Chapter 32
thirty-two
PRESENT DAY
KATE
The treadmill flies beneath my feet as I sprint. Sweat courses down my body, across my black sports bra and leggings, but I only run faster.
No matter how many times I jack up the speed, the comfortable numbness I seek is nowhere to be found. There’s a few people dotting the row of treadmills beside me, but Pulse Fitness is almost empty.
Granted, it’s almost midnight on a Friday.
My two French braids bounce across my shoulder blades as I run. I try to forget the distant look in Brandon’s eyes this morning as we worked silently inside that stupid office. He tried to mask whatever he was feeling beneath his cocky smirk, but it didn’t work.
Either I’m getting better at reading him, or I’ve finally cracked Brandon Roberts.
I curse myself and run faster. Roping him into my ugly family dynamics was a terrible idea. Utilizing him as a shield from Hopefully Yours was every bit as unfair. I don’t know what I was thinking. All I knew was that a breath of fresh air stood across that parade route, and I threw myself at him.
Pathetic. Selfish. Disappointing.
Now I’ve ruined whatever was mending between us. I know I can’t rekindle our relationship without likely breaking his heart again—something I adamantly refuse to do now that I know what he’s been through—but we could still stay friends, couldn’t we?
I’m shocked by the impact of that thought. Of how much I want to be friends with Brandon. The desperate need to keep him in my life—in a strictly platonic way, of course. But it’s ruined now.
Rivers of sweat pour from my hairline. I smack the emergency stop button on the treadmill, snatch my sweat towel, and stalk toward the hall. Anger bubbles over my sadness, and I let it.
I’m pissed at my parents, pissed at myself.
I want to hit something.
So I make a pit stop at the front desk where Levi thankfully is not and check out a set of black boxing gloves. These ones have velcro so I can tighten them fairly easily myself. I’ve already got one glove on as I shove open the door to the boxing area.
I freeze across the threshold, surprise paralyzing my body.
A very bare-chested Brandon rains down punches on the farthest punching bag from me. His tan torso dips and flexes as he throws blow after blow like it’s been choreographed. Sweat drips from the tips of his hair. The room is otherwise empty, and I still have one foot out the door.
I could leave. Pretend I never saw him. Pretend I don’t feel this pang of longing.
Tears spring to the surface, but I clench my jaw.
Despite the desperate need urging my legs to run to him, I refuse. I can’t—I won’t—take Brandon to Marisol Bay. The goodness in this man is raw and real. My family doesn’t deserve him anymore than he deserves to be exposed to their toxicity.
I shift to escape when I hear my name panted from across the room.
“Kate?”
I swivel as if I’ve been caught red-handed. Brandon watches me, chest heaving. He blinks a bead of sweat from his eyes, wiping his brow with a glove. We stare at each other for a long moment.
I’m tethered to the doorframe until the inky roses on his shoulder rise and fall in a shrug. His mouth turns crooked, and he finally puts me out of my misery.
“Back so soon for another lesson, Katie Cat?”
A tiny sob almost flies out at how nice he’s being, but I swallow it with a jerky nod.
His crooked grin splits into a smile, and I force myself not to run to him. The absent look in his eyes today was enough for a lifetime, and it scared me to think he may never smile at me like this again.
I trudge over, holding out my free glove like a petulant child off of time-out.
“Oh no,” he murmurs, eyes twinkling. “Don’t tell me you haven’t even learned how to put on your gloves. Haven’t I taught you anything?”
A laugh forces its way through the hard lump in my throat. “Nope. Maybe you’re not as great a teacher as you think.”
“Or maybe you’re just a terrible student.” His dimples punctuate his hollow cheeks. “You do know that it’s almost one a.m..”
“I know. Couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.”
I study him as he eases off his own gloves. Brandon is slicked with almost as much sweat as me, but he doesn’t smell bad. If anything, whatever woodsy-scented deodorant he wears mingles with his natural scent in a concoction that’s making me re-think my life decisions.
A little voice in the back of my head laughs maniacally at my commitment to stay “friends.” I remember Brandon admitting as much over the phone before that first boxing lesson.
“The friend zone is a place neither you or I would last long in, and you know it.”
