Page 24 of Resistance Training

“Cindy told me to come pick you up.”

“Ohhhhhhhhh! And you came because you were jealous!” She leans into me, wrapping her arms around me. “Poor widdle Bwadwee.”

“I wasn’t.” I remove her arms from around me and open the passenger door to my SUV. “Get in.”

“That’s what she said!”

“Vivian, I don’t have time for this.”

“Oh!” She holds up her hands in front of her chest. “What are you gonna do, ghost me again?!”

“Get in the car.”

She reaches for my beanie.

“Do not touch the beanie. Get in the car, Vivian.”

“If I don’t get in the car, will you spank me?!” She turns, bends forward, resting her elbows on the passenger seat. “I think you should because I’ve been a very bad girl.”

Jesus.

“Boop!” She reaches back to flip her skirt up. She’s wearing black tights, but I can see the curve of her ass and the white of her panties and the smooth bare skin of her upper thighs. What the fuck—those are thigh-high tights?!

That’s a thing? She went to a bar to meet other guys with nothing between her ass and this miniskirt but panties? Oh, hell no.

The only reason my sanity is still hanging by one thread is that she doesn’t look back at me over her shoulder while she’s sticking her ass up at me. It’s almost like she knows it would put me over the edge. And I bet she’s not as bold as she thinks she is either.

“Get. In. The. Car.”

“Uggghhhh. Fine!” She gets in the car.

I shut the door. By the time I get around to the driver’s seat, she’s pulling off her jacket. Now I’m going to have to see the outline of her hot body in that hot red shirt out of the corner of my eye when I’m driving. She is a driving hazard. She’s an everything hazard. “Put your seat belt on.”

“I’m going to! I had to take my jacket off first. Geez!” She makes a big show of clicking the seat belt in.

I hand her the small bottle of water that was in the cupholder. “Drink this.”

She bursts out laughing. “You brought me water?!”

“You need to start rehydrating immediately.”

“Oh, sir, yes sir, yes, captain, oh my captain!” She salutes me and then tries to open the bottle but can’t even twist the cap off. “Ow.”

“Are you kidding me?” I twist it off for her.

“My arm’s sore.”

“You didn’t stretch today, did you?” I start the engine.

“No. I worked out this morning.”

God, that pisses me off. “Rest days are not optional, Vivian. That’s why we train three days a week. More isn’t better—smarter is better. Trust the process.”

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“There’s no way I didn’t tell you that.” Shit. I probably forgot to tell her that because she scrambles my brain, and that is exactly why I can’t be around her.

I open up the GPS app on my phone. I already programmed in her address, which is in my client database, before I left.

I don’t talk again until I stop at the next street light.

“Rest days are when the body actually builds the muscle we’re working for.

When you do strength training you’re creating microscopic tears in the muscle fibers.

It’s the repair process that’s going to make the muscle fibers grow back stronger. That only happens during recovery.”

She takes a sip of water. “That’s what we need to do,” she says, looking straight ahead.

“What?”

“The muscle fibers of our friendship were torn, and now we need to take a rest from all the tension between us so we can grow our relationship back stronger.” She’s speaking so thoughtfully now, she doesn’t even sound tipsy.

She gulps down more water, puts the cap back on the bottle, places the bottle in the cupholder, and clasps her hands in her lap, like a good little girl.

She doesn’t say a thing for two blocks.

Maybe she got everything out of her system.

When I stop at a red light, she exhales and says, “I cannot believe you’re being such a dick about what happened eight years ago.”

And here we go.

“I’m not being a dick about what happened eight years ago.”

“You still haven’t read the emails I sent you!”

“What difference does it make?”

“If you read them it might change everything.”

Exactly.

I have nothing to say to that.

“You are such a scaredy-cat,” she says, matter-of-factly.

“I’m not.”

“You are. You’re a scaredy-cat who’s scared of baby cats and the woman who knows you better than anyone. Which is me, by the way. You’re being a stubborn ass, and it’s boring.”

