Chapter 11 After Hours
AFTER HOURS
GRANT
The gym was supposed to be empty at quarter past eleven on a Tuesday night, and I had made absolutely certain that it would be.
I punched in the security code, flipped on the lights, and stood there in the doorway for a moment, listening to the fluorescent hum overhead and the distant sound of the HVAC system cycling through the building.
No voices. No footsteps. No one else had any reason to be here, which was exactly the point.
I pushed through the double doors with my hoodie up and my earbuds in, though I wasn't actually playing any music. It was just the appearance of being occupied, unavailable.
The gym stretched out before me in neat, organized rows. Treadmills lined up against the far wall. Cable machines. Free weights arranged by size on the racks. Everything had its place. Everything was manageable, controlled, exactly where it was supposed to be.
Unlike my head, which had been a mess for the better part of three weeks.
I dropped my bag against the wall and stripped off my hoodie, leaving me in an old practice shirt and a pair of shorts that had seen better days.
My reflection stared back at me from the mirrored wall, and I looked exactly like what I was—a man who hadn't been sleeping enough and was hoping physical exhaustion would solve what discipline couldn't.
The mats were laid out in the back corner from afternoon practice, and I noticed immediately that someone hadn't rolled them properly.
The corners weren't flush, and there was a ripple running through the middle section.
A tripping hazard. I'd have to mention it to equipment staff tomorrow, add it to the list of things that needed attention.
I started with stretching because routine was everything.
I folded forward for my hamstrings, letting my hands dangle toward the floor, and held the position for a slow count of thirty.
The pull ran up the back of my legs and into my lower back, which was tight from spending all day on my feet behind the bench.
I'd been holding tension there, probably for longer than I wanted to admit.
Hip flexors next. I dropped into a deep lunge and sank into it, feeling the stretch all the way through. The body kept score of everything you tried to ignore. Every frustration. Every moment of restraint. Every time you told yourself you were fine when you absolutely were not.
I moved through shoulder rotations and arm circles, keeping everything controlled and methodical. I knew how this worked. If I could just sweat enough, tire myself out enough, I might finally get some sleep.
I dropped to the floor for push-ups and started counting.
My form was still good after all these years.
By twenty, my shoulders were warm. By forty, they were burning.
By sixty, I was breathing hard and still had too much of the wrong kind of energy left over, the kind that wouldn't quit no matter how much I tried to work it out of my system.
I moved to sit-ups, forcing myself to focus on the movement rather than the memory. Core tight. Breathing controlled. Hands behind my head. Up and down.
After two hundred, I pushed up and moved to burpees.
Down to the floor, chest to the ground, explosive jump up.
Again. My lungs started to burn. My quads cramped.
Sweat soaked through my practice shirt until it was clinging to my chest, so I yanked it off and tossed it toward my bag.
The cool air of the gym hit my bare skin and I kept going.
Jump squats now. Down low, explode up, land soft.
That was when I heard the door.
I froze mid-squat and felt my heart rate spike for reasons that had nothing to do with the exercise.
I knew who it was before I turned around. I'd been paying too much attention to the sound of his walk for weeks now, cataloging it against my will.
Jace stood just inside the doorway with his gym bag slung over one shoulder, wearing grey sweats and a fitted black tank top that showed off the shape of his arms. His hair was damp, like he'd already showered once tonight. His expression was carefully neutral, like he was surprised to see me here.
He wasn't surprised. He'd known I'd be here.
We looked at each other across the empty gym. Neither of us spoke.
He dropped his bag by the wall and moved to the treadmills without a word, stepping onto the one three down from mine while I got on mine and started it up.
The belt began its steady roll beneath my feet.
I eased into a jog, finding my rhythm, keeping my eyes on my own reflection in the mirrored wall ahead.
I lasted maybe forty seconds before I let my gaze drift left.
His reflection stared back at me. He'd pulled off the tank top at some point in the seconds I'd been looking away and was running shirtless now.
