Chapter 2
Katie
The amazing Drew was like pretty much all of Mandie’s friends: gorgeous. This massive, dark-haired guy with a full sleeve tattoo turned around when we approached the front desk and then grinned, sweeping my sister up into a hug.
“Hey, girl. So what’re we working on today? Wanna shoot a tandem video? My man said my lats were looking pretty amazing this morning.” He turned around and flexed, muscles all across his back popping. “The response to the last video was incredible. We had a ton of new signups.”
“And I’m bringing in a new one today!”
This is the moment I hated. My friends and colleagues could meet Mandie and be like ‘hey, how are you,’ but her friends? They always looked me up and down, wondering how the hell I was biologically related to my sister. To my relief, Drew just shot me a huge grin.
“This is Katie? The Katie I keep hearing about?”
“Um…” I started to say, wanting to take a step backwards.
“My sister wants to start lifting as well,” Mandie told him.
“So what’re your goals?” he asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. “Muscle definition, lift heavy?”
The temptation was there to be overwhelmed, but I forced myself to stand tall and answer the man.
“I have no idea what most of them mean, but…” I saw the dogs I visited several times a week at the shelter, one in particular. Bronson was a pit bull crossed with something, and while he looked like a scarred war veteran, he was really this soft little cuddle bug. That’s why he’d been used as bait dog in the illegal dog fighting ring he was rescued from. He was my motivator, so I thought of his funny face when I finally finished the sentence. “I want to be able to take the dogs for a run without feeling like I’m having a heart attack.”
“Leg strength, then,” he said with a nod, and then reached out and steered me into the gym. “You know that Mandie can help you with that, but let me give you a quick tour. You’ve come here before?”
“Casually,” I said, feeling my cheeks start to burn. “Just to use the treadmills.” I looked down. “Not very often though.”
“I’ll leave you in Drew’s capable hands!” Mandie called up as we walked further into the gym. “I’ve just got a quick video to shoot while you get the grand tour.”
That just left me and a strange man in a space that seemed to be a sea of black rubber matting and gleaming chrome. Just my kind of place. I shook my head and let Drew draw me along.
“So was Mandie always that full on as a kid or does she just drink way too many energy drinks?” Drew asked me.
I stopped, surprising myself with a loud laugh.
“Oh no, she’s always been like that. Mum took her in to be assessed for ADHD as a child, but the doctors said no. Mum’s still sure Ritalin could help.” I glanced over to where she had set up her phone to shoot. “Mandie’s always been…” I shrugged. “Mandie. Like she expects the world to be her oyster, and it always is.”
“Soo…” He shot me a sidelong look. “I could be overstepping here, but have you thought about a personal trainer? I mean, your sister knows what she’s doing, but you guys, you seem to have very different energy.”
I was doing so well. I’d walked in here like I had a right to be in a place like this and made small talk with a complete stranger, and yet here we were again. People comparing me to Mandie and finding me lacking. I let out a long breath, ready to reply, when he continued.
“That isn’t a negative comparison.” His brown eyes seemed to see right down into my soul. “If the world was full of Mandies…” He glanced over at Mandie and snorted. “The world would be a whole lot noisier, at the very least. My partner is a bit like her. He’s always super chipper about everything,” he groaned. “Like first thing in the morning, he jumps out of bed.”
“Oh god,” I snorted. “And wants to talk before you’ve had your first coffee?”
“Greg doesn’t even drink coffee,” Drew told me as a conspiratorial aside.
“No coffee!” I yelped. “OK, I don’t even know this guy, but you know you’ve gotta break up with him. That shit is intolerable.”
“Eh, he makes up for it in other ways.” Drew winked at me. “Forces me to lighten up, y’know. Sometimes high energy people can help boost your battery when you’re feeling flat, but sometimes they can just exhaust you.”
“Right.” I looked around the gym, considering the idea of working out here with someone I didn’t even know. It’d taken everything I had to walk in here with Mandie acting as a buffer. “Well, I’ll definitely think about it, but…”
As I scanned the gym, I saw there weren’t a heap of people here. Mandie deliberately came in the downtimes so as to not annoy other people working out while she shot her videos. She knew it’d make me more comfortable. So it was gym equipment, dumbbells, treadmills and…
Him.
