Chapter 19
Damon
The next morning, I wake up in a sauna. Wondering how in the hell I managed to pass out in a sauna, I roll over and collide with the sweatiest body on the planet.
Jesus, Liam doesn’t just run hot…he runs nuclear.
But despite the sweaty sheets—seriously, how the fuck does he sleep like this—I feel the best I’ve felt in a really, really long time. All my secrets are out. Nothing is between Liam and me anymore, and whatever happens from here on, it will happen with both parties having all the facts.
I should’ve known he’d never use my love for him against me. And I could hate myself for not telling him the truth sooner, but he took away all my self-loathing in one sentence. You could’ve told me sooner, but I’m kind of glad it didn’t happen until now.
He gave me everything in that one sentence.
Hope that maybe I didn’t fuck us up.
Joy that he knows and accepts me anyway.
Grace for myself, so the agony doesn’t continue.
I take a minute to appreciate the wide expanse of back muscles before me. God, he’s fucking beautiful. I watch as his ribcage expands with each slow, deep breath, and I am so tempted to lean forward and run my tongue along his spine.
But that would be creepy, right?
Yes, definitely creepy, I decide, rolling out of bed before I lose my last shred of self-control.
Except Liam is awake before either of my feet hits the floor.
“Please tell me you’re not getting up yet. We just went to sleep like four hours ago,” he pouts, burrowing his face in the mound of pillows beneath him, making me laugh.
I smack his ass because that’s how good I feel, but then I freeze, wondering if that was too much.
“Stop overthinking it, and get back in this bed,” Liam mutters.
“Can’t. I’m wide awake.”
“Something is seriously wrong with you,” he groans.
“How can you stand it? You’re sleeping in a swamp.”
“Told you I run hot. You didn’t seem to mind it last night,” he says. With his eyes still closed, he raises his hands in the air and mimics striking drum cymbals, making a ba-dum-tss noise.
I throw my pillow at him, feeling weightless and playful, and hoping like hell after the events of last night, he’s not going to force me to go to the gym.
“I’m going to make breakfast. See you when you get up, Sleeping Beauty.”
I think I’m in the clear until he yells, “Don’t eat too much; you said you’d come to the gym with me this morning.”
“Li, I wasn’t in my right mind when I agreed to that. I agreed under duress,” I whine.
“You did no such thing. Be ready to go in an hour.”
Fuuuuuck.
This was a terrible fucking idea. And that’s not me reverting to the sour mood I was in when I arrived…that’s me stating facts. It’s like Liam wants me to spring a boner because of him, I swear to God.
“Why are your gym shorts so short?” I ask when he strips out of his sweatpants in the small resort locker room.
He laughs, “So I can squat deeper. Full range of motion is essential for quality lifts.”
“Li, if you ‘squat deeper’ in those shorts, I’m going to have to leave.”
Smacking his own ass—which has no jiggle and is tighter than a drum—he says, “This really does it for you, huh?”
Maybe I was wrong when I said he wouldn’t hold my attraction against me…
I just didn’t expect him to embrace it with this level of enthusiasm.
But that’s my fault. I should’ve known better.
Li embraces everything like it’s the greatest thing he’s ever seen/felt/heard/tasted. I envy him a little for that.
I groan and roll my eyes. “You’re never going to let me live this down, are you?”
“’fraid not.”
“Fuck’s sake, Li, can we just get on with it already?”
Honoring my request, he leads me into the gym, which is mercifully empty at the moment, and we start with an easy run on the treadmill to warm up. At least this I can do…until Liam reaches over and taps the incline button on my machine, making it rise.
“Hey!” I shout, batting his hand away. “Mind your business.”
“You want an ass like this?” he asks, grabbing a handful of his left ass cheek. “Then you gotta put in the work.”
“How about you put in the work, and I’ll continue to admire yours from afar like I’ve done for the last decade and a half?”
My pouty suggestion only makes his smile widen.
“You can do both.”
I’m basically fucking dead by the time we finish the two miles. Warm up, my ass.
“Do you want to start with Romanian deadlifts or Bulgarian split squats?” he asks, like I have any idea what either of those things is.
To put this in perspective for him, I ask, “Well, that depends, Li.”
“On what?” he asks so innocently.
“On whether you’ve ensured comprehensive detection and response to all zero-day exploits within the SIEM and EDR stack?”
His eyes narrow, but my face remains stony, my hands on my hips.
“What the fuck did you just say?”
“Exactly! I don’t know what the hell a Portuguese squash split is. Just pick something, and show me how to do it.”
He moves behind me, planting his hands on my shoulders and steering me toward the bench, laughing the whole way.
“Fine. You’ve made your point. We’ll do bench presses. You know that one, right?”
“Barely.”
As we walk to the bench, I follow our reflection in the mirror. Liam is roughly three inches taller than me. He’s scruffier than my clean-cut look, and he looks damn good behind me like this.
The gym itself isn’t big, but it was built with thought and care.
The cardio equipment faces floor-to-ceiling windows that overlook the slopes.
There’s a circuit of machines in the middle, three squat racks line one short wall, and a rack full of dumbbells, yoga mats, medicine balls, and resistance bands sits against another wall.
In the very back are the doors that connect to the locker rooms, the water fountain, and a large empty space for those using the aforementioned free weights and such.
“Okay, I’ll go first and talk you through how to do it on my easy sets, and then I’ll help you.”
I nod, mesmerized by the way the gaping armholes in his tank top somehow make his chest and arms look even bigger than they actually are—which is pretty fucking huge.
He gets adjusted on the bench, and my concentration goes straight out the window. When he’s on his back like this, the baggy part of his Daisy Dukes falls toward the floor, outlining his dick, and the spandex underneath the sad excuse for shorts also rides higher up his thighs.
Now, instead of watching my hot-ass best friend teach me how to do a proper bench press, I’m trying to figure out how the fuck to hide my growing erection.
The visual of taking two steps forward and being able to put my balls in his mouth while I lean over and suck his dick is really taking hold in my mind.
“And it’s as easy as that,” I hear Liam say as he reracks the barbell. “Now it’s your turn.”
“Right.” I can do this. It’s not like I’ve never lifted weights before.
Lying down, I scoot forward on the bench until the bar is at eye level. Quickly glancing to the side, I realize his plates are still on.
Liam’s ‘easy reps’ were at one hundred and fifty-five pounds. That’s almost my bodyweight.
Oh, fuck…I bet he could…
“D, you gonna lift the bar today or just stare at it?” he asks.
“I can’t do your weight,” I tell him.
“I already pulled those plates. You’ve just got the bar,” he informs me, making me wonder when that happened.
“This is so embarrassing,” I mutter.
“Just lift the fucking weight,” Liam says in his personal trainer voice.
I don’t like it, but it’s effective, and I push the bar off the J-hooks and begin my set. The heavier my weight gets, the closer Liam moves in. When I attempt one hundred and thirty-five pounds, he’s almost straddling the head of the bench, and I can just about see up his shorts.
I’m so distracted, I know the rep is bad as soon as I pull it, but Li is there to steady the bar.
“Concentrate,” he instructs. “Don’t rush. I’ve got you.”
And he does.
I’m starting to realize that all the times I thought I was holding him together, I had it backwards.