Page 54

Crew

“Y ou wanna go to the gym with me?” I asked Kota the second she walked through the door.

With the tiniest smile, she shook her head lightly towards the floor. “I just got home.”

“I see that.” I wanted her to say yes, granted I ditched going to the student gym with the guys in hopes that Kota would go with me instead to our secret gym.

Even though it obviously wasn’t a secret gym, it felt that way. None of the other guys went there, because why would they when they could go to the student one for free?

But something I’d never admit aloud was that Kota was right when she accused me of going to a different gym to avoid running into people I knew.

I felt awkward seeing past hookups. When I was there with the guys, it was much more manageable. Less of them would approach me than when I was alone. Or the ones that stared were much easier to shrug off when I had the guys to distract me.

It became unbearable at one point, and that’s when I made the decision last year to get a membership at the second gym for when I had to make the trek alone.

Embarrassingly, I’d been waiting on one of the kitchen stools, practically staring at the front door like a freak, waiting for Kota to get home. Truthfully, this obsessive behavior on my part was starting to scare the hell out of me, but I couldn’t stop; I couldn’t separate my thoughts away from her. If I wasn’t doing something that required a hundred and ten percent of my attention, then there was room for my thoughts to circle right back to her.

I just wasn’t sure why it was happening.

“So, you wanna go?” I asked again.

Kota shook off her jacket, hanging it on the front coat rack. “I don’t know if I’m up for it today.”

The sigh I let out was much louder than I’d meant for it to be.

Kota stopped mid-step, a motionless frown and perplexed glare aimed at me. “Don’t you have other friends you can go with?”

“Other friends.” Was that her way of friendzoning me?

“They already left without me,” I said.

“Can’t you just meet them there?”

“Can’t you just go with me instead?” I challenged.

A scoff and minor eye roll later, she had me questioning what exactly was going through her head right now. Was she trying to not act eager, or did she truly not want to go with me?

“What’s in it for me?” Kota asked.

With my naturally dirty mind, the first thing I thought of offering was a sexual favor, but I knew we were past that. As satisfying as it was to hear her throaty moans and breath hitch, I was longing for a much different sound at the moment.

Keeping my voice as serious as possible, I responded, “You get to see Milf Guy.”

I watched the small twitch of Kota’s lips as she fought a smile, but she lost the battle, and that addicting laugh of hers filled the room, the exact sound that I’d been looking for.

I leaned into the counter in her direction, just for the sake of getting closer to her orbit, and before I could chide myself for doing yet another thing that was out of character, I was smiling helplessly.

I used to loathe the sound of her laughter, because it used to be targeted at me, used to make me nearly self-implode.

Now, it was slowly becoming one of my favorite sounds.

Eyeing her like a kid asking their parent for a new toy, I asked, “So, is that a yes?”

She let out one last giggle. “Alright, yeah, fine. Let me change.”

When she came back out from her room, the first thing my eyes shot to were her blue leggings, accompanied with a black racerback shirt that wasn’t shy about showcasing her tits. Her hair was in a ponytail, hanging out the back of a Cedar U baseball cap.

Without a word, she strutted past me, plucking her keys off the key holder near the door.

“What are you doing?” I let out.

Kota scrutinized me with a brow raised, fingers still looped through her keychain. I was starting to get whiplash from the constant back and forth between her callous glares and starry-eyed gaze. It seemed like every time she caught herself slightly opening up in some kind of way, she did a one-eighty, throwing her guard up as high as she could.

“What does it look like I’m doing? I’m grabbing my keys.”

I swayed unsteadily, a hint of doubt casting over my confident persona. “I figured we’d ride together,” I said, holding my own keys up.

She gave a light tsk with her tongue, along with a cautious glance over before putting her own keys back on the holder and reaching for her jacket instead.

I followed her out, and other than the music I had playing, the car ride was spent in silence, as if we were right back to ignoring each other.

I was trying to figure her out, but the more time I spent with her, the more confused I got. There had to be a reason as to why she was as stone-cold and closed-off as she was. I wanted to ask, to dig a little deeper and truly get an understanding of how her beautifully apathetic brain worked, but I knew she didn’t trust me enough for that yet. Chances were, she’d throw her guard up as high as it could go, tell me to fuck off and mind my own business, and then end whatever it was that we had going on.

If I was going to ask for a piece of her, I’d have to give her a piece of me, and now definitely wasn’t the time to do it, but eventually, I’d get there.

When we got to the gym, the first thing she told me was that she was going for a quick jog on the treadmill. Before I could agree or rebut it, she was shoving her air pods in and roaming off.

I sighed to myself, heading to the power rack. The treadmills were behind me, but as I was doing my squats, all I could wonder was if Kota’s eyes were on me or not. I was paying extra close attention, trying to pinpoint that stabbing feeling I’d get whenever she was glaring.

