6. Spot Me
Spot Me
Natalia
Ican see him trying not to look at me in the mirror as I run, his reflection flicking away every time my eyes drift close.
He rolls his shoulders, cracks his neck, changes stations, all very controlled and disciplined, very I am a mature adult man unaffected by the existence of yoga pants.
It'd be more convincing if he wasn't trying so hard.
Watching him fight himself like that does something to me, it sparks a thought, a plan. Distant Kiri makes me want to peel the indifference off of him with my nails just to see what he’s hiding underneath. It's time to melt him with a little of my fire. We'll see how long he stays frozen.
I slow the treadmill, step off, and wipe my hands on my thighs casually, pretending I didn’t come down here already wound tight.
I walk past him, close enough that I know he feels the breeze of it, even though he attempts to keep his eyes fixed on the cable machine.
His attention snaps to me anyway. I feel it.
I head straight for the bench and start loading the bar with something heavier than I should probably attempt alone. It isn't exactly reckless enough to be truly stupid, but enough to require help, to make a point. Then I turn.
“Kiri?” I say, light and easy. “Are you okay to spot me?”
His hand stills on the cable attachment. At first, he does nothing. He doesn’t blink. Doesn’t move. Just stands there with his face blank and his body still. Then he looks at me. His eyes go to the bar, then the plates, then my face. Practical and assessing, so condescendingly mature.
“That’s a lot of weight,” he says. He steadies his voice into a flat, controlled observation.
I lift an eyebrow. “I know how much I loaded.”
He wipes his hands on a towel and walks over, calmly. He moves like I asked him to pass the salt, not stand over me while I lie beneath a loaded bar.
“Warm-up set?” he asks.
“I already warmed up.”
His mouth tightens slightly. “On the treadmill.”
“I have my own routine for warming up. It doesn't need your guidance, okay?”
“I’m sure it doesn't.”
I don't let him see me hesitate. I sit on the edge of the bench, roll my shoulders back, and swing my legs around like I do this every day with a six-foot-four wall of muscle and regret watching me intently.
The vinyl sticks briefly to my bare shoulder blades when I lie down.
I reach up, set my hands on the bar, then immediately notice how aware I am of him above me.
He steps behind the bench and positions himself with a careful distance, hands hovering where they’re supposed to, making sure he avoids touching me. Professional and detached. The world’s most infuriatingly polite spotter.
“Grip wider,” he says. His voice is steady enough to make me want to bite him.
I look up at him from the bench. “What?”
His gaze stays on the bar. “Your grip, make it a little wider. Your wrists are stacked. You'll pay for it in the morning. Unless the goal is to fuck up your shoulders for the rest of the week.”
“Is being in a gym what makes you this bossy? Testosterone and protein fueled authority?”
“I do things right. Does that answer your question?”
“Yep. Bossy.”
He doesn’t smile. Fine, I can be detached too. I adjust my grip because, unfortunately, he’s right. His eyes track the movement. He's focused now, watching my hands and elbows and the angle of the bar like this is mechanics, not tension.
“Ready?” he asks.
I nod.
“On three. One, two, three.”
I lift the bar off the rack. It’s heavy, heavier than I want to admit, but manageable. Kiri’s hands hover close under it, close enough that I can feel the shadow of him there. The first rep is clean.
“Great,” he says, quiet and clipped.
The second rep burns.
“Keep your elbows in.”
I exhale hard through my teeth. “See? Bossy.”
“Elbows in," he says, hands hovering, voice firm. I relent, bringing them in and the rep instantly gets easier. He smirks. "See? Right.”
I hate how fast my mouth wants to smile. I lower the bar again. He adjusts his stance behind me, attentive in a way that makes my skin prickle. He's watching everything now. The bar path, my breathing, my shoulders. The tiny tremor in my arms that I pretend isn’t there.
“Don’t rush it,” he says.
“I’m not.”
“You are. Nobody’s going to swipe if the rep takes longer than three seconds.”
I laugh before I can stop myself. It comes out high-pitched and breathless. His face changes, a flicker at the corner of his mouth, there and gone before it becomes a smile. My stomach twists but I ignore it.
The third rep is harder. The bar dips unevenly, my left wrist bending just enough to drop the line.
It happens fast, the weight tilting before I can correct it.
Kiri catches it instantly. Both hands close around the bar, firm and sure, taking just enough of the weight to steady it.
His body comes in closer, heat, sweat and presence suddenly right over me, and all the cold professionalism vanishes from his voice.
“Watch it.”
I can hear it, the concern, the warmth.
