7. Daisy
Chapter 7
Daisy
L ocke worked my ass off. There was no easing back in. After a run on the treadmill to warm up, I spent the next hour and a half squatting, jump roping, and lifting. I felt slow at first. Slow and heavy. But after a while my body remembered what it was like to really move.
Other gym members arrived while we worked, and by the time Locke told me I could stop, I was dripping sweat.
“Thank you,” I gasped, trying to catch my breath after a series of burpies.
He looked down at me. “Feel better?”
I nodded. “I think I do.”
“Good. Same time tomorrow.”
“Don’t I need a rest day?” I asked, because even though I wasn’t a gym rat I knew you were supposed to rest your muscles between workouts.
“You work Monday and Thursday, right?” he asked.
“Usually.” The resort was inching closer to its grand opening and I’d been coming in a few extra days here and there as the deadline loomed.
“We’ll work a different muscle group tomorrow,” he said. “You can take Thursday off since you have to work.”
I considered arguing — who did Locke think he was? — but didn’t. I felt better already, the quiet of the house at the top of the falls far away from the lights of the gym and the people working out around me.
Life.
I thought of Jace, picked at the wound of his death, testing it, and an unseen hand crushed my chest.
I pushed the thought of him away. I would visit his grave when I got home, think about him in the big house where I could cry alone. Here I felt more like myself. Maybe that was the trick: compartmentalize my loss, my thoughts of Jace.
Manage them.
I looked up at Locke and nodded. “Tomorrow.”
He surprised me by reaching down to squeeze my shoulder. The gesture felt paternalistic, and I thought of my dad, one of many messes in my life that had gone unaddressed in the wake of Jace’s death.
“I’m proud of you,” Locke said. “Keep showing up for yourself. One minute at a time.”
I sucked in a breath, blew it out slowly around the grief that was creeping back in now that I was still.
One minute at a time. I could do that.
I said hello to a few of the gym members I’d gotten to know when I’d been coming regularly and grabbed my bag. It was a relief to step outside into the cool morning air and I exhaled another big breath.
Across the street, Wolf was holding a cup from Cassie’s Cuppa and leaning against Benji’s driver’s side while Otis fiddled with something under the hood. I felt the unfamiliar stirring of desire.
No, that wasn’t right. I’d felt desire in the months since Jace’s death, but it had always come after prompting by Wolf and Otis. They could still light my body on fire with a kiss or a touch, but I didn’t initiate anything because my body felt dead without a jump start from their lips and fingers.
But I felt it now: the familiar rush of heat to my pussy, the tingling at my center.
And who could blame me? Wolf had deployed his trademark lean while wearing ripped black jeans, a sleeveless gray Sex Pistols T-shirt that showed off his defined biceps, and his black boots. His dark hair was still tousled, probably because he and Otis had gotten up early to get me out of the house for the gym, and I wanted nothing more than to go back to bed and mess it up some more.
Otis did nothing for the impulse when he shut the hood of the car, his arms flexing under his tank top, his lower body poured into faded jeans that hung just a little too low on his hips, giving me a glimpse of his washboard abs and the Adonis belt pointing at his dick.
“Hey, doll,” Otis said, walking over to stand next to Wolf as I approached. “How was the workout?”
I took a deep breath. “It was…” I nodded. “It was good.”
Wolf handed me the cup from Cassie’s. “Thought you could probably use this.”
“Thank you.” I took a drink of the hot bitter coffee.
“What do you want to do now?” Otis asked.
For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel totally dead. It wasn’t just my body, although the workout had definitely woken me up on that front, as evidenced by the shot of lust I’d felt looking at Wolf and Otis. My mind felt sharper.
Clearer.
“I want to find out who killed Jace,” I said. “And I’m ready to make them pay.”