But I didn’t feel anything.

After my first set of reps, I bumped the weight up to three-seventy-five, and after that set, bumped it up to four hundred.

When I was done, my legs disobeyed me by beginning to walk towards Kota on the treadmill, but luckily, the tiny sliver of self-control that I had stopped me in my tracks.

I wanted to wait for her to come by me.

Either she was having the same thought process, or she didn’t care to be by me at all, because five minutes turned to ten, and ten turned to twenty, and I was about to lose my damn mind.

I wanted to shake her, to ask what the hell was going through her mind. I couldn’t tell if this was some sort of huge, elaborate game she was playing.

Finally, I decided that my pride wasn’t even worth it and went to go disturb her jog, which at this point, was just a slow walk.

Sneaking up behind her, my hand dove straight to the treadmill’s power button, turning it off.

Kota popped an air pod out of her ear, snarling. “Hey! Why’d you do that?!”

Folding my forearms on the treadmill’s frame, I was trying far too hard to keep my expression unfazed. “You know, if you’re going to come to the gym, you shouldn’t just run on the treadmill the whole time. You could do that outside.”

All she gave was a hollow glare. “It’s winter.”

My lips puckered from stupidity, and I shifted. “Right... Well, anyways, do you wanna try something else?”

“Like what?”

“Why don’t you try benching?” I suggested. “I’ll spot you.”

Sharp and cruel, she gave a scoff. “Um, no! You’d probably let it fall on me on purpose.”

With a record-breaking frown, I shot, “Take that back. You know I wouldn’t do that.”

As her eyes rolled and she snagged her powder blue water bottle that had been sitting snugly in a cupholder, I got the insane urge to lean forward and kiss her.

Self-control. Self-control. Self-control.

“Fine,” she agreed sternly. “But I’m watching you do it first.”

“Fine,” I muttered, leading the way.

Call me crazy, but a rush of adrenaline was bursting into my veins knowing that Kota was about to watch me. I tried to pretend like she wasn’t there as I threw a hundred pounds onto each side of the bar. But the second I laid on the bench, the only thing I could see was her crossed arms out of the corner of my eye, her blue leggings so tight that my mouth would’ve been watering if it wasn’t so dry. She was leaning into one hip, a sassy stance that my mind was taking down an erotic road.

If I didn’t zone in on the bar right this second, I may have dropped it on myself from being so damn distracted.

A few reps later, which thankfully, didn’t end in my lungs getting crushed from dropping the freaking bar on myself, I sat back up, slightly out of breath.

“Your turn,” I said.

“Hmm,” she hummed, turning over her own shoulder to inspect the weight options.

Mindlessly, my gaze shot to her ass, and I knew that if she caught me staring, I was at risk of getting set on fire, but the thought didn’t stop me.

Light me on fire, Kota. I don’t care, I thought to myself.

When she bent over to grab her water bottle, I choked on my own spit, giving a cough.

Kota whipped around, and I sat there, slightly slumped on the bench, paralyzed as I stared up at her.

“Were you checking out my ass?” she accused, the ghost of a smirk tracing her lips.

My head shook rapidly at the floor.

“You were,” she said, matter-of-factly. “You were checking me out.”

“It was a glance,” I admitted.

“It was a stare,” she grinned.

“Your leggings are...” I cleared my throat, “ tight .”

As if we were the only two in the room, she leaned in a little, and I could only hope her eyes didn’t drop, because my gym shorts were not at all good at hiding the rock in my pants.

“Well,” she murmured, standing over me, “leggings are supposed to be tight.”

Fuck.

Rising to my feet, we switched roles, and now I was the one towering over her.

She’d been snippy with me all morning, and I knew exactly how to bring out that more vulnerable, softer side of her.

Luckily, there weren’t that many people in the gym right now, and everyone that was there seemed to mind their own business as my voice dropped low, tumbling out. “You know, there’s a closet down the hall.”

Somewhat losing herself in surprise or lust or both, she eyed me from under her lashes, giving a heavy exhale. “You wanna do it in public? Doesn’t that seem a little risky?”

A smile painted with pure greed came over my face, and it took everything in me to refrain from touching her. “I thought you didn’t care about the rules.” Watching as her eyes shot to the slim hallway in the corner of the room, I whispered, “I’ll meet you there in two minutes.”

I didn’t wait for her to respond, just turned and wandered off towards the hall. Hopefully she didn’t blow me off.

The only thing that would’ve been more embarrassing than getting caught together in a closet would be getting caught in there by myself.

Glancing both ways twice , I snuck into the darkness of the closet, waiting for my queen of ice to join me.