“Oh, is it?” I guess those nachos she ate were a little spicy.

“Yeah. Did you read the book I gave you yet?”

“I mean, it’s only been a few hours, but yeah, I read a couple of chapters.”

“And? What’s your asshole review?”

“The kitten was not impressed by John Green’s prose.”

She snorts. “I haven’t read any of it yet.”

“Well, I’m not going to wait for you to catch up.”

“Well, I’m not going to wait for you to catch up either,” she says, languidly turning her head in my direction.

I turn onto her street and pull up outside her house.

Put on the parking brake. Close the app.

Leave my phone on the dashboard mount. I don’t unlock the doors.

Her house is cute. I like it for her. She’s left the porch light on.

I wonder if she thought she was going to bring some random guy home tonight or if she has it on a timer. “You’re home,” I say.

“I know.” She looks straight ahead when she sighs and then says, “Look, I don’t believe in playing games. I really don’t.” She sounds so rational I almost believe she’s sober. “Cindy told me not to play games with you…” She looks over at me again. “But I think you want me to.”

Uh-oh.

“The thing is, Bradley, I feel good. I spent three months feeling bad. Years, maybe, even. And I feel good again. I feel good in my body and I feel good because I’m with you.

Even though you’re being a stubborn ass, I’d rather be with you than with someone who isn’t being a stubborn ass.

I wasn’t sure if I could ever find my way back to myself—the part of myself I lost after you left.

But I feel that spark again, and it’s because of you, even when you’re being a dickhead. ”

“I’m glad you feel good, but I can’t date you, Vivian. I don’t date my training clients. It’s gym policy.”

“Jim who? Let me talk to him.” She smirks, but there’s sadness in her eyes, and I can’t look at her.

“It’s a strict gym policy that I expect my employees to adhere to and that I myself have been adhering to.”

“Easy fix. You’re fired.” She unbuckles the seat belt, maneuvers the seat back a few inches, and turns her body to face me.

“Your sister hired me.”

“Then I quit.”

“I still won’t date you.”

“So what you’re saying is you want me to date other guys?”

“I am definitely not saying that.”

“But you don’t want to date me?”

“I don’t want to date you…” I say.

She blinks at that. Bites her lip. She sits up straighter—in that tight, red top—leans in across the center console, and rests her hand on my right thigh. “Do you want to fuck me, Brad? Because I think fucking me could be all four of the F’s you need to become the best Mitch you can be.”

Fuck me.

“Do not make fun of the F’s.”

“I’m not; I’m very fucking serious about all of the F’s. We have a lot of tension between us, Coach.”

“Don’t call me that,” I manage to grit out.

“And instead of having that tension we could be fighting and fucking our way through our issues. Doesn’t that sound fun?”

Fucking hell.

She squeezes my thigh. Her hand is about one inch away from the throbbing part of me that’s trying to unzip my pants from the inside and bury itself so deep in her that neither of us will be able to walk straight for days.

“You can do every single thing you ever thought about doing to me in high school.”

I inhale a heavy, frustrated breath, and it betrays me by leaving my body as a groan.

She places her right hand on the left side of my face and strokes my cheekbone with her thumb.

“Did you imagine us together in your old car like this? Parked by the beach at night. In the rain. Like this?” She caresses my lower lip so gently with the pad of her thumb.

Then cups the sides of my head and leans in farther to whisper into my ear.

“I did. When you weren’t talking to me. When you asked me to prom you gave me permission to think about you like this, and I liked it. ”

She takes my earlobe between her teeth and tugs. Then she licks and sucks and twirls. “I would have done this to you.” She presses her lips against my cheek. Tenderly. “I wanted to, Brad. I wanted to kiss you—I did.”

I am so hard. Just this. God dammit, just this is so much. It’s too much.

