CHAPTER 9 - ELECTROLYTE MIX
electrolyte mix
CHAPTER nine
David smiled as he stared down at a photo of Caroline at her most recent doctor’s appointment. The baby was as big as an avocado now, and every time he saw avocados in the cafeteria, he wanted to call Caroline to talk about it.
He tapped back to the video chat, where Caroline was staring down at him while eating spoonfuls of cereal—her current pregnancy craving. David sent her a giant box of American brands last week, and she’d already gone through half of them.
“The doctor said that at my next appointment, she’ll be able to see the gender,” Caroline said. “Do you want to know, or should it be a surprise?”
David blinked. “I don’t see a reason for it to be a surprise. Unless you want it to be?”
Caroline shrugged. “I didn’t know if you wanted to do an American thing.”
“An American thing?”
“Sometimes Americans wait.”
David frowned. “Well, I’m not American.”
Caroline pulled her hair back into a low bun on camera. “Okay, I just wanted to make sure. We’ll be able to go to that appointment together—I’m going to schedule it in America before your race in Texas.”
David sputtered. “Really?”
“Of course, David. I wouldn’t find out without you.”
Warmth filled his chest, along with relief. He didn’t want to miss such an important appointment, but he hadn’t wanted to make Caroline feel like she had to have any medical care in America if she didn’t want to. This way, Noah would be able to come too, without it being some big deal.
“Thanks, Caroline.”
She smiled at him as she finished putting up her hair, then her eyes went wide. “Oh! I forgot to tell you—the baby can see light now!”
“What?” David immediately wished he could be in France. Their little avocado baby could see things now and he was across the world, missing it. “It can see already?”
Caroline nodded. “The doctor shined a light on my belly, and the baby moved.”
Motion in the corner of David’s vision made him look up. Kyle entered the locker room, motioning for him to come into the gym. David held up a finger.
“Sorry, Caroline, I have to go to training. We’re doing a heat workout to be ready for next week.”
“No problem. Thanks for calling, and good luck,” Caroline said, waving to him. “I’ll tell baby that Papa is working hard.”
David laughed and waved goodbye before hanging up. He checked his messages to see if Noah had sent anything, but nothing new had appeared.
They weren’t fighting, per se. Noah called him every night and stayed on the phone with him while he drove home, but David sensed the tension over the line. Josie was still hunting down security camera footage from last week to see if they could identify Klaus, but so far she hadn’t come up with anything. Noah wanted to be here, but David refused to let him come until they could be sure he would be protected.
David slipped on his trainers and stripped out of his jacket to his thin undershirt. He caught his reflection in the mirror and set his mouth in a tight line.
He’d dropped another five pounds, but he could lose more by race day. His simulator times were already faster with the weight adjustment, but David had more fat to lose. He could still pinch it between his fingers on his belly and hips, despite his ab work and cardio. He wasn’t anywhere close to the “hot bod” Noah had mentioned on the phone, and time was running out.
David stepped out into the gym and inhaled the slightly sweaty scent in the now-baking training room. Weather predictions were looking like it could be over 85 degrees on race day, and David needed heat training to prepare his body for the drive.
“Ready to get started?” Kyle asked. He was shirtless, with his perfectly toned torso on full display, except for the towel slung around his neck.
David hoped Noah never saw Kyle shirtless. David didn’t stand a chance with his flabby belly and soft muscle.
“Let’s go,” David said. He hopped on the exercise bike and started pedaling.
He was disgustingly out of shape, despite all of his workouts over the past few weeks. Thirty minutes of hard cycling drained all of his energy, and his whole body was slimy with sweat within fifteen minutes of hitting pads after that. Kyle met every punch with his boxing mitt as if David were moving at a snail’s pace.
“One-two-six-five,” Kyle said.
David responded with the corresponding punch patterns. Left, right, dodge. Right, left, dodge. Switch stance, right uppercut. Right… right…
“Jochmann,” Kyle growled, wiggling his left mitt.
David swung his right hook, imagining his father’s face as the punch landed.
“Yeehaw!” Kyle praised, backing off and slapping his mitts together.
David took a moment to breathe. His face was flushed in the mirror, and the bags under his eyes had ballooned into ugly, purple lumps. Disgusting. If Noah saw him like this, he would gag.
David peeled off his shirt, revealing his paunchy body underneath. He quickly turned his focus elsewhere.
“Come on, back to it,” Kyle said, lifting his mitts. “One-three-five-six.”
