Chapter 8 #2
“You agreed to be convincing.” His voice was a low murmur. He leaned in even closer, the next words just for me. “A good boyfriend would make sure his girl is wearing his school shirt. And I am nothing if not a good boyfriend.”
I gritted my teeth, irritated because he was sort of right. About the T-shirt part. The good boyfriend part though?
“I highly doubt that’s true,” I said, snatching the T-shirt from his hands and turning back into the locker room to tug it on over my head.
When we walked into the gym together,
Justin was stretched out on a bench near the weight racks when we found them, headphones in, nodding along to something only he could hear.
Kelcey sat on the edge of the mat beside him, scrolling her phone in a co-ordinating workout outfit that seemed like something an influencer would wear.
My clothes, which hadn’t seem too embarrassing in the locker room, suddenly felt like the ugliest, frumpiest outfit ever.
She looked up when we walked in, and her eyes did a quick lap over me, Rhys, the space between us, before settling into something bright that didn’t come anywhere near her eyes.
“There they are.” Kelcey stood to greet us. Her smile and bright voice were forced. “You were running so late I was wondering if Ainsley convinced you not to come.”
“He was picking me up from dance practice,” I said before Rhys could respond. There was an edge to my tone that I hadn’t done intentionally, but the slight narrowing of Kelcey’s eyes made me think it was the right move. I probably sounded like the protective girlfriend.
“You didn’t tell me she danced,” Kelcey told Rhys.
Her tone was still bright but I could feel the sharp edge of the weapon underneath.
It felt just like the way she’d spoken to Justin when she saw me in their house on Saturday night, except it was like she was getting mad at me for spending time with my own supposed boyfriend rather than hers.
She did a small pout that made my blood boil.
“I know so little about your life these days.”
“You know exactly as much as you’ve ever wanted to,” Rhys said, and something passed between them that had nothing to do with me at all—some old, worn groove of an argument they’d clearly had a hundred times.
Justin pulled one earbud out just long enough to say, “Hey, you made it,” to no one in particular, before putting it back in and returning to his set.
Kelcey looked at my shirt, her eyes darkening again. In a false bright voice she said, “Is that Rhys’s shirt?”
“It looks good on her, right?” Rhys asked. There was a deadly tone to his voice. “It’s nice to have a girlfriend who wants to wear my clothes.”
Kelcey’s face turned red and she looked like she was about to yell at him, when Landon jumped in.
“We should actually work out,” he said, steering us all away before this could explode into something worse. “Since that’s, in theory, why we’re here.”
What followed was the single most exhausting performance I’d ever had to give, and I’d once made out with Rhys in a closet.
Rhys installed himself at my side like it was simply where he belonged now, his hand closing over mine on the dumbbell to correct my grip, fingers overlapping mine for a beat longer than any actual correction required, his mouth close enough to my ear that I felt the words more than heard them.
“Wrists straight. You’re going to hurt yourself. ”
“I know how to hold a weight,” I said, and my voice came out thinner than I wanted it to, which he noticed, because the corner of his mouth twitched before he let go.
He spotted me on the bench next, hands hovering an inch above the bar, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off him even through my shirt, close enough that when I pushed the bar up on the last rep and my arms shook, his fingers brushed the backs of my hands before I’d even asked for help.
When I finished the set he hauled me upright by both wrists, and the momentum brought me half a step into his chest before either of us adjusted, close enough that I caught the exact moment his breath went a little uneven, close enough that I felt it more than saw it.
I stepped back first. He let me.
“You’re doing that on purpose,” I muttered, once Kelcey had drifted a few feet away to critique Justin’s form in a voice pitched just loud enough to be overheard.
“Doing what?”
“The hovering. The hands. Correcting my form like you’re my personal trainer.”
“We’re supposed to look like a couple.” He didn’t look at me, just loaded another plate onto the bar. His forearms flexed under the weight and I very carefully chose not to watch. “Couples touch each other. That’s the whole premise.”
“There’s a difference between ‘caring boyfriend’ and ‘personal trainer with boundary issues.’”
His lips twitched. “Duly noted.”