“I’m gonna go,” I mutter. I think I said it out loud, but she’s ignoring me. “I have to get back to the cat.”

She releases my seat belt and slides her hand up my chest, over my shirt, her fingers stretched out. I lock eyes with her. She stares at my mouth, licks her lips, and it’s so fucking hot. Her hand begins to slide down my abs. Slowly, not slowly enough. I grab her wrist. “Get out of the car.”

“I know you want me,” she says, very matter-of-fact.

“Irrelevant.”

“Relevant and significant. And I am trying to convey to you as clearly as possible that even though I just got out of a relationship with a man who had control issues, you have my consent to do whatever you want to do with me, whatever you want to do to me. Whatever you want me to do, just tell me and I might want to do it. If you feel like I need to be mildly punished, for instance…”

“Jesus. Vivian.”

“I am open to it. I trust you.”

“You can’t go around saying stuff like that to guys.”

“I don’t. You’re the only person I’ve ever said it to. You’re the only guy I’ve ever really trusted.”

Fuck. Me. This is what I’ve spent my whole adult life training for.

I realize I’m squeezing her wrist too tightly. Way too tight. And she’s taking it. I loosen my grip on her. I also realize that my other hand is squeezing her left thigh. “You are such a fucking menace.”

She grins and pushes my hand up her thigh, under her skirt.

Jesus, I can feel the damp heat radiating from the most dangerous place in the world—between her legs.

I can feel the bare skin of her upper thigh.

She sucks in her breath, and I realize I’m squeezing and kneading the soft flesh.

I stop doing that.

“You’re a fucking coward,” she whispers.

I am tense as a coiled snake that’s about to attack. “Not falling for it.”

She leans in, an inch from my face, lips parted. “Oh, yes you are.”

One inch. One inch separates my mouth from hers. One inch and eight years. And I can smell that strawberry daiquiri she drank, and I want to taste it on her tongue. But I won’t.

Because she swipes my phone, pulls the beanie off my head, grabs her jacket, and unlocks the passenger door.

“Vivian.”

I turn off the engine.

“Come and get me, Coach!” She hops out and runs up the path to her front porch. Doesn’t even close the car door.

Fuck.

She leaves the front door open.

By the time I walk through the front door, carefully closing it behind me, she’s sitting in the middle of an overstuffed sofa in the small living room.

Knees together, feet spread apart on the floor.

There are, like, three hundred peach-colored glowing Himalayan salt lamps in here.

It’s cozy and feminine, and I really like the vibe.

I see a little black-and-white blur dash out of the room.

I guess that’s Hairy Styles, and I guess he still doesn’t like me, and I really don’t care right now, because Vivian Sparks is daring me to fuck her and I’m not going to.

But I am going to make her suffer in the absolute best way possible for both of us, and she’s going to be so, so sorry she decided to play this game with me.

I stand before her.

She stares up at me. Her hands are behind her back.

She’s probably hiding my phone and my beanie.

She bends her right leg. I can tell she’s feeling stiff, but she lifts her leg and places the sole of her boot against my chest. She watches me as she presses the heel into my rectus abdominis.

Not too hard, but hard enough. “Take my boots off.”

I grip the bottom of her thigh with both hands and slide my right hand down past her knee.

Her boot is leather, and it hugs her calf pretty tight.

I trace along the top of it with the tip of my index finger, around to the zipper.

I unzip it slowly, all the way down, pulling it off her foot.

She rests the sole of her foot against my abs again, stares up at me, her lips parted, and lets that foot slide down, down, down, so slowly, until I catch her heel and pull it away just before it reaches my crotch.

I am so glad I changed out of sweatpants and into jeans, or there would have been a significant protrusion for her to rest her foot on.

Pressing herself down and back into the sofa cushions, she bends her left leg into her chest. Her upper thighs are exposed, but she’s squeezing them together, wriggling around a little. There must be so much tension between those legs, and I am going to make it so much worse.