Chapter 2
heart smart
Max
I exercise every single day, because if I don’t stretch and use my leg muscles, everything hurts more.
The car accident that killed both my parents also shattered my sacrum and my acetabulum.
There are some breaks even the best surgeons in the world can’t repair, but keeping my muscles strong helps.
I have a series of Tae Kwon Do forms I do every evening and a rowing machine I use every morning after warming up with yoga.
This morning, I do my exercises back to back and I push myself. Probably harder than I should.
The workout I do today is brutal. I’ll regret it tomorrow when my muscles ache. That’s okay—I need the distraction. I want the distraction.
The distraction from her. Holly fucking Dolinsky.
I shouldn’t be putting “Holly Dolinsky” and “fucking” in the same sentence, even in my head.
Unfortunately, they are already together in my thoughts.
Worse still, when they are linked in my mind, “fucking” is not in the form of the descriptive adjective I usually use, but the rather the verb I almost never use.
The verb I have never used in the same sentence with a colleague’s name before.
Especially not a sentence like, “Last night in the shower, I jerked off as I imagined fucking Holly Dolinsky.”
Not that I actually did that last night.
No. I did that the night after we first met. And again on Monday night after she came into my lab.
But not last night. Because now that I know just how fucking gorgeous Holly Dolinsky is, it didn’t seem . . . right somehow.
It was one thing to stand in the shower stroking my cock while I imagine fucking a woman who is plain, but smells amazing. Or a woman who smells amazing and has the sheer guts to stomp into my clean room and go toe-to-toe with me.
It’s another thing entirely to do so now that I know how beautiful she is. Now that I know she didn’t actually want me to know she’s beautiful.
So now that I know, it’s not happening again. Which is why this morning’s work out was so completely grueling.
I’m nearly done on my rowing machine when my cell phone rings. I don’t recognize the number, but answer it anyway. The name attached to the number is Charlene and the avatar on my phone shows a picture of a busty blonde.
Sometimes Tavey calls me from unfamiliar numbers because she thinks it keeps me on my toes. I have no idea how she hacks my phone like that. I keep that filed under Questions About My Sister I Don’t Want the Answer To.
“What do you think?” she asks as soon as I answer.
“About what?” I ask.
“About the gift. Did you get the gift?”
“No. What gift?”
“Go look on your front porch.”
I pull the phone away from my face and glare at it, tempted to hang up on her.
I’m sweaty and tired. My leg is aching. I want a shower and some ice.
I exercise because I have to, not because I like it, but because the combination keeps my leg muscles from seizing up. But, yeah, sometimes it makes my leg hurt like a bitch. And sometimes it makes me even more of an asshole.
“Just tell me what it is and I’ll pretend to like it,” I grumble.
She laughs. Tavey is always laughing. Most days, her perennial good mood is forty-five percent annoying and fifty-five percent lovable.
Today isn’t most days.
“Go get the package,” she coaxes.
I grab the towel and water bottle from the chair by the door, wiping off my face and chest as I walk. “There better actually be a package on my front porch,” I grumble.
“It’s there,” she assures me.
“Let me guess, you hacked my doorbell camera again?”
There’s a loud smooch from over the phone line. “I hack because I love. Besides, you’re going to love it. I promise.”
It takes me several minutes to make it to the front door from the guest room at the back of the house that I use as a home gym. Tavey doesn’t comment on how long it takes.
She knows me well enough to know that it takes as long as it takes. Besides, for all I know, she has cameras planted throughout the house and is tracking my progress. Or maybe she has me tagged like wildlife. Who the fuck knows with Tavey.
I may be the reclusive hermit in the family, but she’s the weird one.
I find the package—not from like I thought it would be, but mailed from her home in Houston—and bring it inside. The box is big enough that it’s awkward to carry in one hand while I hold the phone in the other, but thankfully, it’s lighter than it looks.
When I step into range of the Ring security camera, Tavey gives a squeal of mock horror. “Put a shirt on before you go outside! You’ll give your neighbors a heart attack.”
“I was working out when you called.”
“Still!”
I give my Ring the finger.
On the end of the line, Tavey laughs again. “Very mature.”
“Stalker.”
“Hey, if I didn’t stalk you, I would never know what was going on in your life. Because you never call me.”