But he didn’t dial anything back. The next time he passed behind me to grab a resistance band, his hand landed at the small of my back, guiding me half a step to the side, and instead of dropping away right after, it stayed there a beat too long, warm through the thin fabric of my shirt.
It didn’t help that he was (objectively) obscenely good-looking in a way that felt almost unfair given everything else about him.
I’d known this before, in an abstract sense—it was hard to miss, the way half the party had orbited him without seeming to notice they were doing it—but there was something different about watching it happen up close, sweat starting to darken the collar of his shirt, the muscle in his forearm shifting every time he racked a weight, the total ease with which he moved through a room like he’d never once questioned whether he belonged in it.
I resented every single one of these observations on principle and would deny all of them if he ever asked.
“Water?” he asked, holding out his bottle without waiting for an answer, and I took it before I’d fully thought through what it meant to drink from the same bottle as a boy I’d tried to punch three days ago, tipping it back and handing it over right as Kelcey’s gaze swung toward us to catch the whole thing.
I wasn’t sure how Rhys could anticipate what she was going to do, but I was sure he had planned that for her to see anyway.
“Cute,” Kelcey said, appearing at my elbow the second the bottle changed hands. “Sharing water bottles. Very sanitary.”
“We’re basically the same person at this point, germ-wise,” Rhys said, capping it without looking at her.
“I bet.” Her smile didn’t move, but her face was starting to flush red from anger. “How long has this actually been going on? Nobody’s given me a straight timeline.”
“A while,” I said, echoing Rhys’s own line from the closet without meaning to, and watched something in his expression that might have been approval.
“A while,” Kelcey repeated, testing it, like she was hunting for the seam. “Funny. I don’t remember you existing before Saturday.”
“I don’t remember asking to exist in your memory at all,” I said, before I could stop myself, and Landon, a few feet away pretending to spot Justin, made a sound suspiciously like a laugh disguised as a cough.
Kelcey shifted her weight onto one hip as she adjusted the strap of her immaculate two-piece set. Her gaze flicked to Rhys, who was resetting a weight stack, before sliding back to me with a look of faux-innocent curiosity.
“Does Rhys still do that thing where he just picks you up when you’re in the middle of a set?
He used to do it to me all the time when we dated.
Every time I was on the mat, he’d just scoop me up over his shoulder like it was nothing.
” She let out a soft, melodic laugh that sounded totally rehearsed.
“He must do that with you too, right? I mean, since you guys are so comfortable with each other.”
Kelcey had this irritating way of speaking, where the words she said weren’t outright rude, but the tone made it obvious what her real intent was.
A wave of heat rushed up my neck. The trap was so obvious, so blatantly laid out to make me feel small and unchosen, that my brain completely stalled out.
We hadn’t even held hands in public until twenty minutes ago—the idea of Rhys Montgomery slinging me over his shoulder like a sack of flour felt lightyears away from our fragile truce.
I didn’t want him to do it, of course, but I didn’t want to let her think she was really that much better than me because of it.
“We haven’t really—“ I started, my voice wavering just enough for Kelcey’s smile to sharpen.
Before I could finish digging my own grave, a pair of large, warm hands clamped firmly around my waist from behind.
I gasped as my feet abruptly left the rubber floor.
Without a single word of warning, Rhys hoisted me straight up into the air as effortlessly as if I weighed nothing at all.
My instinct kicked in, my hands flying out to catch his shoulders for balance as he brought me level with his chest, his fingers digging securely into the soft fabric at my waist.
“Only when she asks nicely,” Rhys said smoothly into the top of my head, his voice deep and completely unbothered.
I looked down at him, my heart hammering against my ribs—partly from the sudden shock of being elevated, and partly because his face was suddenly inches from mine.
Up close, I could see the faint dusting of sweat at his temples, the dark ring around his irises, and the subtle, smug smirk pulling at his lip.
Kelcey’s smile flickered, a tiny crease forming between her brows. “Right. Well, I just meant—”
“Actually,” Rhys cut in, looking up at me with an unreadable warmth that made my breath hitch, “she’s a lot lighter than what I’ve been benching. Hold still, Ainsley.”
I gasped, realizing what he was about to do. “Rhys, don’t you dare—”