Balance (Off Balance Book 1) (17 page)

“I think we should stop,” he said gutturally.

I paused, insecurity consuming me. “Oh, okay. Am I doing something wrong?” Maybe this was another reason my ex-boyfriend dropped me.

“No,” he murmured. “You’re not doing anything wrong, it feels good, but if you keep touching me like—”

He cut himself off, clutching my wrist tightly. My fingers were about to slide deeper when he stopped them.

“Adrianna. Do you know how good this feels?”

“No,” I answered quietly when he released my wrist. A brow lifted and he placed his hand on my hip. “Have you ever had a boyfriend?”

“Yes.”

His other hand stayed in my hair. “And?”

“We didn’t do much, just played around.”

“You’re a virgin,” he stated more than asked. I nodded, inhaling. “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” he said.

Just as I thought he was about to pull away, Hayden dove in for another kiss, claiming my mouth. For me, that was the green light to dive into him.

Hayden held my face between his hands as he devoured my kiss, my hands slid around his hips. His hands quickly shifted to my chest and I released a little sigh. My stomach tightened and my heart jumped into my throat at the thought of what he—we—would do next. His fingers ran over the sides of my breasts, and my fingertips plunged into the waistband of his sweats and pushed them down just a bit so I could feel how low the V dipped.

He broke the kiss and stepped back.

“No, no more,” he panted. My lips were swollen and my breath heavy when he pulled away. “I don’t know what I was thinking. This is a big no for our gym. If any coach found out, we could get in a whole lot of trouble. We don’t need that.”

Overwhelmed with lust, I didn’t take a moment to stop and think about how this could affect us down the line. Looking at the ground, I apologized.

“Hey, there’s nothing to be sorry about, okay? I liked kissing you and, under different circumstances, maybe we would’ve kissed longer, but we have bigger things to focus on.” He ran a hand through his hair and blew out a ragged breath. “Let’s get those hands fixed for you.”

Turning my hands over, I chuckled remorsefully at the blisters. “You know, I forgot my hands hurt. You took the pain away for a bit.”

The dimples in his cheeks appeared and his eyes glistened. My stomach was full of butterflies and my heart pounded in my chest.

Hayden was so damn cute.

Opening the package, he took out the ointment and uncapped it. He squeezed a small amount on his fingers. “I’m just going to apply this to your wrists right now. Before bed, you’ll need to apply a generous amount to your palms and put socks over your hands. Otherwise, it’ll get everywhere.”

Hayden clutched my wrist and turned my hand over. “Luckily you don’t have rips on your wrists too from grips and tape, so this will help heal them nicely.”

He began applying the balm, rubbing it into my skin and making sure it got absorbed. “You know we’re going to need to pull those off, right?”

I groaned. “Do we have to?”

“I think you know the answer to that.”

I did.

His skillful fingers did wonders to my aching muscles and I almost groaned from the sheer delight of the massage. Maybe I needed to hire a masseuse. “You have no idea how good this feels. My wrists are always in pain.”

“I overheard what Kova said, how you hang on the bar and all. To be honest, it’s amazing you’ve lasted this long. Between the grip on bars and the bizarre way you wrap your wrists, I’m surprised you haven’t quit.”

Never. There wasn’t a chance in hell I’d ever quit gymnastics.

He grabbed my other wrist and changed his tone. “I’ll be honest. I like you, Adrianna. I have since the moment I met you.” He shook his head and then met my eyes. “There’s a light in your eyes, a will I don’t see often from the other girls at World Cup. I see the way Coach grates on you, pushes you down, picks at every little thing, but you never give up. Sometimes I wonder if he has it out for you. You don’t cry, you don’t want empathy, you don’t walk around with a chip on your shoulder—”

“Like Reagan.”

He smiled softly, and my heart melted. “Like Reagan. You’re determined.”

I bit the inside of my lip. “I feel like that’s how all the girls are though.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know.” He shrugged. “You’re just different.”

Reaching into his bag, Hayden pulled out a package of needles and a lighter.

“No,” I whined, knowing what those were used for.

He paused. “You have to, Aid. You know this.”

I did know this. It didn’t mean I wanted to do it.

“This can’t be worse than straddling the beam.”

I pursed my lips together. “You may have a point, but this is going to make tomorrow even more painful and you know it.”

“No,
not
popping them will make it worse. You have to drain them. At least get the fluid to release a little. I won’t do to you what I do to my hands, I’ll just pop at the corners.”

Curious, I asked, “What do you do for your hands?”

“I pop the blisters and then cut the skin off all in one shot. I don’t wait for the skin to tear back and die.”

I grimaced. I wasn’t going that far tonight. Hayden began lighting the needle to sterilize it and prevent an infection, after which he planned to use it to pop my blisters. I’d had rips and blisters before, but never to this extent. I was always given time to heal my hands, so I never really had to treat my skin to this degree before.

“Do you have any other ointment in your bag of tricks? Like some antibacterial kind? I can use that.” My heart began to pound. I really didn’t want to do this.

“Yeah, but you know none of that will help.”

Hayden stepped back and I jumped down off the counter and reached for the filmy, plastic bag and began rummaging through it. Chap Stick, tape, scissors, socks, honey, a pumice stone, antibacterial ointment, all things used for rips.

No...

I pulled the stone out of the bag, but Hayden yanked it out of my hand and held it above his head.

