Page 19

Chapter 19

APRIL

I had a coffee stain on my jumpsuit, a new scratch on my watch, and a cut on my hand. Those were just the afflictions you could see. Lady Luck had landed other punches, like when one of the screws holding the basket on my commuter bike had spontaneously come loose, and my bag fell into a puddle. Hence, my phone’s spa day in rice. Billie was also running late, which left me fumbling through the register. Later, when I’d finally made it to my workbench, I realized I’d ordered an entire box of the wrong product.

So, when the doorbell rang, you can understand my apprehension to open it. I ran through the catalog of possibilities: a Jehovah’s Witness who wouldn’t take no for an answer, a member of the HOA letting me know the type of roses I had violated neighborhood policy, the Grim Reaper himself here to take my weary soul. The possibilities were endless.

Which is why I was equally surprised and happy when I looked through the peephole and found Gabe looming over my doorstep .

“Hey?” I said, but the greeting came out like a question. Gabe had his bike resting against his hip and his tri-suit on. I worried he was there to convince me to join the group ride.

“Hey, sorry for the unannounced visit. I tried to call.”

“But my phone is still healing,” I offered.

He nodded and was quiet for an uncomfortably long moment. When he spoke, his voice rumbled low. “I pieced together why you don’t want to ride with the group.” His gaze smoldered. “It’s Friday the Thirteenth.”

I waited for the verbal lashing, for him to tell me I was being ridiculous. I thought, for sure, he’d tell me to go get my bike so we could join the group ride. Instead, he said, “I’m sorry. If I had realized the date, I never would have asked you to come on an outdoor ride.”

“You don’t need to—” I shook my head. “I’m the one who should be sorry. I should have said something at the shop, but it’s . . . embarrassing. I hate that I’m like this. But believe me, today definitely felt like Friday the Thirteenth.”

His brows drew in. “Why? What happened?”

I waved him off. “It’s a long story.”

“Well, maybe we could talk about it on our ride.” I frowned, but Gabe continued. “I thought we could do our own group ride—just make it indoor. I have my trainer in the truck, and I packed my laptop so we could watch movies.”

My mouth fell open. I couldn’t believe he’d want to spend the ride with me when he could be out in the fresh air with the group.

“Unless . . .” He ran a hand through his hair, making it stick up wildly. “You definitely don’t have to. If you have other plans—”

“No.” I stepped aside to let him in. “That sounds amazing. We can set you up in the garage. ”

As Gabe’s body filled my doorframe, his eyes trailed across the living room. It’s not like my house was a mess, but I had a cardigan on the back of the couch, the bookshelf could have used dusting, and I would have moved my shoes to my room if I’d known someone was coming over.

“You said this used to be your parents’. Was this the house you grew up in?”

It felt kind of personal, letting Gabe see into a window of my life that ran all the way to the beginning. “It’s the only home I’ve ever known,” I said by way of answering. Then I thought that sounded a little pathetic. A twenty-nine-year-old living in the house her parents had brought her home to from the hospital. “It needs a lot of work,” I admitted, eyeing the damn baseboards I still hadn’t had a chance to replace.

But Gabe said, “It’s really nice.” And there was a hint of something there, so light I’m sure I would have missed it if I didn’t know him better—maybe a little bit of longing, but he covered it quickly. “Where should I put this thing?” He nodded toward his bike.

I led him to the garage, and after his bike was set up, he walked over to the old Schwinn that was looking less and less like junkyard pieces by the day.

“Do you bring your work home?”

“No,” I said, looking at the scattered pieces on a towel. “This is a side project.”

He appraised me. “You work on bicycles all day, then come home and work on them for fun?”

I shrugged, my cheeks heating as I realized how boring I sounded. “I really enjoy it. Each one is like a puzzle.”

“Did you start working on bikes after your mom opened the store? Or is it something you’ve always done?”

I shook my head. “It wasn’t until after my mom died that I became interested.”

“You picked it up to be closer to her,” he guessed. “Like the Ironman.”

“Not exactly.” I put a screwdriver back on the wall to give my hands something to do, a place for my eyes to look instead of at Gabe. “You know the stages of grief?” I could feel the intensity of his gaze, the way you know someone is drinking in your every word. “Well, I was somewhere between denial and anger. I saw my mom’s bike in the garage. I wasn’t allowed to touch it normally. You understand. Our bikes are our babies.”

