Chapter 1
CHAPTER 1
SIMON
W alking into the arena where the LA Rams practiced was fucking awesome. Sure, I wasn’t here for football, but the atmosphere was still electric, the very air in here infused with the thrill of competition and the drive to win.
I felt it pulsing through my veins, adrenaline coursing through me as if I’d taken a shot of it right to the heart. I grinned, knowing my team was going to trash the competition this year. Every year, Fit Gal put on their company’s version of the Olympics and it was crucial that the guys and I knocked every event out of the park to come out on top.
Flanked by Benny, David, and Josh, my childhood friends and team members for these Fit Gal Olympic Games, I was all pumped up. Benny helped me run my family’s company, Astor and Co, these days, and he and I had roped in David and Josh as soon as we’d received the dates for this competition a couple months ago.
Fit Gal was the world’s first all-natural energy drink, and while it was aimed at women for now, Fit Guy was in the works for the future too. Fully made from fruit and vegetable extracts with a dash of beef tallow and bat turd—I wish I was shitting you—the drink enhanced your ability to perform and it was the hottest thing since sliced bread right now.
Ashley and Blake, the brother-sister pair who had created the drink and started the company, were fitness obsessed and events just like this one had turned them into superstars in the health and wellness industry. Banners of them had been strung up and booths displaying Fit Gal drinks were everywhere as we made our way inside, loud, energetic rock beats flowing through the speakers.
Thousands of people were already gathered to compete and have a good time, bright team colors visible throughout the crowd. I was excited for the competition and to have some fun with my old friends, and I grinned at them as we made our way to the huge stage in the center of the arena where Blake and Ashley would soon be appearing to kick things off.
“We’ve got this in the bag, right?” I eyed some of the competition around us and smirked at Benny. “We’ve definitely got this in the bag.”
He elbowed me and shook his head. “Remember, this is just for fun. Fun and research, that’s why we’re here.”
I chuckled, shrugging a shoulder as I turned my gaze to his. “Competition is always more fun if you crush the people you’re up against.”
Benny groaned and shoved a hand into his blond hair, giving Josh a look like he needed some backup with me. Josh arched an eyebrow at Benny instead. “Dude, if you didn’t come here to win, why are you even here?”
“To check out the company, idiot.”
“And to win,” I finished for him, laughing when Josh nodded his agreement so enthusiastically it was possible he was going to give himself whiplash. “What about you, Dave? You here to win or to watch?”
David scoffed down a bark of laughter. “They’re broadcasting it, man. If I wanted to watch, I’d be doing it from my couch at home.”
Benny let out a deep sigh. “You’re all incorrigible. All of you. Have none of you learned anything since fucking high school? It is possible to participate in a competition without getting overcompetitive.”
I frowned, desperately trying to hold back a smirk. “I literally do not understand the words that just came out of your mouth.”
Before he could respond, the music changed and a loud roar went up, prompting all four of us to turn our attention to the stage. Benny wasn’t wrong about Josh, David, and me. We did have a tendency to get a little too competitive, but why waste time with losing?
Personally, if I was in something, I was in it to win it. Not to watch it happen or see someone else take the thing I had been competing for. Maybe that was a product of my upbringing, but I wasn’t ashamed of it.
Quite the contrary, in fact. It was a point of pride for me that I had mastered the art of winning—and that I was always willing to put in the hard work to earn it.
Ashley and Blake appeared on the stage in puffs of smoke and theatrics, none of which impressed me, but the crowd went nuts for this shit. All around me, people were losing their minds—and their voices—screaming and cheering for the siblings who had taken the world by storm.
That was the part that impressed me.
Ashley was my age, twenty-eight, and Blake was only four years older, yet they had achieved a remarkable amount of success for themselves. They had risen from obscurity a few years ago with the launch of Fit Gal, and while they’d faced a fair amount of skepticism at first about their product, it’d passed every test that had been thrown at it with flying colors.
