“Nothing is going on, Nick.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Denial isn’t just a river—”
She pointed a finger in his face. “Do not finish that sentence or I’ll throw you in a river.”
Nick didn’t look concerned. “I’d love to see you a) find a river and b) try to throw me in.”
“You’re being a pain in the ass right now.”
Nick sighed. “Look, Stone’s a good dude, but Payton is bad news.”
Lea ground her molars. Why did everyone feel the need to warn her? To protect her? Like she didn’t have a brain and couldn’t see or hear Max. Or judge him based on her own experiences.
“I really don’t need a lecture—”
Nick held up his hand. “I know. You would probably chew him up and spit him out before he got your last name—”
“He already knows my last name—”
“
Anyway
, I didn’t mean anything by it. I’m not trying to warn you. I know you can take care of yourself around guys. Just stating a fact.”
“Okay, but what about him is so bad? He likes to sleep around? He’s a jerk? I mean, what? And doesn’t he get a shot at being able to change?”
Nick’s eyes softened and his gaze traveled over her body, resting on her hips where he knew ink marked her skin beneath her clothes. She’d used a fake ID at sixteen. That was a rough period in her life which she’d come back from. Changed.
She stood before Nick as proof of it. And he knew it.
“I guess . . .”
“No, honestly. So because he was an asshole in high school, he’s always an asshole now?” And that was the problem. As much as she wanted to hate Max and as much as she thought he
was
an asshole most of the time, she also glimpsed something else there. A kindness that made her want to dig under the cocky sludge of his exterior and get to his heart.
“Don’t get preachy with me, Lea. Has he been anything other than an asshole to you? Some people don’t change, you know.”
“But some people do. And what, is there a statute of limitations on change? Like, if he hasn’t changed now, he can’t?”
Nick twisted his features. “What is going on with you? Why are you defending him?”
She didn’t know. Why was she? Because the image of him taking care of that stupid cat, the turmoil that swirled in those warm brown eyes, flashed in her head. There was something more to Max than he let on. Another Max.
And she wondered if she’d ever meet him other than in fleeting glimpses.
But she wasn’t going to admit that. Even to Nick. “Just playing devil’s advocate,” she muttered, fingering the sharp edge of the cart.
Nick squinted at her, and she knew he didn’t believe her, but this conversation was over.
Lea glanced at the clock on the wall over his head. “Why don’t you head out early? It’s okay, I have this covered. You don’t look so hot.”
He looked liked he was going to argue but then sighed and rubbed his face. “Fucking sinuses. My head is killing me.”
“Then go. Honestly.”
“Yeah, but sometimes the library picks up now right before close and you’ll be here by yourself . . .”
Lea propped a hand on her hip. “You’re too nice for your own good sometimes. Go. Home. Nick.”
He smiled, a weak smile compared to his usual bright grin.
Nick looked to the front doors at the darkening sky as the sun set. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Trish was going to meet me and walk home with me, but I’ll just text her and tell her I’m heading home early and to head on over to my place.”
“Yes,” Lea said, helping to gather his things. “Shoo.”
Bookbag over one shoulder, Nick slung an arm around her neck and tugged her to him in a quick hug. “Thanks, Lea.”
“Get Trish to make you tea and give you a scalp massage,” she said.
He laughed softly. “Sure, I’ll do that.”
Lea watched him go and then glanced at the clock again. Another couple of hours and then she could go to the gym and relieve some stress. Maybe pretend Max’s face was on a punching bag and beat the crap out of it. She smiled and chuckled to herself. Sounded like a plan.
M
AX DRUMMED
HIS
fingers on the desk of the recreation center on campus, counting down the minutes until he was off duty. He worked the desk in two-hour shifts a couple of days a week. He made minimum wage but every penny was worth it.
A girl walked up to the desk and handed him her student ID card. He scanned it absentmindedly and handed it back to her so she could head into the gym. She smiled and sauntered away, throwing a look over her shoulder. She was cute—with her blonde hair and hazel eyes—but lately, he’d been in the mood for dark hair, thick bangs and challenging brown eyes.
He rubbed his temples.
Shit.
After the whole debacle with Alec’s ex-girlfriend and Kat, Max had sworn off girls. Or at least, sworn them off when he was sober and could remember everything. And especially attached girls.
But from the first moment he saw Lea Travers last year—the pixie face, deep brown eyes, glossy hair—he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He had no business flirting with her, but damn, it made him hard when she pushed back.
Everything about her made him hard.
“Payton.”
His name focused him on the present, reminding him he was at work so thinking about his dick was inappropriate.
