Page 8

Chapter 8

APRIL

F or all that talk about not being easy on me, Gabe mercifully gave me a week to recover from the sprint triathlon before asking me to complete the FTP.

When the time eventually came, I set up my tri-bike on the trainer in my garage, just like I usually would for indoor rides sanctioned by Clay. But this time, I hung Mom’s Ironman medal on the wall, so when I looked up from pedaling, it’s what I saw.

This was it. I could feel it. Those 140.6 miles were mine. With a new coach, I wanted to put forth my best effort. Maybe because I knew Gabe was going out of his way to take me under his wing, but I felt this strong drive. I wasn’t delusional enough to think I’d ever make him proud, but I thought I could manage not letting him down if I worked hard enough, which is how I ended up in a pool of sweat on my garage floor, heaving breaths. I’d completed the FTP, putting out more watts than I ever had.

Still lying on the floor, I sent Gabe my results. He immediately replied .

Gabe: We can work with that. Could you stop by the rec on Friday? I want to get a look at your form in the water and have you run a magic mile.

A magic mile? I let my hands fall back against the cold concrete. A magic mile was similar to an FTP in that you ran a mile as fast as you could to get a baseline for pace. My body wept in the form of sweat.

Me: I don’t get off until 6 Friday.

Gabe: Meet you at the Rec at 7?

Me: I’ll be there.

I finally coaxed myself off the floor with the idea of dinner, a shower, and hours of tinkering with the old Schwinn while engaging in my most beloved guilty pleasure—listening to a romance audiobook. The evening laid out like a treat for surviving a day of customer service and physical exertion.

I had a long “everything” shave and shower and even topped it off with exfoliation. I was obsessed with my new raspberry vanilla sugar scrub. I imagined it rubbing away all the stress from the day along with the grime. Clean, and slightly pink from all the scrubbing, I padded down the hall in an oversized T-shirt and crew socks.

One of the baseboards near the kitchen looked a little warped. I nudged it with my socked foot—another item to add to the growing list of things to fix around the house. But I’d do it, put every broken piece back together to keep the house I grew up in whole.

About five years ago, my dad declared he was putting the house and the store on the market. While I looked at our home as endless memories with Mom, I think he only saw the places she should still be: in the back garden planting squash, on the couch with an arm over my shoulder, at the table with a deck of cards smiling mischievously because she’d bested the both of us .

He wanted to start new. Scrap the store. Sell the house. The only path was forward for him. I respected his choice to move on, encouraged it even, but I begged him to sell me the house and pass the business onto me. He agreed and even offered me a generous, flexible payment plan. He got his new life in Alabama with his long-term girlfriend, Cindy. And I got to hold onto the house and the store.

That’s where I’d found Mom's vision board. She probably wouldn’t have called it that, but that’s basically what it was. I’d been digging through old files in the office and found a folder sectioned into two columns: short-term goals and long-term goals. And under long-term goals, my name caught my attention.

Cross the red carpet with April for her first Ironman.

I’d sat on the tile floor of the office and cried my eyes out, broken by all the things she’d been excited about. Then, still wiping away tears, I’d registered for my first Ironman. Maybe she couldn’t be here to race it, but I could cross the red carpet for her.

Starving and excited to get back to work on the old bike Billie and I found at the estate sale, I didn’t bother heating my leftover ravioli. I ate it cold right out of the container as I laid out the necessary tools. The goal of the day was to finish disassembling the bike and then start stripping the frame of the paint.

After taking the last bite, I put on my over-the-ear headphones and started up the new audiobook I’d just purchased that morning based on a Bookstagram review. Within the first chapter, the love interest was described as tall with thick black hair, and instantly, I pictured Gabe. I tried to imagine someone else. It was a bad idea to cast my coach as the male main character in a book whose readers rated it as three spicy peppers, but as the story unraveled, my diligence kept slipping, and Gabe always ended up being the one to lean against the door frame or smile without it reaching his eyes or tuck a lock of hair behind the heroine’s ear.

Needless to say, I stayed up two hours past my bedtime, completely enraptured.

At the rec on Friday, I found Gabe on the upstairs track, looking down at the contents of a binder. He wore his usual: a racing T-shirt and basketball shorts, but I felt a little dazed by his appearance, because though he’d spent the night rent-free in my head, he looked better than what my memories could even draw up, with his black hair artfully messy and that wicked scar at his eyebrow. I wondered, again, how he’d gotten it. With all the falls we took cycling, it was easy to imagine that it was a sports-related injury.

He looked up and interrupted my curiosity with a smile bracketed by dimples. “Hey, Speed Racer.” That made me pause. “Your FTP was better than I anticipated. You sure you’re not chasing podiums?”

I barked out a laugh. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not. Start stretching, Baird. I want to see that energy in person.” Why did the way he used my last name make my insides turn to goop? Clay had called me Baird all the time but, to be fair, I also never pictured Clay as a lead role in a romance novel. That was only one of the two fatal errors I had made the day before, because after pushing myself during that FTP, Gabe expected that same level of athleticism (if you could even call it that) in my magic mile .

Unfortunately, that was a text that couldn’t be retracted, so I lowered into a runner’s stretch with a, “Yes, Coach.”

Something sparked in Gabe’s eye at that, but before I could appreciate the full effect, someone slammed their locker directly behind Gabe. Anyone would have been startled by such an abrupt bang in an otherwise quiet room, but Gabe seemed frozen in place, eyes wide, knuckle-white grip on his binder.

I straightened, concerned. “You . . . okay?”

He blinked and then shook his head, the human form of rebooting. “Fine.” He pointed at a nearby bench, back to business. “Use the side to get a good calf stretch.”

