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Page 13 of Gym Bros (Bay Area Bros #2)

“You should. It would probably help.”

“Any other professionals you recommend I see?”

He grins. “No—just those.”

“Send me some numbers, I’ll set it up. How long do I have to stay like this?”

“Downward dog is next.”

“Oh.”

“So whenever you’re ready.”

“Show me?”

I hold my pathetic version of cobra while Calyx pushes himself backward into a geometrically perfect triangle. His feet are flat on the mat, legs long and straight. His arms balance his weight perfectly. I also have a full, unobstructed view of his chest.

So. Fucking. Pretty.

Before I start imagining licking him or something and tenting my shorts, I push myself up.

My hamstring puts a hard stop on the movement. “Nope,” I say.

“Bend it,” he says immediately like he’s reading my mind. “Keep the weight distributed through your arms and your left leg.”

He’s standing again, his hand pressed to my lower back, easing me into a deeper left hamstring stretch while I bend my knee to let my right leg off the hook.

“Okay, but I want you to let your right leg do something. Not just hang there. Press your heel back just until you feel it, then ease off.”

I do it four or five times, terrified to feel that horrible pop again. I’m overly cautious about it. “Wherever it’s mildly uncomfortable, hold there for a few breaths,” Calyx tells me.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says, and doesn’t even hesitate.

Swallowing my nerves, I push my heel back again to find the stretch, and even though my heart is still thrumming with anxiety, I do as he says and breathe.

He keeps his hand on my back, the heel of it applying pressure to my tight tailbone.

It’s a spicy stretch for sure, and I don’t look half as good as he did in the mirror, but I can feel where balance comes into play, especially when he explains how to use my arms in the pose to distribute my weight.

“Okay, now just step through into forward fold and stand back up.”

I rise and look down at him .

“That’s it,” he says. Hands in prayer position, he gives me a nod. “Namaste.”

I grimace. “You made it look easy, but it’s actually not.”

“I bet you make a lot of things look easy that are decently impossible,” he says.

I give him a wary look. “No need to overdo it. I’m okay with you not rolling your eyes at me.

He presses his lips together. “It wasn’t you,” he says. “Please don’t take anything from before personally. I’ve been in kind of a mood, but I can leave it outside. I’m glad you called me on it. Someone needed to.”

“I get it,” I tell him, gesturing at my leg. “I haven’t been in the best place either since this happened.”

He nods. “Let’s do it a few more times, and then I want to show you a back bend that should be easier than forward fold.”

He doesn’t salute the sun with me on the next few rounds.

Instead, he circles me, hands on me in all kinds of places.

Shoulders, wrists, the nape of my neck, my lower back—my hips at one point in downward dog.

I wish it didn’t feel so fucking good. I wish my body didn’t respond to each new touch like a dried up flower getting a full drink of water, but in my fourth cobra, I groan on purpose—just so he’ll put firmer counter pressure on my tailbone. Am I proud of it? No.

But let’s face it. I’ve had the least human contact of my life over the last five weeks.

I let Beauty sleep in bed with me just so I have something warm and alive to wrap my arms around.

I think I underestimated how much fighting satisfied my need for touch.

Grappling isn’t sexy, but it releases endorphins I’m obviously starved for.

“You probably don’t wrestle, huh?” I ask Calyx.

“Um…not in the traditional sense.”

I huff. “I take that to mean you’re in a relationship where you get to do the unconventional kind of wrestling? ”

“Ha. No. No relationship. But yeah, that was the unconventional kind I meant. Totally appropriate to talk about right now when you’re asking about sports. Kidding. Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine.” I change the subject though, not needing to think about that . “Did you ever play any sports?”

“I didn’t go to normal school,” he tells me. “We traveled too much for work.”

“Your work?”

“Mmhm.”

“So, you didn’t have to deal with high school? Lucky.”

“You think?” he asks. “I feel like I was robbed.”

“Yeah?”

He shrugs. “A little.”

I’m standing again, wondering if he’s gonna want me to go through the routine again. “Do you not like modeling?”

He scrunches his nose, and it has no right to be that cute. Not when he already has ten of the cutest toes I’ve ever seen. There’s got to be something wrong with him. “It’s not that I don’t like it. I like parts of it. I like the clothes, or pretending to be someone else…it’s just…”

“You don’t have to talk about it,” I say hastily. I don’t want it to seem like—what? That I want to get to know him better? That I’m interested? I’m not.

“I didn’t really have much of a childhood is all,” he concludes.

“Yeah, I guess not.”

He shrugs. “It’s a trade-off. I got to see the world. Most people probably can’t say that.”

“Right.”

“Anyway, go ahead and lie down. I wanna show you a different way to stretch your spine out.”

He directs me into something called the plow pose, which I have to actively work not to laugh about especially when I see the position it puts him in. “This feels…vulnerable.”

He’s on his back with his legs stretched completely over his head, his toes on the floor, while I’m a mess of bent in half brawn that has gravity to thank for the fact that I even get close to what he’s doing.

He laughs, his face very red from the inverted position. He rolls out of the pose, then gets up again to try and tweak mine.

His hands on my bare legs give me instant goosebumps. “Too tight,” he mentions, before moving around to sit right where my ass is lifted off the floor.

For reasons I can only make an educated guess at, his hand on my lower back in this position feels a hell of a lot different than before.

“I think it’s your hip flexors,” he says. “Not your eight pack.”

“Why?”

