” The sound of his certainty was almost as bad as if he had laughed
at her.

The knit of her frown matched the knot in her
throat when Allie looked back up at him.

Marc wasn’t done with his argument. “You are.” He
had turned so that he was looking right at her. Right into her, it felt like,
and Allie wasn’t sure how she was supposed to be good when her thigh opened
beneath the harder grip of his hand. “You’ve never needed my help. You’re
smart. You care about important things. And you do them.”

“Marc.” Allie wasn’t sure she actually said his
name. She might have forgotten how to breathe. That’s what it was, that look of
his she’d sometimes catch. That he was impressed with her.

“I know you’re not going to let some asshole get in
the way of you being great. Whether he’s a professor or not.”

Marc believed in her. Marc was trying to tell her it’d
be okay.

A hungry little sound welled up from Allie’s belly.
She stretched towards him and her hands lifted from her lap. Her fingers hooked
at his nape to pull him close so that she could taste the sweetness from his
mouth. “This is what I see,” she told him once she pulled back to gasp her
lungs full again. The stroke of her fingers along his jaw wished to take his
unhappy tension away forever.

From the pressed closeness of their foreheads, her
whole world was in his eyes. “You.” She felt Marc’s smile when she kissed him.
“And I want you.” Her words murmured against his stubble-shadowed skin. “You’re
who I want. I’ve known … I’ve known.”

Marc had been receptive, listening attentively to
her words and matching the gentle wonderment of her amateur kisses. The extent
of his restraint was clear when her unprompted declaration broke it. She bent
into the rough claim of his fist tangling into her hair. He bit at her lips and
she hissed from the delicious sting as they flushed with heightened
sensitivity.

The car shifted when Marc stood to turn and face
her. The fabric of his jeans was cool against the heat of her thighs as he
wedged his legs between hers. His hands slid up beneath her skirt while he
kissed her. He took her hips into a hard grip and dragged her seat to the very
edge of the fender. Allie gasped into his mouth. The startled open of her eyes
found his.

“Don’t you know where I’m going?” The grazing whorl
of his fingertips against the heat of her skin was a kind of teasing she could
get used to.

Allie licked at the plumped tingling of her lips
but couldn’t find her voice. She was too riveted by him to figure out how to
vocalize her barely-dared expectation.

Her eyes closed when his mouth sucked over the
pulse-threaded hollow of her throat. “Down.” His breath tickled across the damp
of her skin. “On you.”