Brandon appraises me before nodding toward one of the heavy punching bags. “Let’s see what you’ve learned, smart alec.”
But my laugh catches as Brandon’s searing fingers capture my wrist. They brush the sensitive skin across my pulse point as he slides on my last glove.
Any amusement melts away as he flicks his eyes upward. The expression meeting mine is ocean deep, a current of unknown depth, before he drops his eyes to my bouncing left knee. The corner of his mouth quirks the tiniest bit. Brandon backs away, and I fight the absurd urge to stumble after him.
He nods toward the bag. “Show me what you’ve got, scaredy Kate.”
The tension snaps, and I roll my eyes.
I plant my feet in front of the bag like Brandon taught me, staggering my stance in the invisible quadrants that now live rent-free in my mind.
I send a glove flying toward the leather surface. It smacks into the bag in what I hope is a decent right-cross. The room is quiet enough that the punch sounds deafening.
“Again.” Brandon’s voice is low, practically scraping the mats toward me.
I roll my shoulders back, lift my fists, and obey.
My right glove sinks into the leather before I follow it with a jab from my left. It felt off-kilter, even more so than usual. My sense of gravity pitches and rolls, likely tied to the man behind me.
“Stop.”
His command is little more than a growl, and a delicious prickle skirts across the nape of my neck. The tiny hairs there vibrate with awareness that Brandon is suddenly much closer. The heat of his chest radiates across the exposed skin between the back of my sports bra.
“Why?” I breathe, not daring to turn around.
Seconds tick past agonizingly slow in the heavy silence.
I suck in a tiny gasp as Brandon’s calloused palm wraps around the bare skin of my waist. His hand is massive, fingers curling across my stomach. Every cell stills beneath his touch.
“Your punch is sloppy,” he grates out.
Brandon steps around me. His expression is still that of a vast ocean, but a current of electricity now builds beneath. Brandon doesn’t break our eye contact as he lowers his knees to the mat in front of me.
“Punch from your core, Kate,” he murmurs, tapping my abdomen. “Like this.”
His calloused hands come up to bracket my hips.
He twists my body in example, and it only takes a few repetitions before I trust myself to relax into the movement.
I let him manipulate my hips as I sink into my stance, tighten my abdomen, and punch.
He twists in time with me, and my glove sinks forcefully into the bag.
It sways harder than it ever has, and I can’t ward off a tiny grin. I throw right hook after hook in the safety of Brandon’s grip, only stopping when he draws away. He drags his thumbs across my bare stomach as he lets go. A shiver courses through me as he stands.
“Better.” His voice is cracked desire, and it fans a flame across my cheeks.
“Thanks.” It’s all I can say.
It takes all my willpower to not throw him to the mat for an entirely different reason. I’m craving his skin against mine. My body is begging for him to soothe away my stress in that expert way of his.
Brandon is temptation personified, body and soul, and my willpower is dwindling.
“I’ll do it,” he suddenly says, taking my eyes captive until I’m lost in a sunlight-dappled forest. Although his voice is rough, the soft smile tipping his mouth distracts me before I wander the trees again.
“Do what?”
“Come to Marisol Bay. Be your fake boyfriend.”
Tears spring to my eyes, but I bite the inside of my cheek. “Brandon, you don’t have to. I shouldn’t have let you get roped into all of that. Whatever friendship is fixing between us isn’t worth messing up just to…get my parents off my back.”
Brandon is quiet for a long moment. “Then that’s all the more reason for me to come.” He steps closer, and the air practically crackles. “I made a promise to be there for you, Kate. Plus”—his lips twitch—“I’m your friend.”
I roll my lips to keep from laughing, because friends do not undress each other with their eyes—a crime we are both guilty of at the moment.
Brandon’s lips curl into a whisper by my ear. “So take me to Marisol Bay. I dare you.”
I swivel my head toward him, and my lips almost graze his. I’m satisfied when I hear his own sharp intake of breath.
If I want something I’ve never had, I’ve gotta do something I’ve never done, right? Perhaps keeping a friend like Brandon in my life has been the missing puzzle piece all along. It could become my new-New Year’s resolution.
Even though the word tastes like a bad idea, it rolls off my tongue.
“Okay.”