“Well, you can obviously bring your knees to your chest as long as they’re bent.”

“I have to be able to do that for kicking,” I tell him.

“They’re still super tight, though,” he says, running his hands literally along the underside of my thighs. Over my shorts, but still, dangerously close to my ass.

Fuck me.

The boner that wants to emerge so badly threatens again.

“Does that feel okay?” he asks when he applies a firmer touch. A rub .

“Mmhm,” I manage.

“Understand I’m not a massage professional, but I’ve had enough of them in my life that I’m not completely clueless.”

He say this as if he doesn’t realize what he’s doing is a huge turn on, and that my balls are literally right there.

He avoids touching them though, like he can tell exactly where they are, which makes me wonder if he can see them through my shorts. Jesus Christ. Breathing isn’t easy in this position with my lungs jammed halfway up my chest, but it’s fucking impossible with him touching me like that .

Why I don’t stop him is anyone’s guess. Not respecting my own limits maybe.

His thumbs land on two tendons that desperately need it, and I groan. He grinds pressure into them, and I go lightheaded with how shallow my breathing gets.

Finally, he pats the backs of my thighs and helps me out of the position, urging a slow lowering of my spine and to let my legs follow.

My abs engage, and I shudder.

I check my shorts to make sure there’s not a huge bulge. I’m okay. Just a semi—not a full boner.

I wonder what Evan would say to a repeat of last Monday? I’m not sure I wouldn’t reciprocate this time, though. The desire to touch and be touched is rearing its head. That would definitely fuck up the friendship.

No, I need to make peace with my hand and a squirt of lotion. That’s the safest bet.

Calyx glances at the clock on the wall. “Wow. That went by quick. How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” I say shakily.

“Have you gone back to your gym yet?”

“I was planning to next week. That’ll be six weeks from the injury.”

“You think you’ll stick with this awhile?” he asks.

I sit up. “I have to admit, it feels a little hopeless.”

He frowns and shakes his head. “Not at all. You’re doing great.”

“Yeah, all right. I’ll give it another week.” I’ve got nothing better to do. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure. ”

“What’s the deal with goat yoga?”

He laughs. “Honestly, I don’t know. But it looks like fun.”

“No, but I mean what is it? I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t seen it. Are there actual goats?”

His pretty smile lingers, and his eyes shine. “Yeah. Baby goats. You do yoga while they climb all over you. It looks cute. I’m not sure how effective it is. More like a dumb thing to do with friends before mimosas.”

That actually does sound fun. If I had friends. “Do they have it here?”

“They have everything here,” he says.

“I’d totally be down for goat yoga,” I say. “And mimosas.”

He blinks a few times and stares at me.

Fuck, that sounded like I was asking him out, didn’t it?

“I could look?—”

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean?—”

“No, it could be good for you.”

“I don’t have anybody to go with,” I say, trying to backtrack on the way I initially made it sound. Because I was not trying to get Calyx of all people to go to goat yoga with me.

“Oh, but I do,” he says. “I’m gonna see if I can find a class this weekend. You like girls, right?”

“Um…” Is he asking if I’m straight? “Sure.”

“Because I know two who’ll love you. Unless you have someone—I’m not saying I’m trying to set you up, but if you are available…”

“I…am,” I say like I’m new to English.

“They’re fun, and they’re mostly harmless. Unless you don’t want them to be.”

Jesus, what the fuck is he talking about?

“I prefer harmless,” I mumble.

Calyx laughs—like a real laugh.

“Why is that funny? ”

He gestures at me. “Because. You’re…”

He nods like the joke I am should be obvious, but then he sees my face and looks mildly horrified. “An MMA fighter,” he says quickly. “Like—you fight people with your hands. On purpose.”

“Oh.”

“That’s literally all I meant. That you could defend yourself.”

“I don’t like fighting women,” I say, and realize that sounds about as dumb as a box of rocks.

“Of course not. But do you wanna do goat yoga?” he asks like he’s trying to get back to safer ground.

“I mean, I’ll try it. But I can barely do a sun salutation.”

“You did great,” he argues. “And I promise—goat yoga is way more about the goats than the yoga.”

“I thought you said you’d never done it.”

“I’m making another assumption, but I’m pretty sure it’s a safe one,” he says.

I nod. “I’ll think about it. Let’s see how the week goes.”

“Sure. Yeah. That means I’ll see you tomorrow?”

He sounds like he’s looking forward to it, and I wonder how much of this is an act.

“Yeah,” I tell him. As difficult as it is for me to be bad at something in front of someone, it’s even harder to back away from a challenge.

I guess I’m stubborn that way. I also, and I have to admit this to myself, sort of want to see him again.

The eye candy. The hands on me. Whether he likes me or not, he’s got something I need.

“Great!” he says, brightening. His beauty is fucking blinding.

I look away this time. “See you then,” I tell him.

Before I know it, he’s beside me, walking with me to the door. “You’ll like tomorrow,” he tells me. “We’ll do strength poses. One of them is called warrior.”

I glance down at him. “Sounds good. ”

“We’ll build off the sun salutation,” he goes on as he opens the door for me.

“You’re laying it on pretty thick,” I say.

“Is it working?” he asks.

“Working to what?”

“Prove I’m not an asshole?”

I think about it a moment and realize he’s not quite as scary as he was an hour ago. I feel slightly less tense. “Yeah, I guess.”

He smiles, and fuck. I wish he’d stop doing that.

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