“Give it back to me.”

“No.”

I jumped, trying to reach it, but it was useless. I was too short.

“Hayden, it’s one thing to pop my blisters and cut off the dead skin. It’s another thing entirely to scrub my hand. Just please give that to me. You’re not doing it.” I knew what would happen after.

The dreaded pumice stone. Fuck that. I’d never had to go that far with the stone, mainly because I never had a psychotic coach before like Kova, or gym hours like I did now, but I’d heard war stories, and it wasn’t something I wanted to test out.

Plus, they didn’t look terribly bad. I may have overreacted with how they looked.

“You know I’ll just be back here tomorrow, right?”

“Please,” I begged, my forehead bunching together. “Please, Hayden, I’ll take my chances. You can drain the blisters but no stone.”

Hayden’s eyes softened, pitying me. “Are you sure that’s what you want to do? I’m obviously not going to scrub the blisters, just around them to get the calluses off, but you need to start using it every night in the shower to toughen the skin.”

I shrugged helplessly, sighing. “I know, and I will after these heal.”

“Fine.” He cocked his head to the side with a know-it-all look. “Are you a religious person?” he asked out of the blue.

Puzzled, I said, “I mean, we go to church on major holidays, but we’re not devout Catholics or anything. Why?”

“Because you’re going to need the grace of God on your side tomorrow. I’ll be praying for mercy and that Kova will go light on you. Now give me your hand and let’s work on those rips.”

Y
esterday morning when my alarm went off, the first thing I did was remove the socks. The swelling on my hands had gone down tremendously, and the redness on my wrists looked almost healed. The nipple cream was like a magic potion. After practice, I had Alfred take me to the nearest pharmacy to buy every tube I could get my abused hands on.

Much to my surprise, Kova took mercy on me and gave me a day off from bars. It didn’t follow into the next day though, because when I walked into the gym this morning, he insisted we work on bars again first thing. He wasn’t confident I had learned my lesson.

“You should have popped those,” he said arrogantly in a thick Russian accent, eyeing my blistered hands. I swear, because I hadn’t popped them entirely, he’d do anything he possible could to make me suffer.

I was certain Kova was a sadist.

Reaching inside my bag, I pulled out a string of tape Hayden had prepared for me. He cut some pieces and showed me how I should apply them to cover my blisters since I wouldn’t be allowed to use my grips. “Can I at least use this?”

Kova stepped over the cables and looked down. “Go ahead, it won’t help though.”

I ignored his flippant tone. Anything would help at this point. I looked at the rest of the team girls, envying the grips they had covering their hands. Placing the strip over the blisters, I ripped a piece of tape from the roll with my teeth and layered it. I was tempted to tape my entire hand, but I wasn’t that ballsy to take the chance of getting yelled at and being forced to remove all of it and go bare skinned. I repeated the same method on my other hand and then applied chalk. Lots and lots of chalk.

“Did you stretch out this morning?”

I nodded.

“My way or yours?”

“My way.”

He gave me a pointed look. “I did not see you stretch.”

“Uh, when...when you were in the back,” I stammered. “I warmed up with the girls.”

“Did you run?”

Shit. “No, I didn’t.”

He glowered. “Before you break for lunch, you will run, and you will do three miles.” Fuck my life. I hated cardio. “Have you been using any of the drills I showed you?”

Jesus Christ. This felt an awful lot like an interrogation. Like I was under the spotlight. The urge to lie was stronger than ever, but for some reason, I just couldn’t. Call it intuition, but I had a feeling he’d know I was being dishonest. “No, I haven’t. I mean I have, just not every time.”

“You are not proving anything to me this morning, Ria. When I am not around, you must still use these exercises on your own. You are only hurting yourself in the long run.” He clucked his tongue in disappointment. “Tonight, after practice, we will work together again before you leave.”

Ria? The way he said it gave me butterflies. That was a new one, and I liked it a million times more than Ana.

“All right, let us go.” He clapped his hands enthusiastically and stood near the low bar, watching me closely. That was it. No yelling, scowling, or glaring at me? His cheerful mood caught me off guard, and I wasn’t sure what to think of it.

Swinging into a kip, I cast to a handstand, free hip circle cast to another handstand, then I piked down and used my core and hips to release and fly to the high bar. Coach watched my posture closely, probably analyzing every little thing I did wrong so he could berate me later. All I wanted to do was please him and prove I was trying, but it never came off that way.

Kova was hard and honest to a fault, which is what I’d wanted when I transitioned to World Cup. It was something every coach should be, regardless of our feelings, but some days we needed a break. Some days it was too much. Some days it could break our spirit.

I found myself making more mistakes than normal when his eyes were trained this closely on me, or when his hands touched me when he spotted. He didn’t miss a beat and if I messed up, he caught it and corrected me immediately. He had eagle eyes, and that was both a blessing and a curse for a gymnast.

When my hands gripped the high bar, chalk dust sprinkled in my eyes and I winced. There was a slight burn but I ignored it and continued. I’d use that mind over matter logic and push through the pain.

I could do it. I knew I could.

A simple back tuck for my dismount and I felt more confident with my feet on the soft, blue landing mat. The pain in my hands wasn’t nearly as bad as I anticipated, however, I felt a pull in the back of my calf I wasn’t used to. Bending down, I rubbed the twinge of heat and walked away wiggling my leg with each step.