“Why would I need to call you? You call me.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just open the present.”
In the living room, I switch the phone to speaker, set it and the package on the coffee table, and open the box.
“It’s full of socks,” I say wryly.
“Sox in box! From Dr. Seuss. Get it?”
“Yeah.” Like I said, Tavey’s the weird one.
There are socks with penguins. Socks with polka dots. Socks with sandwiches and graduation caps.
“There have to be like fifty pairs of socks in here,” I grumble, but I’m working hard to keep the smile out of my voice.
“You better count,” she says slyly.
“Let me guess, the socks are part of one of your elaborate puzzles.”
This is what Tavey does.
Professionally, she’s a cryptographer who does a little light hacking on the side for fun. Her hobby is harassing me with puzzles and weird games she devises.
I keep digging in the box. Eventually, the socks give away to boxer shorts—which are all just as ridiculous as the socks. At the bottom of the box are puzzle pieces. Loose. All red.
“Jesus H. Christ. Can’t you just text like a normal person?”
But even as I ask, I’m moving the socks and boxers to the sofa so I can dump the puzzle pieces onto the coffee table.
“Send a text?” she asks. “Like a boring person, you mean.”
I sit down on the sofa and start sorting out the edge pieces. Yeah, I’m still sweaty and gross. And I fucking hate the way sweat feels as it dries on my skin.
Tavey is the one person I would put off a shower for. If I tell her I’ll call her back in ten minutes, she might not pick up. In ten minutes she could be off focused on something else or off settling some international crisis. With her, you never know.
So, I sort pieces and talk to my sister.
“So why’d you send a package today?”
“Do I need a reason to send a gift to my big brother?”
“You always have in the past.”
“Maybe I just think you need a hobby.”
I pause sorting the puzzle pieces to frown at my phone. “I don’t have time for a hobby.”
“Right, because you’re all work, work, work. Did you learn nothing from The Shining?”
“What—”
But before I can ask her what the life lesson from The Shining is supposed to be, she cuts me off. “Holy shit, who’s that?”
“Who’s who?” I ask. I don’t even look up from the puzzle. Tavey is always doing ten things at once and for all I know she’s watching surveillance from somewhere on the other side of the globe while she talks to me.
“Who’s that at your door?”
Apparently, she’s still got my hacked Ring feed up on her end. “I don’t know. Let me pull up—”
“No! There’s no time to pull up the app. Go get a shirt on!”
Her voice is so high I can’t tell if it’s excitement or horror that has her barking out orders.
I stand, but then she adds, “No! Wait. Skip the shirt. You’re ripped. And there’s no time.”
Tavey is six years younger than me, but bossy as fuck.
“Jesus, calm down, Tavey,” I mutter as I head to the door.
I have no idea who or what could be on the other side of the door. I haven’t ordered any groceries or take out. I’m not expecting any deliveries. Frankly, this feels like part of Tavey’s elaborate puzzle.
I’ve got the phone in my hand and the towel tossed around my neck when I throw open the door—expecting . . . I don’t even know what. A flock of geese. The cast of Cats. With Tavey, you never know.
When I open the door, it’s not a flock of geese or the cast of Cats.
It’s Holly.
Fuck.
If I’d thought she looked pretty that day in her class, today she looks fucking stunning.
Or maybe stunningly fuckable.
She’s in a dress that’s short enough to expose her legs, which are tan and muscular and gorgeous. It’s got those thin straps that leave her shoulders and arms bare and immediately make me wonder if she’s got a bra on. If she does, how the hell is it keeping anything up without straps?
Her hair is up in a ponytail on top of her head that somehow makes her neck look even longer.
In class she looked like a sexy librarian—elegant, but aloof—and it nearly killed me.
Now? With all this exposed skin? Looking relaxed and touchable? And on my doorstep?
I am absolutely screwed.
I’m a dead man.
All my plans of contributing to the good of humankind, of revolutionizing crop sciences, and solving world hunger?
Yeah. None of that shit is going to happen, because my heart is going to pound out of my chest like that alien in . . . well, Alien.
And I’m just standing there in the doorway.
Like a fucking moron.
While the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen stands there, staring at me.
No. Not at my face. At my chest.
My bare chest.
Because my fucking sister told me not to put on a shirt.