31. Chapter 31
“Merc, have you seen Colt?” Camila stood in Beau’s office doorway, twisting a shop rag and frowning. “He was here this morning, and Joyce said he showed for his shift at the diner, but…”
“But?” Beau prompted.
Camila twisted the rag harder. “I saw him watching a video of his race. No proof, but I think that pendejo from the race Saturday posted it and added a nasty song.”
Beau sighed. “Knew that jackass was gonna be trouble.”
The bell over the front door dinged, and Camila turned toward the lobby. She shoved the rag in her pocket and disappeared from his doorway. “Colt, what the hell? Were you—Jesus. Did you go for a run? You’re dripping.”
Beau raised his eyebrows and took off his glasses.
He set them on a stack of paperwork. Camila sounded worried, and when Beau saw the state of Colt he understood why.
Colt was wearing short running shorts and a tank top with the sides cut out, and they were stuck to his skin like paint.
His cheeks were bright red, and his eyes—
His eyes were the worst part. The circles under them had only gotten darker in the two days since the race, and his smile wasn’t reaching them at all.
“Yeah.” Colt grabbed a clean shop rag from the box under the desk and wiped at his face and neck. “I ran to the gym and did a few supersets instead of eating lunch.”
The gym was only a mile and a half from the shop, but it was a hundred and fifteen degrees out and the air was thick with humidity that had been trying to break since the last rain.
“Mhmm.” Beau crossed his arms and leaned against the doorway. “How many supersets?”
Colt shrugged. “Dunno. Four?”
“This is supposed to be your rest day,” Beau reminded him as Colt dug his gym bag out from under the counter. “Doesn’t sound like you’re doing much resting. You got a race Saturday. Planning to be burnt out before the flag drops?”
“Exactly,” Colt said, running a hand through his hair. His fingers got stuck in the wet curls, and he winced. “I have a race on Saturday. I gotta make sure I’m ready.”
“You are ready.” Beau nudged Camila’s shoulder and nodded toward the garage.
She gave Colt one more worried look before she left to get back to work.
Once the door to the shop was shut, Beau uncrossed his arms and stepped closer to Colt. “You’re gonna burn yourself out.”
“I’m fine,” Colt assured him, already heading toward the bathroom to change.
Beau wrapped his hand around Colt’s wrist before he could disappear. “If I catch you back at the gym today, I’ll cancel your track time for tomorrow.”
Colt looked stricken. “You wouldn’t.”
“Try me.”
Yanking his wrist free, Colt scowled. “You can’t—”
“I’m your coach,” Beau interrupted. “Not only can I, but I’m damn well obligated to. That’s my job here.”
“Your job.” Those green eyes flicked away from Beau, but not fast enough to hide the hurt in them. “Right. I’ll try to remember that.”
Then he slipped into the bathroom and shut the door. The lock slid in with a click.
Shit.
Goddamn complicated, that’s what this was. His job. It was his job. But even he had to admit they’d crossed enough lines that the two of them were on a whole new playing field.
They hadn’t talked about the morning after the race—not about the sim, the pool, or Colt waking up sleep-mussed in Beau’s bed at ten. They’d eaten breakfast, Beau had given him the day off, and that had been the end of it.
But he’d held that man in his lap while he fell to pieces, and now he’d reduced what was between them to a job.
Which was all it should be. Except that Beau had lain down to sleep Sunday night and pressed his face into his pillow, and when he’d smelled Colt, his heart had ached. Nothing about this was professional.
Beau put his hands on his hips and tipped his head back, his jaw tight. Then he rolled his shoulders and headed out into the garage.
Camila had her hands buried under a hood, and she gave him a questioning look.
“I’m taking off.” Beau hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “And I’ll be back soon to take Colt, too. Keep him outta trouble for a bit, will you?”
“Yeah.” Nodding, Camila set her hands on the shop towel she had draped across the front of the car. “Thanks, Merc. For looking out for him.”
“Mhmm.” Beau shut the shop door, then his office, and left before Colt was out of the bathroom.
***
Work was slow, which meant Colt’s brain was going fast, fast, fast. He'd watched the video someone had tagged him in more times than he could count, a compilation of every stupid move he'd made on Saturday.
Just for a little cherry on top, whoever had made the video had added the theme song from Jackass to it.
Fingers drumming against the desk, Colt glanced at the clock.
Three fifteen. The shop didn't close for hours, which meant he couldn't go use Beau's sim for hours, which meant he was just standing around wasting space and trying not to think about the way it had felt to hear those words out of Beau’s mouth.