Gabe huffed out a laugh and nodded.

“Well, I thought if I took apart her bike, she’d have to come back. If I messed up her bike, she’d be mad, but I’d have her home. At seventeen, I was way too old to actually believe that, but denial can be overwhelming.” Tools and parts straightened in front of me. I finally found the courage to look back at Gabe. A little crease had formed between his brows. “Anyway, my dad found me on the garage floor,” I gestured to the exact place it had happened, just a few feet away, “fingers bloody, parts everywhere.”

“Was he angry?” he asked, eyes searching mine.

“No. He sat with me on the concrete for the longest time, just holding me. Then he said, ‘It’s okay to fall apart. But now we have to put the pieces back together.’ That was the first time I assembled a bike.”

“He sounds like a good dad,” he said, looking relieved.

“He is,” I agreed. “I don’t see him too much now that he lives in a different state, but he still video calls me on holidays and texts me to make sure I vote each election—you know, typical dad stuff. ”

Something indeterminable crossed Gabe’s features, but it passed before I could read it. “I’ll go get my trainer,” he said, hiking a thumb back towards the door.

“Right, and I’d better go change.” We did have forty miles to get through.

By the time I’d come back, Gabe had his bike and laptop set up. He let me pick what we watched. I went with a highly acclaimed action movie I’d been wanting to see, but I didn’t catch any of the plot points.

We got too busy talking as we pedaled. I asked Gabe about Chuck, and when I told him he should have brought him, Gabe replied with, “Next time.” Only to shake his head and say, “There I go inviting myself again.” I pressed my lips together to avoid suggesting we make these buddy rides a regular event.

The movie switched to a jungle scene. “That looks just like Costa Rica,” Gabe commented.

“Have you been?”

The question prompted a story about a crazy bachelor party where he’d had to share a bed with a man named Koontz and didn’t sleep a wink because the guy tried to spoon with Gabe in his sleep. Gabe had moved to the floor, but he kept waking to things crawling on him because they had been in a jungle, after all.

He had me hanging on every word. That is, until the workout grew too intense. Our bike machines had our preloaded workouts. The gears would match the desired resistance to act like hills, and at intense stretches, our focus narrowed to breathing and pedaling.

While my intervals were horrid, Gabe’s seemed like absolute hell. I never saw the man winded, and now he was fighting for his life through the sets. Sweat rolled off him at a steady rate. Where I had sprinkles of perspiration under my bike, he had a pool.

“I can’t tell if your coach really likes you or sort of hates you,” I said as the set ended.

“Yeah.” Gabe laughed, but it sounded pained. He was still in aero position and hung his head as his back rose and fell with quick breaths. “I think it’s both.”

“Are all your workouts this difficult?”

“They vary. But mostly, yes.”

“Don’t you get tired of pushing yourself that hard?”

“This is Rick’s last year before he retires from coaching. I want to make him proud.”

I wouldn’t have understood the drive to want to please your coach while I was under Clay’s wing, but I got it now.

Next, we talked about the upcoming road trip for the race we were working in Waco. It was only a three-hour drive, but Gabe had declared a Buc-ee’s stop was non-negotiable. We discussed food options for when we weren’t working at the race. I’d been excited before, but now I was nearly giddy about taking a trip with Gabe. Talk of the trip got us through the rest of the workout. We unclipped and dismounted slowly, muscles and joints aching.

Gabe had brought an extra pair of clothes for after the long ride, and I let him use my shower on the condition that he refrain from using all of my raspberry-vanilla sugar scrub. I’d been teasing, but Gabe nodded slowly and said, “That’s why you always smell like dessert.”

I had to hide my blush because the fact that Gabe recognized my scent unlocked some sort of weird, primal part of my brain. Years of evolutionary coding told me to jump him and continue the bloodline.

When he finished his shower, dressed but hair wet and mussed, the savage side of my brain was still running the show. He cleaned up so nicely, even in his casual marathon T-shirt and basketball shorts. I wanted to get up on my tiptoes to put my face in the crook of his neck and see how my shampoo smelled on him.

“April?” Gabe said, his brows scrunched. “I asked if you wanted me to order pizza while you shower.”