The portly frame of Bruce Shaw stepped in front of the desk. He was the recreation director, who managed all the comings and goings of the recreation center and was Max’s boss.
“Yeah, hey Bruce,” he straightened from his hunched position and smiled.
The man clapped him on the shoulder. “Busy tonight?”
Max shrugged. “So-so.”
Bruce—he’d told Max he could call him by his first name during his interview, sophomore year—leaned on the desk. “You ever take any martial-arts classes? Self-defense?”
Max shook his head. “No, but I can do a mean tackle.”
Bruce snorted a laugh, but he seemed distracted. “Yeah, all right.”
“You need something? Or—” But before Max could finish his question, Bruce’s phone vibrated on his hip.
He glanced at it. “Ah, gotta get this. Talk to you later, Payton.” He rapped his knuckles on the desk and then walked away after barking a greeting into his phone.
Max watched him go, curious what that question was about, but figured Bruce could catch him later. He made his schedule, after all.
Ten minutes later, Max was off work, in his happy place at the leg-press machine.
He gripped the handles of the bench, took a deep breath and puffed out his cheeks as he exhaled while straightening his legs, raising the leg-press bar. His legs burned from the second set of five hundred pounds, but leg day was his favorite and he had a lot of frustration to get out.
But then the source of that frustration flashed in the mirror in front of him in a black and fuchsia vision and his knees buckled. As the weights clanged back into place, she jerked her head at the sound. Her dark ponytail whipped over her shoulder, and she locked eyes with him under her fringe of bangs.
How had he never seen her at the gym before? Granted, he rarely went at night, but this morning’s routine got messed up when he had to make those stupid cookies for his brothers to take to his dad’s tomorrow.
He didn’t move, just held her gaze, like she was a rare, beautiful doe and if he moved, she’d bound off. He’d never seen her with clothes that snug. The pink tank top showed off her small breasts with just the right amount of cleavage. Her black pants were skin tight, ending below the knee, hugging her perfect ass and narrow hips. She was a tiny thing, but how come he never noticed the definition in her arms and the muscles of her calves as she shifted her weight from foot to foot? Some scars twisted out from under the hem of her pant leg, and he wondered if she suffered from pain, or if her limp was from destroyed muscles.
He wanted to hear her voice. He wanted her to give it back to him as good as he gave it. Anything to take his mind off of tomorrow, when he had to go home and see his dad, start his every-weekend sentence.
When he raised his eyes back to hers, she jolted forward, like she thought about walking over to him, but then she shook her head and turned around, walking back toward the free weights.
No. Fuck that. She wasn’t walking away. Not after the attitude she threw at him in the library earlier.
He stood up, wiped down the machine with his towel, then threw it over his shoulder and walked toward Lea as he took a sip of water from his Camelbak bottle.
She was bracing herself on a bench with her left knee and hand, her right leg straight with her foot on the floor. Her back was parallel to the bench as she executed a pretty damn good tricep kickback with a fifteen-pound weight, keeping the upper half of her arm tucked to her side, bending and straightening her elbow.
But still, it was his job to mess with her, he decided. He couldn’t have her, but he’d take what he could get, even if it was a battle of insults.
He stopped in front of her so the top of her head was about a foot from his thighs and he leaned back against the mirror, crossing one ankle over the other. A subtle shift of her body was his only indication she noticed him.
“Nice technique.” He took another drink of water.
Lea completed two more tricep kickbacks and he heard her mutter “twelve” under her breath before she straightened, the weight hanging at her side, knee braced on the bench. “Gee, thanks. I didn’t realize you were a personal trainer.”
“I’m not.”
She widened her eyes and looked around. “Oh! So this is free advice then. From . . . a random guy.”
He straightened from the mirror. “Hey, I’m not some random guy.” What was it about her that made him defensive? He could never get the last word with her.
She only smiled at him and rotated her wrist that held the weight.
He pointed with his head toward the area behind her. “You know, they have a machine for triceps. You don’t have to use free weights.”
She shifted now, straddling the bench, then knelt her right leg on the bench so she could perform the exercise on the other arm. “I’m aware of that. But I like using free weights, because it works out the stabilizer muscles.”
He knew that. Fuck, he totally knew that but he was shocked she did. “How come I’ve never seen you in here before?”
She raised her eyebrows and bent over. He admired the dark rope of hair that curled around her neck, and the beautiful strip of toned back muscle exposed above her tank top. “I don’t know. Either too busy looking at yourself or all the pretty shininess in here.” She jerked her head toward the treadmills where a blonde was running. Pretty hot with a big rack. But Max’s eyes went right back to that dark bent head. “Doll, my eyes are on the only thing in this room pretty and shiny.” The words were out before he could tell himself to stop flirting with her.