David hissed out a noise and turned, snapping into his boxing stance. The room tilted as he swung right, then left. What champion failed after thirty minutes of working out? A race took an hour and a half. He swung up with a left uppercut and hit home.
“Switch!” Kyle shouted.
David hopped to switch stances and cocked his right arm for the next—
Floor.
Sound and vision warped, pulling like taffy. Strings of light streaked across his vision against darkness, and a faint throbbing pattered in his temple. He swung his head, searching for the source of the pain, but everything blurred.
Right hook. Right hook.
“David? David, can you hear me?”
David blinked, and suddenly he was staring up at a white ceiling. Pratik, the Oxbow medical director, waved a small light in front of his eyes.
His baby could detect light now.
“Where—?” David couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Easy,” Pratik said gently. “You fainted from overexertion, David.”
“Oh.”
Kyle’s face materialized over Pratik’s shoulder, and Hugh stood nearby, watching carefully.
“Sorry, man,” Kyle said. “I should have recognized the signs. We need to up your hydration, or the race could be dangerous. You’ve been following your diet, right?”
David nodded, then winced at the pain in his temple. He couldn’t have been out for that long, but he didn’t remember Pratik or Hugh entering the room, let alone being called in.
“You hit your head when you fell,” Pratik explained. “Thankfully, you landed on the rubber flooring, but it may swell.”
“Great,” David muttered.
Pratik offered him a fizzy pink drink—the same electrolyte mixture from Laguna Seca. David slowly sat up to drink it through the provided straw. He felt like complete shit.
“Nice to see you’re working hard, though,” Hugh said. “The whole team appreciates it. You’ve been doing really well, David.”
David could have cried. Hugh rarely gave praise, so it had to be true. “Thanks, Hugh. Nobody called Noah, right?”
Hugh shook his head. “I was about to, but you started waking up.”
“Good. Don’t call him. Does anyone else know about this?”
Pratik shook his head. “Kyle called me, and I caught Hugh on the way down here.”
David nodded as he sucked down more electrolyte mix. “I don’t want anyone finding out about this, okay? Noah found out about what happened with that engineer within the day. I don’t want that to happen again.”
Noah was one bad phone call away from boarding a flight over here and ruining all of the work he’d done at his fashion job. David had to resort to begging him not to come the last time they talked about it.
Pratik frowned at him. David waved him off before he could speak. Whatever he was going to say, David didn’t want to hear it. Wow, you’re really out of shape for a champion , he guessed.
Pratik glanced at Hugh, who kept his eyes on David, all but confirming David’s suspicion.
“Can someone get my phone from the locker room?” David asked. He finished his glass of water as Kyle rushed off to grab it.
“I can’t support this diet plan, Hugh,” Pratik said when Kyle left the room. “This has very dangerous connotations for the race.”
“I’ll be lighter by race day,” David snapped. “I don’t need any more adjustments to my diet, okay? This is enough.” He shoved the empty glass at Pratik, who reluctantly took it.
Hugh nodded in agreement. “The diet has been working well. We’ve lost almost half a second per lap thanks to David’s hard work.”
Kyle returned with his phone, and David took it, his heartbeat climbing when he saw a string of texts and a missed call from Noah waiting for him.
Good news and bad news , Noah wrote. Good news: I got picked to represent Lucy’s firm at a private haute couture show next week. Bad news: I won’t get into LA until race day if I say yes.
David breathed a sigh of relief. Hugh, Pratik, and Kyle gathered near the door to talk amongst themselves, giving him some privacy.
I’m totally ready to say no, and I plan on saying no , Noah added in another message. You’re more important than all of this.
David tapped the button to start a call. His head pounded with a headache, but he ignored it, as well as the sharp pain in his ribs, the growling in his stomach, and the aching in his knuckles from punching so hard.
One glance in the mirror was proof that he had to work a lot harder.
“Hey there, hot stuff,” Noah answered. “Busy day at the prison—I mean, at Oxbow?”
David let out a snort. “Hey. Figured I should call you instead of texting.”
“I’m canceling the fashion show thing,” Noah said quickly. David heard the disappointment in his voice, even though Noah was trying to hide it. “I don’t know why I sent that first text worded like that. I’ve been thinking about it since I sent it and—”
“You should say yes,” David said, rubbing the back of his neck. “That’s a big deal, right? To be asked to represent the company?”
