But she sadly shook her head. “I can’t. I’m all wet…”
“I have sweats that are probably just as baggy as those are that you can wear.” I pulled her closer until our lips were almost touching. “Please.”
She sighed. “My food is in the car.”
I let her go and said, “I’ll get it.”
She snorted and dashed back out into the freezing rain to retrieve her food. By the time she was back, she went from soaked just a bit to ‘you need to get out of those clothes before you catch the plague’ soaked.
“Strip,” I urged her as I took the bag from her hands and placed it on the nearest table—the coffee table that had my notes spread out on it.
I heard her wet shoes hit the tiled entryway and headed for the dryer where I’d just turned on, for a fourth time, the clothes that I’d been wearing all week.
Pulling out a t-shirt, sweats, and some socks, I caught up a towel from the folded pile and then headed back for her.
I found her shivering and slightly blue in the entryway.
Grinning, I dropped the clothes on the arm of the couch before I walked up to her and shook out the towel.
She came to me willingly, and I wrapped her up in the soft cloth before wrapping her up again in my arms.
She sighed and leaned in.
“I missed you,” she breathed.
Something inside of me that had been cold since about halfway through my marriage warmed.
“Let’s get you warmed up,” I breathed as I bent down and swooped her up into my arms.
She didn’t even let out a startled squeak.
Instead, she went willingly, laying her chest on my shoulder, and placed all of her trust in me.
It changed everything.
My day was instantly better.
CHAPTER 13
If squats were easy, they would be called your mom.
-Fran to Mavis
FRAN
“How do you think this competition is going to go for you?”
I gritted my teeth.
Maria’s friend that she always worked out with at the gym was there.
She was competing with someone that I hadn’t ever met before, one that wasn’t from our gym, and she was making it a point to make sure that I saw her.
As if she had to take up the mantle where Maria had left off.
Maria, the woman that was never too far from everyone’s thoughts nowadays.
Maria, the perfect.
Maria, the holy.
Maria, the person that was beautiful.
Maria, the one that was way better than me.
Maria. Maria. Maria.
I know that it was bad to think ill of the dead, especially one that had died so terribly.
But I just couldn’t freakin’ stand it anymore.
She was all I heard about.
Everyone in town had so much to say about her, and had so much to relay to me that was about her, that I was literally about to lose my shit.
If one more person came up to me and asked how it felt to date a recently murdered woman’s ex-husband, I would scream.
Did none of the women at the gym, besides Sophia, realize that Maria was a complete and utter bitch to Taos? Did none of them see the torture that the woman had put him through over the last few years?
Did none of them care about that?
I didn’t know.
What I did know was that I would continue to hide the hurtful words from him, and I would do my best to keep it that way.
Like now.
He was smiling and walking up to me after he finished his part of the competition, and I couldn’t do that to him—make him aware of the whispers.
He would be upset.
So I kept the hurtful words and comments that everyone spewed to me quiet, and instead pasted on a smile.
“You did great, Taos.” I grinned.
He threw a sweaty arm around me and pulled me in close.
And, despite the excessive amount of sweat that was clinging to his Madd CrossFit shirt, I laid my head on his chest and sank into the embrace.
I was tired.
So. Freakin’. Tired.
I’d spent a really long time last night thinking about things that I shouldn’t be thinking about—i.e., the murder of women around town by a serial killer—and it’d taken me an irrationally long time to calm my mind down long enough to get some shut-eye.
Therefore, when I’d had to wake up at four o’clock this morning to get ready in time for Taos to pick me up by five for the competition an hour and a half away, I’d had less than two hours of sleep.
Not to mention, I’d already done two workouts.
Two workouts that, despite being what they considered ‘easy’ were actually quite hard.
I had two more workouts to go, and if things kept progressing like they had been, I’d be dead by the end of the day for sure.
“You want to go take a rest in our tent? We have about an hour and a half until we need to start warming up for the next competition,” he offered.
I actually didn’t. But only because it was so damn cold outside.
We were expected to get snow.
Again.
And it was raining and cold outside, despite Taos setting up a tent for us to use, and putting a small space heater in it to keep it warm while we were inside of it.
The sad thing was, it wasn’t cutting it.
And now, with me being wet with drying sweat, it would be even colder.
“I’m cold,” I admitted.
He pulled me in closer, wrapping his arms around me.
“I have more blankets in the car.” He paused. “And we can snuggle to keep warm.” He paused. “I just don’t like being around this many people.”
I reluctantly agreed.
But, when we finally got to the tent, I was surprised to find it a lot warmer than I expected.
Piling inside without opening the tent flaps all the way, I all but fell into the warm heat, happy to find it warm when I expected it to be cold.
“I’ll be right back,” he called out.