Shaggy light-brown hair was blown out of his eyes as he pushed what seemed like an insane amount of weights up with his legs. I had no idea what the machine was, but I caught the quiver in those thick, muscular thighs, saw his face flush red. Every muscle strained, which was no doubt hard work for him and a delicious sight for me, because damn… There was just something about a guy who was bigger, stronger, than you were. As if he could hear my thoughts, he finished his rep and then looked back over his shoulder.
Oh shit.
I felt like some kind of weird perv as his eyes met mine. They were a strange grey colour. I noticed that because as adrenalin tore through my body, it made every detail crystal clear. His shirt with the sleeves ripped out, the way those big hands gripped the machine, the vein travelling down one bicep. I couldn’t seem to stop staring. He gave me a little nod, as if in recognition of my sin, and then a sly smile spread across his face. That was finally enough for me to wrench my eyes away. God, I was like one of those idiots Mandie talked about annoying them in the gym. Eye-fucking, that’s what she had called it. Actually, make that eye rape. He hadn’t consented to me checking him out and that was enough to get me focussing back on Drew.
“I think I need to work out what I can and can’t do first,” I told him hastily.
That knowing smile made clear that Drew had seen everything. Great, that had me flushing bright red, my cheeks burning hotter as his grin spread. One thing I’d learned, though, is if you didn’t acknowledge you were embarrassed, only arseholes pushed the point, and I was about to test him.
“So maybe we should continue the tour so I can make a decision about membership?” I said briskly.
“Right this way,” he said.
Ten minutes later, I knew they had a wide range of machines here. What were they used for? That was still to be determined. It seemed like a well-stocked gym though, with many different instruments of torture–I mean, exercise equipment.
“Women’s change rooms are through there.” He pointed to the door. “Obviously I’m not going to take you in there, but we have the cleaners go through and tidy it up hourly.”
“Good to know.”
“So I think that’s about everything,” he said. “Were there any questions you wanted to ask?”
“How to make sure Mandie doesn’t freaking kill me in my first gym session?” I shot him a rueful expression. “You know how enthusiastic she gets. She’ll be loading up one of the machines with all this weight and be twittering on about how a positive attitude will have me lifting whatever the hell I want.”
He snorted and shook his head at that.
“Lift light. It should be a little hard, but not impossible. Pushing to the point of muscle failure.” My eyebrows shot up, but he clarified. “When you just can’t do another rep. I wouldn’t recommend that for you right now. Tell her you want some simple movements like a bicep curl or a hip hinge. If a light weight is too much, just perform the motion without one.” I frowned at that, sure I wasn’t that weak. “Getting your form right from the start helps prevent injury and means we don’t have to train you out of that later.”
“So how did you go?” Mandie asked, jumping up from the weight bench she was sitting on. “It’s amazing, right? Drew’s a doll and his partner, Greg, is just amazing.”
“Amazing,” I said with a nod, smiling at her effusive use of superlatives. “So he said to start with simple movements, that getting my form right was more important than lifting heavy weights at the start.” Mandie sucked in a breath, no doubt ready to argue. “Which sounds like a smart plan, right?”
“Right.” Mandie smiled hastily. “Right, OK, so we’ll start with some of the whole body movements. We’ll go over by the mirrors.”
“Where I can see myself stuffing up in real time.” I shook my head. “OK, let’s do it.”
Simple movements, my lily white arse. By the time I completed the last bodyweight squat, my thighs were trembling and sweat was rolling down my neck. We’d been at it for half an hour, but still, I felt like I’d been run over by a bus.
“Last one… Amazing!” Mandie said, performing the same damn exercise with ease. “You did it!”
“Pretty sure the exercise did me in,” I grumbled. “Can I have a shower now, little sister?” I flicked my hands. “I’m all sweaty and gross.”