Noah didn’t answer right away. “I’ll get another chance.”
“Noah, please. Everything is fine here. I’m going to be doing race prep all the time leading up to the race anyway, so don’t worry about it.”
“Everything is not fine there,” Noah argued. “Your dad threatened you last week. He’s still out there, and I’m about ready to sue this security team for how shitty of a job they’re doing.”
David bit his lip to keep from laughing. “I’m not the president. My dad hasn’t even tried to come to Oxbow or the apartment complex because he knows you’re keeping such a good eye on me. What happened with Jacob was a test, and now he knows we’re serious.”
Noah sighed. “Sleep on it. Think about it, then tell me how you’re really feeling about it once you’ve had some rest. Lying to me about how you feel is only going to stress us both out in the long run.”
David’s lip twitched in annoyance. The words stung, but more so the fact that Noah thought he would lie to him after all they’d been through together. Noah knew him in a way no one else did, and David had been working every day to be completely open with him.
“I told you, I’m not lying to you ever again,” David said. “Of course, I want you here, but that’s the selfish part of me that wants to fuck you.”
Pratik looked up from his conversation in surprise. Hugh shook his head with a disappointed sigh. David didn’t care if they were listening—it would teach them to stop eavesdropping on other people’s business.
“Using me for my body?” Noah teased.
“Noah,” David warned through a smile.
“That’s kinda hot. Using me for your pleasure, hm? Or maybe I’m just horny enough that it sounds hot to me.”
David rolled his eyes. “You know I want more than that.”
“I know, baby,” Noah said softly, and some of the anxiety melted from David’s shoulders. He couldn’t wait to have Noah in his arms again.
“Actually, it’s good that I have a few more days,” David said. “I’ve been working out a lot, and I think you’ll like how it looks. I want it to be a surprise—that’s why I haven’t sent any pictures.”
Noah let out a whine. “Fuck, Jochmann. You can’t just say stuff like that. Now I’m imagining getting railed by my gorgeously buff, hot boyfriend. How am I supposed to stay in Milan now?”
David laughed. “Well, that can happen when you get here—and you can add race winner to that list of adjectives.”
Noah made an obscene noise that made David laugh again. It was strangely freeing to talk about sex within earshot of the same people they’d been terrified would find out about them when they first got together. David didn’t consider himself a vulgar person in the slightest—he was a prude, if anything—but maybe it was a course correction to be so outward about Noah. Something to make up for how secretive they had to be before.
“Fine. I’ll accept the show, but you better be ready for a night full of fucking after you win, Champ,” Noah said. “We’ll get a gauge on that endurance.”
David winced. If only Noah knew how shitty his endurance really was. “Can’t wait.”
“Oh yeah? So I should cancel this show, then.”
David closed his eyes, fighting a wave of dizziness. He knew Noah was joking, but suddenly everything felt like too much. His dad threatening him and everyone in his life, the championship he had to defend, the baby he was going to be a father to—and Noah wanted to come back early.
“That was a joke,” Noah said gently. “Hey, are you okay? Like, actually okay?”
David was conscious of Pratik, Hugh, and Kyle watching him. He put his head between his knees and let out a shaky breath.
“Yeah,” he finally said, but he didn’t even believe himself. He swallowed hard. “Um, I can’t really talk right now, Noah.”
“David. When you talk like this, it scares me and makes me feel like I’m out of the loop on things,” Noah said, suddenly sounding sad.
Tears of frustration stung David’s eyes. He was trying his hardest to fix everything. What did Noah want him to do? Try harder?
“You’re not,” David protested weakly. “But I can’t talk about this stuff right now. Three people are listening.”
Pratik, Hugh, and Kyle all looked in different directions at the same time, confirming his statement.
“Right. Sorry, I’m not trying to stress you out,” Noah said. “I just get nervous.”
Noah thought he was going to turn tail on their relationship and betray him. After everything. Hurt lanced through David’s body, but he didn’t let himself snap. Noah’s lack of trust in him was his fault, after all.
“I’ve told you everything,” David said. “If you could see my face, you’d know I’m not leaving anything out.”
“I wish I could see your face,” Noah said softly. “I love you, and I’m sorry for saying that. I know you’re doing everything you can.”
“Thanks,” David choked out. He cleared his throat. “Sorry, I have to go. I love you.”
He hung up the phone and tossed it onto the rubber gym flooring that had probably just prevented him from getting a concussion. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.