I smiled and fell onto the gray roll-out mat that he’d brought along, burying my face into the pillow that he’d insisted I bring today.
I was glad he’d asked me to grab it, because it was about to come in very handy.
I was lying there, my arms wrapped around myself, fallen over on my side with my head on the pillow, when I heard the first whispers.
“Did you see who Taos was working out with?” someone asked.
“Is that her?” someone else, a woman instead of a man this time, whispered.
They must’ve seen Taos taking off, but hadn’t seen me come inside the tent, or they wouldn’t be talking right next to our tent, loud enough for me to hear.
“I think it is.” The man paused. “I recognize her from the paper.”
The paper.
The damn Paris Herald.
I hated that fucking paper.
I hated even more that they’d published my life story, including an old race photo of me, to their front fucking page, without first asking me if I was okay with it.
Even worse, everyone in town knew what almost happened to me.
Everyone but one certain hero police officer that I couldn’t work up the courage to tell the truth.
I would tell him.
I really, really would.
When I worked up the courage.
Until then, I just hoped that he didn’t hear the story from someone else.
“I think that they’re cute together,” I heard said.
“They are.” The woman paused. “The only thing is, how do you think she’s doing with that type of relationship with what happened to her?”
Not wanting Taos to overhear their words, I said, “I’m handling sex just fine, thank you!”
There was a long pause, then a manly, ‘oh, shit,’ before I heard feet carrying the two farther away with a rush of whispers and apologies.
&nb
sp; Snorting quietly to myself, I reached for Taos’ blanket—why didn’t I remember to bring one again?—and practically wrapped myself up like a burrito. It wasn’t the best. I was still cold.
But it was okay enough to allow me to get somewhat comfortable.
I was dead to the world by the time Taos got back.
I woke what felt like five minutes later to hands running up and down the length of my calf.
I blinked an eye open and came face-to-face with a muscled back.
“What time is it?” I wondered.
I sounded drowsy as hell.
I could really use a cup of coffee.
But I would stay away from anything that would make me need to shit.
That would be my luck.
The next workout would be deadlifts, and I’d have to…
Taos’ hand moved higher, and my breath hitched.
“What are you doing?” I rasped.
“Working the lactic acid out of your thighs,” he answered as he massaged me. Higher and higher. Until he might as well be running his fingers along my private parts.
It was erotic as hell, and if I could just get him to go a little bit higher…
“…there’s thrusters in the workout next,” he said.
And as if his words had an instant dampening effect, whatever excitement he’d managed to scrounge up out of my tired body fled with that one word.
Thrusters.
“Ewwww,” I grumbled. “That sounds awful.”
Thrusters were squats with a weight of some sort. When you stood up out of the squat, you would thrust the weight over your head. Which was how the name came to be.
“I’d rather die,” I grunted.
He chuckled and switched to the other leg.
“The sad thing is, you’re really good at them,” he mused as he moved to the top of my leg.
I let out a sad sounding squeak, causing him to laugh.
“Sore?” he wondered.
“As hell,” I groaned.
We’d only done half of the day’s workouts so far.
The first workout had hit me hard.
It was a ten-minute workout that had a fuckton of double-unders, paired with a shit ton of calories on the assault bike.
It’d been a brutal ten minutes, and I never wanted anything more than to sanitize that assault bike by setting it on fire.
Obviously understanding my thoughts, Taos had been the one to wipe down our areas with me glaring at the piece of machinery the entire time.
After the first workouts, I had no desire whatsoever to do anything that had to do with thrusters.
I did anyway, though.
“Let’s get up,” he suggested, standing up with me in his arms, and then letting my feet slowly drop until I was pressed almost fully against him.
Sadly, I still had the blanket wrapped around most of my body, meaning that I could barely feel him where he pressed against me in all the right places.
I did, however, feel how he could kiss seeing as my face was mostly the only thing exposed.
I was expecting a small kiss from him. A chaste one that wouldn’t lead anywhere.
Instead, what I got, was a kiss that had me panting and gasping by the time he pulled away, and an ache in my core that had me questioning my life choices up until now.
“What was that?” I asked between breaths.
His eyes twinkled as he said, “I just wanted to make sure you were well and truly awake.”
Well, I sure the fuck was.
And so was my vagina.
He put me down, and I kept the blanket that I’d managed to stay wrapped in, but reluctantly left all the others where they lay discarded after that kiss, and then slowly shuffled my way out of the tent.
He made sure the zipper on the door opening was closed really well behind us.
I smiled at his methodical preparation, all because he didn’t want me to be cold where we were stuck outside.
“It’s snowing,” I surmised as we walked through the busy parking lot toward the gym again.
“It is,” he agreed as he threw his arm around my shoulder. “It started when I was walking back to the tent. I came in and started talking about it before I realized you were asleep.”