“Yes. Pizza is great!” I edged toward the bathroom. “I’ll take whatever you want as long as it doesn’t have mushrooms on it.”

I turned the cold water up and hoped it would be enough to kickstart reason and bring intellectual April to the forefront.

After a cold shower to remind myself that I was more than just my hormones, I was able to enjoy dinner with Gabe. It was almost domestic, seeing him in my kitchen. He lounged in his chair, one arm hooked over the back while the other held onto his slice of pizza. His long legs stretched under the table, which I kept accidentally bumping with my feet.

“I want to hear about your Friday the Thirteenth.”

I snorted. “You want to hear me whine for half an hour?” I asked before plucking a second slice of pizza from the box.

“If it means you’ll tell me about your day, yes.”

Something in my belly swooped at that. I took a large bite of pizza to give my fizzy stomach time to settle before answering.

“Well, one of my favorite parts was when a customer proudly told me he used dish soap to clean his bike, which is fine if you’re in a pinch, but when I warned him that using it on the derailleur could eliminate the good grease, he berated me, saying I just wanted to ‘push product.’” I used air quotes on the last two words .

“Because a ten-dollar bottle of bike cleaner is really going to help you reach your monthly sales quota.”

“Exactly!”

Having someone on my side felt so good that I spilled every miserable part of my day. And as we laughed through all my misfortune, Gabe had somehow cast a different light over the day. How could I think about this Friday the Thirteenth without also remembering Gabe’s commentary and how he threw his head back and laughed, only to slap a hand over his mouth and say, “Sorry. That’s not funny,” though he was still laughing behind his hand?

When the pizza box was mostly just discarded crust, and the conversation had finally found a lull, Gabe stood. “Well, I’d better get going.” Then he gave a mischievous smile. “Can I borrow your dish soap? I was going to give my bike a quick wash before I leave.”

It took me a moment to realize he was messing with me. Two could play at that game. I passed him, grabbing a wrench from the counter. “Hey, if you want to slow down your bike, I’ll just take the wheels off.”

“Hey, no!”

I giggled and picked up the pace as Gabe chased after me. He grabbed the wrench from my hand and tossed it back onto the counter.

“Keep your hands off my bike!”

“Just a few modifications,” I said, still laughing as he hauled me away from the garage door with an arm hooked around my waist. When I reached for the wrench again, Gabe backed me against the wall and gripped my hands above my head.

At first, we stared at each other, smiling like idiots as our chests rose and fell with heaving breaths. Then Gabe’s dark eyes fell to my lips, and the air in the kitchen felt charged. My heart pounded so hard, I thought it was looking for a way out of my chest.

His eyes came back to mine, a question clearly in his widening pupils. I didn’t answer. Instead, I closed my eyes and leaned forward. Gabe caught my mouth with his.

That first moment our lips touched was gentle, testing. Then Gabe sighed and pressed in. Just like that, the kiss turned from question to need. He kissed me hungrily, and I wanted to be consumed by him.

His tongue swiped across my lower lip before he sucked on it slowly. My knees buckled. Luckily, Gabe was holding me up—my hands still deliciously pinned above my head. I opened for him, and we tasted each other in between gulps of air that I took like I had no intention of resurfacing.

Heat coursed from my core, molten lava in my veins. He could wreck me. His size, his power, his stamina. All of it should have intimidated me. Instead, I was grinding against him, begging for it with my body.

I needed him—in a way that should have concerned me, but there was something about being with a guy who could destroy you but would never dream of it.

As if testing that theory, I felt his erection push into my stomach. I gasped at the size, and Gabe released me and pulled away. “I’m so sorry,” he rasped.

“Why are you sorry?” I took a step toward him, but he put out a hand to stop me.

“That was unprofessional. You’re my athlete, and I . . .” He looked at the floor for a moment before meeting my gaze again. His pupils were still huge, but they narrowed by the second. “I’m just sorry.”

“I’m sorry too,” I said because it felt like the right thing to say even if my body screamed that it was definitely wrong. “We shouldn’t have . . . You have A-Team to think about.”

He nodded without meeting my gaze .

We worked in silence, unhooking the bike from the trainer and packing it all into his truck. The words neither of us could say hung in the air, making everything seem heavy.

As I watched him drive away from the window, I just kept thinking, of course, I wouldn’t get lucky on Friday the Thirteenth.