I looked at my own treadmill display. 6.8 miles per hour.
I looked at his. 7.5.
Without thinking about it, I bumped my speed up to match.
His reflection showed the corner of his mouth twitch. He'd noticed.
Of course he had.
We ran in silence, separated by two empty machines and everything we weren't saying.
The minutes ticked by. Five. Seven. Ten.
Sweat was dripping down my chest now, soaking into the waistband of my shorts.
My breathing was getting heavier, less controlled.
Jace looked like he could run forever—pace never faltering, breathing staying even, sweat running down the cut lines of his abdomen in a way that I tracked in the mirror and couldn't seem to stop.
He caught me looking.
Our eyes met in the reflection and held for three full seconds. Neither of us looked away.
Then he increased his speed.
A challenge, clear as a dropped glove.
I should have recognized it for what it was and shut it down. Instead I bumped my own speed up and kept running.
The sound of our breathing changed—harsher, more labored, the treadmills humming louder. My quads burned. My lungs worked hard. But I wasn't going to be the first one to stop.
Jace's chest was heaving with exertion, his skin slick with sweat. He looked over at me, not in the mirror this time but directly, and there was something fierce and hungry in his expression that I felt in my sternum.
I held his gaze while my heart pounded and my breath came in gasps and every muscle in my body screamed.
He reached down and stopped his treadmill.
The sudden absence of that sound made everything else louder. My own footfalls. My own breathing. The rush of blood in my ears.
I stopped mine too.
We stood on our respective machines, both dripping, both breathing hard, staring at each other across the empty space between us.
Then Jace stepped off his treadmill and drifted toward the mats in the back corner, moving like he had no particular destination, but there was nothing casual about the way he moved.
When he reached the edge of the mat, he turned back to face me.
The look he gave me was half question, half challenge.
Every rational part of my brain threw up warnings. This was a bad decision. This had consequences written all over it in permanent ink.
I stepped onto the mat anyway.
Jace moved first, a testing feint that I deflected easily.
He was fast, but I'd been reading bodies and anticipating movement for twenty years.
He came at me again and this time I engaged, catching his wrist and using his own momentum to pull him off balance.
He recovered smoothly—his core strength evident in the way he spun out of my grip and reset his stance—and the quick grin he flashed said so that's how we're playing.
We circled each other on the mat. The fluorescent lights cast harsh shadows that made the angles of his face more severe, more defined.
Sweat gleamed on his collarbones, ran down the center of his chest, tracked the lines of his abdomen.
I forced myself to focus on fundamentals.
Center of gravity. Base. Leverage points.
The technical details that would keep this somewhere I could still call professional.
He lunged. I sidestepped. His hand caught my bare shoulder, fingers digging in for purchase, and suddenly we were grappling for real.
That was when I felt it, the first stirring of arousal, unwelcome and undeniable.
The contact. The heat of his skin against mine.
The way his muscles flexed under my hands when I caught him.
I tried to ignore it, tried to focus on technique and positioning, but my body had already logged the information and decided what to do with it.
I hooked my leg behind his knee and tried to take him down, partly to end this before it got worse.
He twisted at the last second and threw his weight against mine, and we hit the mat together in a controlled fall that still knocked the air from both our lungs.
The impact reverberated through my chest and ribs and pressed our bodies together in a way that made my growing problem significantly worse.
Jace ended up on his back with me half on top of him, my forearm braced across his sternum, his hands locked around my bicep. We were both breathing hard, faces only inches apart.
I could feel his heartbeat through my arm where it pressed against his chest. I could smell his skin, something clean underneath the sweat. I could see the exact moment his pupils dilated, black swallowing up the color, and I knew he could feel me against him. There was no hiding it.
I shoved off him harder than necessary and rolled to my feet, trying to create distance before the evidence became impossible to ignore.
Too late for that.
He followed a beat slower, and I caught the way his eyes dropped, just for a second, to the front of my shorts.