I snickered. “My body isn’t used to doing exercise. It’s taking me a long time to get back into the groove.”
“You’ve been exercising for almost seven weeks now,” he countered.
I had.
We had finished up bootcamp, and I was kind of sad that I would no longer have him as my coach once it was over. So sad that I was going to sign up to continue this torture voluntarily.
I changed the subject to keep the sadness from leeching into my voice.
“I’ve never driven in snow, either,” I told him. “I barely drive in the rain.”
“You barely drive at all anymore,” he countered.
He was right.
When Taos wasn’t at the gym, and we were together, he was the one driving.
I loved it so much.
I had zero interest in driving, which was a fucking riot seeing as that was what I now did for a living.
“I had to drive myself home last night,” I countered.
He grinned and pressed his cold nose to the side of my face. “You did. But you were the one who insisted you sleep at home and not in my bed.”
That was true, too.
I wanted to sleep with him at his place, but I also didn’t want to make myself too… clingy.
I wanted him to continue liking me. I didn’t want to burn him out on me.
I’d practically move in with him if he let me.
But again, he was a very private person. I knew that he needed some time away from me. At least, he got these long, silent periods that equaled to me time spent apart was needed.
Not that he’d ever come right out and said it.
Maybe I was making too big of a deal about it?
I didn’t know. But until he could give me a clearer picture of how things were to be, then I’d be quiet, keep my nose out of his business, and enjoy the time he did give me.
For now.
“What’s the rest of the workout?” I asked, shivering slightly as a tiny snowflake fluttered from the sky and landed on my eyelashes.
Without stopping, Taos reached over and plucked the snowflake off my eye and then smiled at me before saying an even worse word than thrusters: burpees.
Ew.
I supposed that the workout started out okay.
I was trudging along, doing my thrusters at a nice, even pace, and making sure to keep doing them and not stop seeing as the longer I took, the more burpees that Taos had to do.
I didn’t realize just how slow I was moving until I heard the teams beside me switch out with their partners.
I winced when I looked over at Taos to see sweat pouring out of him and onto the mat below him as he did yet another burpee.
I groaned and kept moving, trying to block out just how fast the men were able to knock out the thrusters in comparison to me, who was still going.
Finally, I finished, and then dropped the bar from about head level, causing Taos to drop down onto the mat and turn his head to stare at me.
“I’m sorry,” I cried between pants.
He pushed himself up, and I watched as the muscles of his back started to ripple beneath the surface of his skin.
Yum.
It was good to know that, even tired and feeling bad, I could still find the man absurdly attractive.
Finally, we got ourselves switched, and I watched in awe out of the corner of my eye as Taos did his thrusters—caught the men that were still going—and then surpassed them all while I did the slowest burpees on the planet.
Yet again, we still had to wait until I got to the number that was required, and we switched all over again.
This time with me having a very small lead.
A small lead that turned into a larger one when the weight jumped up.
; See. That was the good thing about my legs.
They were well muscled and toned and could withstand just about anything that I put them through.
Like adding thirty more pounds.
My slow and steady approach wound up being the perfect thing to do, because when I finished, the girls that’d been ahead of me still had over half of their reps to do.
This time, Taos was smiling even wider, still sweating profusely, when we switched.
Just as I thought we were about to pass easily and switch positions, he stopped me with a swift kiss right to the lips.
The crowd around us started to titter.
I didn’t blame them. I was all tittering, too.
At least inside.
On the outside, I was doing burpees and cursing whoever invented them.
And when we switched again, with an even bigger lead, I felt like I was on top of the world.
Until I got to the first thruster and realized that it was hard.
Very hard.
The heavier weight made it to where I was doing them one rep at a time.
My arms were shaking from fatigue, my legs hated me, and I was fairly sure that my lungs were smoldering on the inside.
I was surprised that I wasn’t breathing smoke with how badly they were burning.
Just when I thought I couldn’t do another, Taos’ voice rang out, jolting me into doing the next rep.
And the next.
And the next one after that.
Until finally I was done.
We switched, and this time Taos’ hand slapped down on my ass. “Good job, baby. Keep going. We’re almost done.”
My face flaming, I flopped on the floor and did my first burpee.
I kept doing them until the judge screamed that I was done.
I blinked. Looked around. Then smiled huge.
Because we’d won.
We’d won by a lot.
I flopped over onto my back and felt my head whirl.
It whirled even more when I was hauled to my feet by big-grin-wearing Taos.
“You did it, baby.”
Then he picked me up by the waist and kissed me.
CHAPTER 14
If I pass out, write my time on the board.
-Coffee Cup
TAOS
It was way later that day when we finally made it home from the competition.
“I’d have sex with you,” she whispered. “But I don’t think that I could bend my legs and do anything right now even if I wanted to.”
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