“It's my job,” Colt sneered in an exaggerated southern accent as he picked at a piece of tape stuck to the side of the desk. “Your job. Sure. Only job I've ever heard of where someone ends up in your bed during the work day is—”
The bell over the door jingled, and Beau walked in looking annoyingly hot in a dark green tank top and black exercise shorts that hit him mid-thigh. Which made Beau either oblivious or fucking mean, because Colt didn't need to add this knowledge to his growing catalogue of Beau.
Reading glasses, happy trail, thick fucking thighs. Fuck.
Stop looking. Not your job.
That did it. Hard to give yourself an inappropriate hard-on when you were busy being pissed.
Colt picked up the clipboard where he kept a running list of daily tasks and looked for something to do. Unfortunately, he'd already blown through the list half an hour ago. He could pretend to read, though, avoid Beau's gaze until he went back into his office at least.
A hand plucked the clipboard from his grip, and he was given Beau's gym bag instead. He looked down at it, then up at Beau.
“Get changed. We're going out.”
“Out where?”
The urge to look inside the bag was high. Ignoring curiosity wasn't his strong suit. But he set the bag down on the desk anyway.
“Out.”
“Sorry, I've got work,” Colt said as he crossed his arms. “You know. My job.”
Beau's jaw ticked, and he let a breath out through his nose. “I know you're mad at me. Get changed anyway.”
“Oh, good.” Colt snatched up the bag and turned toward the bathroom. “So you haven't gone full robot-regression.”
In the bathroom, Colt ripped his shirt off and then froze, staring at his obedient ass in the mirror. Goddamnit. He'd folded like a lawn chair.
“You're pathetic, Rourke,” he mumbled to himself as he stripped off his joggers and unzipped the bag.
Inside he found his own black tee with a raptor skeleton across the back, and his own short, black workout shorts with t-rexes in every neon color of the rainbow.
The same clothes he'd worn under his suit Saturday for the race.
Beau had cleaned and folded them, and they smelled like his detergent, like his sheets, and Colt absolutely did not smell them.
Under the clothes was a pair of sneakers that definitely were not his, black and neon green with neon pink soles.
“You asshole,” Colt grumbled, pulling on the shirt.
Unfair that Beau got to gut-punch Colt with something cold and then melt him with something so goddamn thoughtful. The thought of Beau—mustached and all—standing in REI picking out neon fucking pink shoes made it damn near impossible to stay fully pissed.
He slung the bag over his shoulder and walked out in the short shorts he liked to call his hoochie daddy shorts.
Not anymore.
Beau was leaning over the counter, his ass and thighs testing the integrity of his shorts to the max. All big and hairy except the side of the left one, where a mess of wicked scars crept up from his knee to disappear into his shorts.
His short, short, shorts.
The title of hoochie daddy had been passed on. God bless America.
Maybe he wasn't mad mad anymore, but Colt was still stinging from Beau's attitude. Being hot didn't make him less of a dick, and bribery would get him nowhere.
The cab was like an oven if that oven also had water inside it.
The air was thick and hard to breathe through until Beau slid into the driver's side and turned the ignition.
It rumbled to life, and hot air hit Colt square in the face.
Air flow made things better, but not when that air was hotter than what you were breathing.
The truck cooled off as they drove, and Colt turned the AC vent toward himself. He sighed in relief.
Beau snorted. “It's hotter than this on the track.”
“Yeah, well, on the track, the heat is expected and a choice.” The heat was rising off the road in a visible haze. “This is just Mother Nature being petty. I can handle one. The other makes me wanna die. I don't make the rules.”
“Well, you better be expecting more heat, because we're going hiking.”
Colt scoffed at Beau, who was driving with one hand, his elbow on the window. “It's a hundred and fifteen degrees!”
“And you were perfectly fine running in it today,” Beau pointed out. “‘Sides, it's only ninety on the mountain.”
Colt’s stomach lurched.
"We're not going to the pass.” Beau tapped his fingers on the wheel. “Different trail. North side."
Colt relaxed. The mountain in daylight was mostly fine.
It was only that specific stretch of road.
He'd been up to the peak dozens of times for hiking or skiing, if they got enough snow to open the lodge.
But seeing the section of guardrail they'd fixed and the golden rim Rosy had turned into a memorial was always a gut punch he didn't need.
He didn’t talk much through the forty-five-minute drive. Just stared out the window and reminded himself he was angry.