“I’ve got it,” I snap, even though there's a flutter in my chest.
“No, you don’t.” His voice is tight now, no performance left in it. “Rack it.”
“I can finish the set.”
“Nat, rack it.”
The command lands hard between us. Protective and so genuine it shakes something loose in my chest before I can stop it.
I push up with his help, and he guides the bar back into place with a solid metal clank.
Neither of us moves. His hands stay on the bar, knuckles tense.
I’m still lying beneath him, breathing fast, looking up at the underside of his jaw, the damp line of his hair near his temple, the way his chest rises and falls like he’s the one who nearly dropped it.
Then his eyes drop to mine. There's no mask of coldness left, not anymore. It's all heat wrapped in worry.
“You okay?” he asks.
I can't stand it. The way that it hits harder than flirting would have. I hate that concern looks good on him, that I can see exactly why I liked him in the first place, before the silence, before Rafe’s warning, before he decided my choices belonged to everyone but me.
“I’m fine,” I say.
His jaw flexes. “That wasn’t fine.”
“I don't need a lecture.”
“I’m not lecturing.”
“You have a lecturing-me tone.”
“I have a ‘don’t drop a loaded bar on your ribs’ tone.”
I glare at him. He glares back, and then, against all sense, his mouth twitches. It’s tiny, reluctant and incredibly cute, even if it's annoying.
“What?” I demand.
“Nothing.”
“No, say it.”
His eyes flick over my face, and some of the tightness eases out of him as a smile crosses his face. “You’re fucking stubborn.”
“I’m Polish. Same thing.”
This time he actually laughs. Just a short, small exhale, but it’s warm.
It’s his. The sound reaches into some old, stupid part of me that remembers voice notes and midnight messages.
The sound of him laughing under his breath like I’d surprised it out of him.
My body betrays me with a little rush of heat. Fuck this.
This was supposed to be punishment. This was supposed to be me forcing him to look, making him stand there and feel things while I stayed perfectly untouchable.
I didn't come down here to remember that he can be funny or that his concern still has hands he can use when it suits him. He steps back then, as if he remembers, too. The distance returns, but not all the way. He tries to put the coldness back on. I watch him do it. Watch his expression flatten, watch his shoulders settle, watch him become careful again. But it doesn’t work now.
“You should drop the weight,” he says, that cool voice returning.
I sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bench. “I’m done.”
“You don’t have to stop, just lower it.”
“No, it's fine, I’m finished.”
He looks at me, the muscles in his neck tensing. “Because I said to rack it?”
“Because I’m bored.”
“Bullshit,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief, a smirk on his face.
“What's bullshit is how you've been pretending not to look at me for the last twenty minutes. That's bullshit.”
His face goes still. I should feel victorious. I do, a little, but the satisfaction is tangled now, knotted with something I don't want to name.
He looks away first, reaching for his towel. “You're the one that came in here to start something.”
“I came in here to work out. I didn't know you'd be here.” Maybe I did. Maybe I even hoped so, but he doesn't need to know that.
“Sure.”
I stand, grabbing my own towel. “You’re very paranoid.”
“No,” he says, folding the towel in his hand. “I’m observant.”
The way he says it makes my stomach dip. Kiri always looks like he doesn't care about anything, but he sees everything. He saw the weight before it got away from me, my grip, the tremor. The game. Maybe he sees the part I’m trying to hide too.
“Thanks for the spot,” I say brightly, already stepping away. “All done.”
His eyes narrow slightly, like he hears the change.
“Natalia.”
I glance back. “What?”
He looks like he has five things to say and doesn't trust any of them.
“Don’t lift that heavy alone,” he says finally.
That’s what he chooses. I smile, sweetly. “Don't pretend you care about what I do all of a sudden, Kiri. It hasn't bothered you in the last year. I'll be just fine.”
His mouth presses into a line. “Okay, whatever.”
“Great.”
“Great.”
We stare at each other across the bench, both of us pretending this is about weightlifting.
Then I turn on my heel and head straight for the door, my heart hammering, my thoughts racing ahead of me like they’re trying to escape.
I fling the gym door open and move fast, almost running back toward the elevators, refusing to look back, refusing to let him see anything else.
I won't let him get to me like this. Not now, not ever. He lost that chance the minute he let Rafe tell him what to do. The minute he decided I was too young or fragile, like I didn’t know exactly what kind of fire I was walking toward.
This was supposed to be simple, controlled. An easy game I knew how to win.
But for one second, when his voice softened around my name, it wasn’t just a game anymore.