My heart takes a leap out of my chest, not sure where it wants to land. I don’t trust this man standing in front of me, and I don’t know if he can ever earn that trust again, but this admission does something to my insides, something it shouldn’t. I should be running for the nearest exit. Reminding myself of the lonely black hole I found myself in these past five years, but instead, I desperately need to hear more, I want him to still crave me.
I begin to shake my head, I shouldn’t want this, it’s not healthy . . . not going to end well for me.
He pulls me up against his chest, his arms folding me into his body. “Addison, I want you back.” Leaning in to kiss me, I step away, out of his embrace, evading the touch of his lips that my body desires.
My hands push against his chest, creating the space I should have the minute he barged in here. I can’t allow my body to rule my mind. His clean male scent, his striking eyes that are boring into my own, and I can’t think straight, my body betraying me.
“You left me knowing I had to take care of a sick dad, a bar that he’d run into the ground, and a crap load of debt to crawl out of. You told me you’d be here for me, said you’d help me pick up the pieces, and then you left.”
“I’m here now.” He reaches for me again.
“You’re too late,” I say the words but they’re meaningless. I know it, he knows it, and when his fingers graze my arm—when he steps further into my zone, my protective space no one is supposed to invade without being invited, all the fight leaves me as I’m not strong enough to ask him to step out of it.
“Ten more!”
I grunt in agony as Reed unleashes a torment of unnecessary commands in my face. Dusk is setting in, and I can see my breath with each exhale. We’re at the track at the Santa Barbara City College, our go-to place when we meet for our workouts. He has some sort of rap blasting from his portable Bluetooth device, and I want to laugh at him as he tries to yell over the volume of the music.
“Come on pussy! Ten more pull ups!”
I pause mid-stride, my chin grazing the bar in front of me. “Quit the dramatics, Reed, this isn’t the army.”
He steps closer, his hands on his hips. “Get moving, Damian, I’ve got a date, and you’re fucking with my time.”
Laughing, I finish the ten pull-ups, and do five more for good measure. Releasing my hands from the bar, I drop to the ground and wrap a towel around my neck.
“With who?”
He shrugs. “Some chick I met at Starbucks the other day.” He’s busy packing up our training gear, not looking in my direction. It’s getting dark and the lights from the stadium are illuminating everything in a soft glow. My heart is pounding furiously inside my chest, and I love every second of this massive endorphin high my body is on right now. I couldn’t feel more alive.
“And?” I ask as I begin to take off my weight lifting gloves.
“And what? She has a great ass and a nice rack, so I asked her out.”
Rolling my eyes, I take a swig from my water bottle.
“Good luck with that one,” I say sarcastically.
Stepping back to document the set we just hammered out, my leg gets a slight cramp, and I’m reminded how different my life is from six years ago. You can either be slapped in the face with a reality check, or slowly shown that your life is going to need to change. I was punched in the gut when a drunk driver slammed into my car, destroying . . . everything. My leg eventually healed, and my body was mended, but my heart never quite recovered.
“Damian – watch out!”
The pain is violent. Bones are shattering into dust . . . skin ripping apart. Blood is everywhere, the smell of warm copper surrounding me. And it’s loud. Pain is a deafening sound, and right now, it’s pulsing between my ears.
I open my eyes to try to find a focal point, something that will bring me back to the here and now, but all I see are headlights blinding my vision, and I realize the