Just as I feared, the stretching ended way too quickly, and it was time to get to brass tacks. Gabe had me do a couple of warm-up laps before I started the dreaded magic mile. Just like the FTP, I was expected to give my all. To finish with no gas left in the tank. At least this one was only a mile, so my suffering would be short-lived.

Four laps. I gazed out at the loop. We were on the second level of the gym, and the track stretched above two neighboring basketball courts. Four laps was nothing compared to the literal marathon I was set to run, but there was a big difference between endurance running and going as hard and fast as possible.

“Okay, Baird,” Gabe said, thumb poised over his phone to start the stopwatch. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Before I could let apprehension settle too deep, I took off. On the first lap, my feet pounded on the slightly squishy track, and I felt unstoppable. In those few minutes, I wondered if that was how my mom felt, tearing up a racecourse. Light, airy, a bird in flight, but as I rounded the second corner of my second lap, I realized that I was Icarus, flying too close to the sun. The pace was going to kill me. My lungs could have turned to lead for the effort it took to breathe. I probably should have slowed, but Gabe would notice, and the thought of disappointing him was enough to force my legs to keep the beat of the crazy song I’d already started.

At the end of the second lap, Gabe called, “That’s it, Baird! Halfway there.” The praise powered me well enough through the first half of the lap, but I was ugly breathing by the end of it, and my knee gave a warning pinch. “Come on,” Gabe encouraged. “Pick the pace back up.”

When I didn’t, Gabe joined me on the track, effortlessly keeping up with my strained stride. “That’s it. Match my pace,” he said, having no problem hitting my fastest speed and coaching me through it. I realized I’d never once worked out with Clay. He’d always been more of a sideline coach, which was fine. However, there was something equally irritating and motivating about Gabe staying just a foot ahead of me, saying, “Keep up. Come on. Just a little further.”

If nothing else, his beautiful form, which could block out the freaking overhead lights from his height, was enough to distract me from my abused lungs, chest, and legs.

“Eight minutes, nineteen seconds,” Gabe announced proudly as we reached the end of the loop, and I would have been impressed if every cell in my body hadn’t been thrown into survival mode.

Gabe led me through some cooldown exercises and stretching, and ultimately, I was satisfied until he asked the dreaded question. “What kind of core work did Clay have you doing?”

As soon as the question left his lips, I knew I wouldn’t like this turn of the conversation. I wondered if this was what Johnson felt like whenever Trevor said the words “bath” or “vet.”

“You mean, other than the swimming, cycling, and running?” I asked. My abs got used enough, thank you. I might not have had a visible six-pack, but the muscles lurked somewhere below the surface .

“I’m talking about targeted core exercises.”

I scratched the back of my neck.

He lowered his binder. “April?”

“Gabriel,” I said, meeting his disappointed gaze with an exasperated one.

“He didn’t have you doing any core work?”

I shrugged.

Gabriel was unimpressed by my indifference. “A strong core will improve balance, stability, endurance—”

“Okay, okay.” I put my hands out to stop the gush. The lecture reminded me of trips to the dentist when I didn’t floss well enough. “I get it.”

He squinted at me. “I’m going to give you core exercises. I need you to commit to five minutes a day.”

Five minutes didn’t seem like much to ask, but I was no fool. Time doing ab workouts was like dog years. Multiply the time by seven to get the real feel. I wanted to complain, but Gabe was sacrificing his time to coach me. If five minutes of suffering a day was my penance, I supposed I could pay it. “Okay. I can do five minutes.”

“How long can you hold a plank?”

I should have made up a freaking number. Instead, I blurted out, “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t done one since high school gym.”

Gabe reached back and pulled a mat off the wall. It slapped against the floor between us.

“No time like the present. Let’s see how long you can last.”

I knew it was an innocent comment, but I’d pictured Gabe saying that exact line last night as the audiobook had entered a steamy scene. I kneeled, ready to give my face a reason for reddening.

“Okay,” I said, arms braced. “But be ready for disappointment.”

Gabe knelt in front of me. “Whenever you’re ready.”

After a generous inhale, I lowered to my elbows and stretched my legs out behind me.

It was embarrassing how quickly the burn ripped down my stomach, how fast my arms started to shake.

“Lower your hips,” Gabe’s deep voice rumbled with the merciless demand.

I did as I was told but had to bite back a gasp.

“You aren’t going to last if you don’t give your body oxygen,” he said. “Breathe.”

I inhaled, but even that hurt. “I’m not—” I tried but had to pause. “Lasting much . . . longer . . . anyway,” I said, voice strained.

“You’ve gone thirty seconds. All you have to do is hold.”

Oh. Is that all?

The pain blazed through my core, up my chest, down my arms.

“I can’t—” I gasped at the pressure. I wanted to say I couldn’t hold it any longer, but it was too much effort.

“You’re going for a minute,” Gabe said—a low, calm command. “You can take it.” And once again, I pictured a scene from the book. Gabe towering over me in bed.

The image took up the entire frame that was my mind.

“Time,” Gabe said, and I flopped down, trying to recover both from my burning abs and the fantasy.

“Not bad for someone who hasn’t planked in a decade.” Thank God he didn’t call me a good girl. I would have melted onto the mat. “I’ll let you rest for a minute, and we’ll hit it again.”

“Again?” I asked, not able to keep the anguish out of the question .

Gabe gave a rumbly laugh. “I told you I wouldn’t go easy on you.” And I wondered if the cleaning crew at the gym had a protocol for cleaning human-turned-oobleck out of the training mats.