“Oh, well, I thought?—”
“Hey.” A deep masculine voice had us all turning around, but the only one he focussed on was Mandie. “I saw you finish your training session. Name’s Frank.”
“I’m hitting the showers!”
I used this distraction to make a quick getaway, my sister shooting me a murderous look, but I was out of reach before she could do anything about it.
“Smoothie’s up!” I turned to see Drew gesturing for me to come over.
“Oh no—” I started to say.
“You need something to rehydrate yourself.” Drew was using a very good dad voice right now. “There’s fruit, some electrolytes, and some caffeine as a little pick me up.”
“You had me at caffeine…” I groaned, picking up the plastic cup, but doing that made me aware of how clammy and gross I was now that the sweat was starting to cool. “But I might drink this after a shower.”
“Shower’s through there,” he said, gesturing for the door.
I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. My phone had pinged as I walked towards the door and I was scrolling through my notifications rather than looking where I was going. One of the vets had texted me for the alarm code yet again, so I was trying to tap in a response one handed while carrying the smoothie in the other. Science had shown that multitasking was not possible, and I was about to prove their point. Texting, focussing on getting one wobbly leg to move, then the other, almost able to feel the cool spray of the water on my skin.
So to say colliding with him and feeling his rock hard abs was a shock would be an understatement.
“Oh…!”
I looked up and saw those same grey eyes and just like before, they sparkled with amusement. The poor guy was probably choking back a laugh because I was a complete idiot and not able to walk into a damn change room without involuntarily assaulting strange men. I looked down, saw my hand was resting on a set of rock hard abs and then jerked it back like they were made of hot coals.
Did I mention that I was wobbly? My ability to successfully do simple things like walk without tripping was always not great, but after the hammering my body had just taken, my balance was completely screwed. I jerked back way too fast and his smile faded as he saw me start to fall, his arm snapping out to grab mine and set me to rights. The drink, however, did not like being jerked back and forth like this at all and decided to make that clear by spilling all over the strange man’s chest.
“Oh my god…” I stared in horror as the green liquid trickled through the furrows between each of his abs and started to drip. “I am so, so sorry. I…”
I needed to fix this, right fucking now. Clean him up! my brain screamed, which had me looking around for a towel, before spying the one around his waist.
Later, I would replay this moment over and over in my head, curling further into a ball of shame by the second. Right now, I was in survival mode. My only way of dealing with my clumsiness was to try to rectify the situation immediately, so that’s what I did. I grabbed the end of his towel, wrapped tight around his waist, not mine. I had a towel in my bag, using that would’ve been a far better solution, but I wasn’t thinking right now. I was just reacting, and that was always bad. I lifted the hem of his towel, frantically mopping at his chest, when a hand covered mine.
“It’s OK.” His voice was deep, reassuring, like a hand sliding down my spine. “But unless you want us to get a whole lot more acquainted, you might want to leave this for me to fix up.”
I stared into his eyes, heart thundering in my ears, before following his gaze down.
Just a shadow, that’s what I saw, but enough to make clear that he wasn’t wearing anything underneath that towel. Like a blurry photo of the Loch Ness Monster, I saw something stir. That was enough for me to drop the towel like it had caught on fire, forcing me to take a step backwards.
“I’m sorry…”
What the hell else could I say? Not only have I assaulted you with a smoothie, but I involuntarily took a peek at your dick? Even if I tried, my lips wouldn’t move. I let out a small sound of distress and then moved, scuttling off to the bathrooms like a frightened little mouse. It wasn’t until I was safely inside one of the shower cubicles that I could take a full breath. Over and over, I forced my lungs to inhale and exhale. It was only then that I dared to look at my palms.
I could still feel him there, warm, hard, alive. And perfect, I added belatedly. I flexed my fingers, because quickly enough I saw another set of abs.
Dave’s.
He thought he was pretty hot, was definitely in good shape, and where had that got me? I wrenched my sweaty shirt off, and then the rest of my clothes, before turning on the shower. New year, new me? That meant ignoring pretty fuck boys and focussing entirely on myself, and so as I stepped under the spray, that’s what I did.