I respected that. I also respected Ashley’s ass, which was tight enough to bounce quarters off of. A fact that didn’t appear to have escaped David’s notice either. He bumped his shoulder into mine and leaned over.
“Ain’t that just the juiciest peach you’ve seen in a long time?”
I jerked my chin in a nod. The girl was well built. I had to give her that. Platinum blonde hair hung all the down to that butt, held out of her face with a neon pink headband while her crop top was so small, her nipples would probably pop out if she lifted her arms.
My boys and I weren’t the only ones drooling, either. The women equally enchanted by Blake’s muscles in his cut-off T-shirt and I overheard a few comments about his ass from the girls behind us. Ultimately though, I’d never been so into platinum blonde.
“Welcome, Fit Gals and Fit Guys!” Ashley called into the microphone attached to her face as she skipped from one side of the stage to the other. “It’s absolute honor for Blake and me to welcome you to this year’s Fit Gal Olympic Games.”
Another roar went through the crowd and even Josh let out a whistle between his teeth this time. I grinned. Good, let him get even further into this game.
“As a company, we love to throw this event because it gives people the chance to come and be part of a community with other Fit Gal lovers. It gives us all the chance to get active together and, of course, to participate in some good old-fashioned competition.”
She gave the crowd a sassy wink as she said it, and I finally put my hands together for the applause that followed the statement. Good old-fashioned competition was something I could get behind.
“Now, as you all know, we asked you to organize yourselves into teams of four,” Blake said, taking over from his sister and making a few women practically swoon when he looked right at them from the stage. “Your chosen team names are going to be displayed on the screens all around the arena throughout the day, and those will tell you which event you’ll be heading to as the games progress.”
As he said it, brackets came up on the huge screens situated around us, and immediately, the hum of chatter went up as people spotted their team names and started discussing their first events.
Blake grinned. “That’s the spirit. Let’s get to it, people. Good luck to everybody and remember to have some fun!”
He and Ashley disappeared again, and the guys and I headed outside to the courts that had been set up. Our first competition was basketball and we were going to own it. The boys and I had met when we were six years old and we’d played almost every team sport imaginable together since.
Once we got into a game, we were unstoppable. We were all fit, athletic, decently talented, and most importantly, we could basically read each other’s minds in this kind of scenario. As always, it paid off for us.
The sun was out in Los Angeles and it was a beautiful day, the weather perfect for beach volleyball, which was where we were headed next.
Even Benny had been swept up in the competition at this point, and he pushed his mirrored sunglasses up on his face as we headed down to the sand. Even covered in a sheen of sweat and with his muscles bulging with heat and exertion, to me, he looked like a strict nerd when he turned to face the rest of us.
“Protect your damn shoulders this time, will ya?” he told us instead of asking even though he’d phrased it to sound like a question. “We’re going to look like a bunch of old men if you keep hurting them like you did in Miami.”
I groaned. “That was two years ago, and we were all half a dozen shots of tequila in by the time we played. We’ll be fine.”
He smirked at me. “Yeah, you will be as long as you remember to protect your shoulders. If you forget, at least they’ve got ice packs here.”
“I had my shoulders iced last time too.” A half-longing sigh escaped me when I thought back to the women who had so helpfully iced my aching body while the guys and I had been in Florida. “Think I could convince Ashley to put the ice pack on me herself? If so, who’s willing to take me down?”
I fist-bumped with Josh when he offered to take me out if Ashley should come by, and then it was our turn to dominate in volleyball. We won, naturally, and we were in high spirits when we headed over to our last event for the day, the Relay Race.
“This is it, gentlemen,” I said, though none of them deserved that damn title. “Let’s finish the day strong and show all these weaklings what we’re made of. There is absolutely nobody here who is better than us and nobody who can knock us off our game.”
The guys cheered around me, but in hindsight, I should never have said that. Life was always what happened when people made other plans, and it turned out the only person in the entire world who was able to knock me off my game was only a few lanes over.
I just hadn’t spotted her yet.