Chapter 11 #2
I watch his chest rise and fall and I disappear into the rhythm of his breathing, the way his abs tense with each rep.
One. Two. Three.
On the fourth, my knuckles brush his bare stomach. Just barely. A graze. But he shivers. Full-body, unmistakable, his whole frame trembling under the weight. He doesn't stop the set. Doesn't say a word. But I felt it. I know I felt it.
I tell myself to focus. To keep my hands where they belong.
But Rhys keeps making these low sounds under his breath every time he presses the weight up. Barely audible over the music in the gym, but I hear them anyway, like they were just for me. Small grunts of effort that hit low in my stomach, harder than they should.
And now I can't stop wondering what he sounds like when he's not trying to hold back.
What he'd sound like if someone touched him the right way.
The image flashes through my head and I grip the bench tighter, to the point I feel my knuckles crack. Rhys racks the bar with a sharp exhale and lies back for a second, chest heaving, sweat gleaming on that strip of bare skin.
I can't stop looking at the snake.
It's not even a decision anymore. My eyes are just there, fixed, and the longer I look, the less the rest of the gym exists.
The music goes distant first. Then the clang of weights two benches over, dulling into something I hear through water.
Then the voices, the footsteps, the door at the far end opening and closing — all of it just falls away one piece at a time until there's nothing left in the room except him.
I should look away. I know I should. There's a version of this exact second where I do — where I clear my throat and check the clock and ask if he wants another set — and that version gets further away the longer I stand here doing nothing about it.
The tattoo starts at his ribs. I've seen it a hundred times in passing, in locker rooms, in the corner of my vision when I'm trying not to look.
I've never let myself actually trace it before.
Never let myself follow it slow, the way I'm doing now, down across his stomach, over the dip where muscle gives way to something softer, down toward the hip where it curves and disappears under fabric.
I can't stop staring at the place where it vanishes.
The place I can't see.
I think about it longer than I should. Long enough that I lose track of where I am completely — lose the bench, lose the bar still racked above his chest, lose every rule I've spent twenty-one years building myself around one careful piece at a time.
There's just him laid out in front of me, breathing hard, skin slick under the gym lights, and that part of me that never seems to stay buried when he's around.
The gym fully fades out around me.
The music. The voices. Everything.
There's just Rhys breathing hard beneath me and that fucking tattoo and the sudden terrifying realization that I need to know where it ends.
My thumb moves before my brain catches up.
Tracing the ink. Following the line down, down, lower, slow and helpless and nothing like restraint, until my fingertip almost slips under the waistband and—
I jerk back like I've been burned.
The gym slams back into focus all at once, too loud, too bright, and I have no idea how long I was standing there gone. Seconds. Minutes. I genuinely don't know, and that frightens me more than me touching him did.
I glance sideways to make sure no one caught my mistake.
Rhys sits up slowly, eyes finding mine. He's smirking, obviously amused. Of course he is. Always unbothered.
I am the opposite of unbothered. I just lost an entire piece of myself standing in a public gym, in front of him, and I don't know how to get it back.
And I wonder how far he would have let me go.
"You sure you’re good, Captain?"
I nod, throat too tight to speak.
My hand's still tingling.
I want to run.
I turn away from Rhys before he can see whatever the hell is on my face.
The rest of practice is a blur. I finish the workout.
I talk to Fitch. I give the team the cooldown instructions.
I do everything I’m supposed to do because that’s what I do.
That’s what I’ve always done. I put one thing in front of the other until there’s no room for anything else.
Except when everyone starts clearing out, I head for the locker room too quickly.
Too fast to look casual.
I strip my shirt off before I even reach my locker, needing air, needing space, needing anything that isn’t the image of Rhys under the bar, breathing hard, looking at me like he knew exactly what it was doing to me.
I shove my clothes into my bag and head for the showers before half the guys make it in.
Turn the water down until it's almost nothing.
Stand under it with my hands flat on the tile and my head dropped forward.
The water turns cold over my head.
I stand under it and close my eyes.
It doesn’t help.
Because the problem is still there.
Low in my stomach.
Heavy.
Unavoidable.
I look down and swear under my breath.
This is not happening.
Not here. Not because of him.
My hands brace against the tile and I drop my head forward, water running down my neck, my shoulders, my back. I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth, like I can discipline my own body into obedience. Like I haven’t spent most of my life doing exactly that.
Be harder.
Be better.
Don’t give anyone a reason.
Don’t be soft.
Don’t be anything anyone can see.
My father’s voice is distant, but it still finds me when I’m weakest. Most vulnerable. I turn the water colder. It still doesn’t help.