Lea’s free weight wobbled. She swore softly and placed it on the rubber mat by her foot. She put her hands on her hips, but not before he spotted her hands shaking. “Don’t,” she said, softly but firmly.
“What?” he asked, playing dumb.
“Don’t,” she repeated and grabbed her bottle of water at her feet—a pink Camelbak that matched his gray one.
“I don’t—”
She took a drink, eyes on his. “Don’t play games with me, Max. I’ll win every time.”
He frowned. “What games? I’m not—”
“Yeah, you are.”
He clenched his fists. “Don’t tell me what I’m doing, Lea. I’m not playing games with you. I don’t lie.”
Those dark eyes burned into his and fired a flaming arrow right between his eyes. “Oh, you just omit the truth then.”
He knew what she was referring to—the fact that he’d slept with Alec’s high-school girlfriend and kept it from him even after they broke up. Yeah, he was a shit, but he’d apologized. He was trying to be a better person. And who did she think she was? He leaned forward, his voice rumbling deep in his chest. “Don’t talk about that like you know what really happened, because you don’t. You don’t know me. And you don’t know how that guilt fucking ate at me every day. How I hated myself for being a coward for not telling the truth.”
All the harshness from Lea’s face drained and those hard eyes that had previously burned with a pain-inducing heat now smoldered with a soothing warmth. A slender hand rose. Fingers brushed his chest and his eyelids dipped as the touch shot sparks over his heart.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have thrown that in your face. I . . .”
But he didn’t find out what she planned to say next, because a phone chirped and she blinked, the connection between them broken by a stupid piece of microchipped plastic.
She pulled her phone from a strap on her arm and glanced at it, frowning. She flicked her eyes up to him, like she was apologizing. “I’m sorry, but I need to answer this.” She tapped the screen. “Hey, Trish.”
A voice sounded on the other end, loud and slightly hysterical and Lea’s face slowly paled. “What?” she said in a pained whisper.
Max stepped closer and she leaned slightly into him. Something was obviously wrong but he found a small bit of satisfaction that his presence seemed to comfort her. And that should weird him out. Because he didn’t do this “damsel in distress” thing. He wasn’t a white knight. He’d learned that the hard way. But something about Lea made him want to be.
Lea spoke into the phone. “Oh Trish, I’m so sorry. I’ll be right there. The hospital in Maple Grove?”
More hysterical words.
“Okay, give me twenty. And tell Nick to hang in there.”
Nick.
The boyfriend.
Max clenched his fists. He should step back. Get away. Run as far away from this tempting, beautiful doe as fast as he could.
But her eyes were wet and her lip quivered and he couldn’t leave her. So he waited, unsure if she wanted his words or not.
She looked up at him finally, her eyes dry but her lips trembling. “That was Trish, Nick’s girlfriend, and . . .”
Her voice trailed off, maybe because his face was surely a riot of confusion. Nick had another girlfriend? What kind of sister-wives shit was Lea into?
She blinked and bit her lip. “Nick is my cousin. Trish is his girlfriend. I didn’t . . .” She waved a hand. “ . . . whatever. And, she just said he . . . oh shit.” She yanked on her ponytail so hard her scalp shifted.
Max filed it away to deal with this Nick-cousin thing later. Because right now, something was bothering her, and everything in him screamed to root it out and make it better. He batted her hands away and placed his on her slender shoulders. “Doll, take a deep breath and tell me what’s going on.”
She looked at him with eyes no longer dry. Her hesitation was unmistakable. He could feel her trying to pull away under his palms so he softened his voice. “Hey, fight your flight instinct and talk to me.”
He didn’t know if it was his words or his voice but her muscles slackened under his fingers and her weight sagged into him.
“Trish said Nick was robbed or mugged right outside his apartment and . . . and . . .”
A tear slipped down her cheek, and he massaged her shoulders with his thumbs. She took a deep breath and her next words were said on a gasp, brown eyes pleading with him to tell a different truth. “ . . . beaten up.”
Max’s breath left his body in a rush. “And he’s at the hospital now?”
Lea nodded, her eyes welling up again, but she focused on his face, as if their eye contact was the only thing keeping her body from collapsing. He squeezed her shoulders and jerked his head toward the door. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
She balked at that, the muscles again bunching, her face hardening, but he cut her off before she could protest. “Look, just let me help, okay? You’re upset, and you’ll be tired when you leave. Let me do this for you.”
The muscles remained tense, but those eyes stayed on him. And with a jerky, reluctant nod from Lea, they were striding out of the gym, Max’s arm around her shoulders.