“Guess I just wanted to see what you were up to,” I say finally. “Is this place yours?”
“Yeah. I opened it a couple of years ago. Have another one in Fairview too.”
“Really?” Turning a small circle, I take in every little detail. “That’s amazing. Is it just a gym?”
“Just a gym.” He snorts, heading to the mats. “It’s definitely not just a gym, thank you.”
“How do I know?”
“You don’t, until you ask.” He winks. “It is a gym. People pay a membership fee to use the facilities, but I also train a couple of amateur fighters and have a boxing program for kids. That’s really my favorite thing. They love it for the love of the art, you know? Not because they can whip ass in a bar or flex around town.”
“You used to do both things,” I point out, moseying my way toward him.
Leaning against a wall, his face sobers. “I did. I still do, if it’s warranted, but that’s not what I’m about anymore.”
The way he speaks the words, the level of sincerity in his tone…it has my heart swelling in my chest. It’s a reminder that I don’t quite know this man anymore and it raises a host of questions, including how different he just may be now than he was when I left.
“What are you about these days, Cross?”
“I’ve settled down some, I suppose. Don’t interface with the law much these days.” He grins. “I work a lot, either here or over at the Fairview gym. I do some online coaching and personal training sessions.”
“Like with Megan?”
He shoves off the wall, a twinkle in his eye. “Like Megan,” he goads. “Did that bother you?”
“What? Megan? No,” I insist, brushing it off. “Why would it?”
“Just an inkling.”
“Your inkling would be wrong. How is it my place to have any feelings about what you do in your business?”
“It’s not.”
It’s a simple statement, two little words that pack so much of a punch. It’s not. It’s not the words that irritate me so much; it’s the reason for needing them. Even as I stand here inside his gym, even though I feel this link to Cross and have since I saw him yesterday inside Crave, he’s nothing more to me than somebody I used to know.
“I don’t train many women,” he says, picking up a couple of towels along the mats. “I only agreed to three sessions with Megan because someone bought them for her birthday. She has one more and then it’s over.”
“You aren’t training her any more than that?”
“Nah. She knows it. It’s ridiculous, really. She doesn’t want to know how to box any more than I want to know how to bake a cake.”
Laughing at his analogy, I grab a few dumbbells off the floor and put them back in the rack. “I’m glad you found something to do with your life that makes you happy. I always worried you’d float around and get stuck doing something you hated.”
“Come on,” he teases. “You were really worried I’d end up in jail or on your couch.”
“True.” I giggle, turning to face him. “But I like this version of you, all grown up.”
“Well…” He blows out a breath. “You can thank yourself for that. If you’d have stayed here, I don’t think I ever would’ve realized what a punk I was.”
“You weren’t a punk.”
“I was. I did whatever I wanted and had no plan for going anywhere. Then you left and I realized…” He looks at me and then at the floor. “I realized I’d already lost the best thing that would ever happen to me.”
There isn’t a reply to that. I just hold a breath and watch his beautiful eyes soften.
“So,” he goes on, “one night I decided I was going to do something with myself, and if you ever came back, maybe I could show you I wasn’t a loser.”
“What if I never came back?”
“Honestly? I’d have been a little relieved.
“Gee, thanks.”
“What?” He chuckles, motioning for me to follow him. “Is it wrong that I would’ve found relief in knowing I wouldn’t be falling in love again? That shit hurts, Kal.”
I stop walking. “What if I did come back?”
He pauses too and turns around. Running a hand through his thick, silky locks, his cheeks redden. “Then I’d fight like hell to get you back.”
“You’re just being charming again,” I whisper, knowing it’s a lie as soon as I say it. There’s no denying the stripped-down emotion on his face, the crinkle in his forehead just between his eyes. The corners of his lips flicker, almost pulling into a smile, but not quite.
“Come on,” he says, turning away. “Let’s teach you how to throw a punch.”
Seven
Kallie
“I like this one too.” I point at the screen toward a small one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment.
“It’s so small,” Nora remarks. “That bathroom is barely big enough to turn around in.”
“True. But it’ll be just me. I don’t need tons of space.”
“If you use more than five cosmetics at one time, you’re screwed. Just think about that.”
Nora sinks into the pillows on her sofa as I readjust the computer on my lap. We’ve been at this for a while now and my friend’s patience is running thin—not because of the house hunt. Because I’ve not brought up Cross.
Just thinking about him in theory alone causes my stomach to go crazy and, when I allow my brain to focus on his face or his smell or his touch, it’s lights out. I can’t focus on anything else. It’s a Cross Show and I don’t necessarily want a ticket.
Nora does, though. Her gaze is heavy on the side of my face as I pretend to be immersed in the hunt for an apartment.
“What about this one?” I ask.
“Stop ignoring me.”
“What are you talking about? I’m talking to you. That’s hardly ignoring you.” I laugh, feigning ignorance.
She sighs dramatically. “You aren’t giving me an opening.”
“An opening for what?”
Scrambling to sit up, she throws a pillow at me. “I know you saw Cross.”
My head falls to the cushion at my back. Just like that, the weight that had been sitting on top of us is now squarely on my shoulders. I close the computer lid. “And how do you know that?”
“I saw your car at the gym. I just happened to be heading to Crank to take Walker and Peck a sandwich and saw it there.” Her bottom lip juts out. “You didn’t even call me.”
Laughing, I lift my head. “I don’t have to call you with every little thing, Nora.”
“This is not a little thing! You saw Cross. Privately. Alone.”
“And it was private,” I say, shaking my head. “Do you know what that means?”
“Yup. It means it’s for the two of you and me. Besides,” she says, rolling her eyes, “everyone knows. Machlan asked me about it while we were closing tonight.”
“Oh, good grief.” I groan.
My eyes close as I prepare to either answer or do my best to deflect her questions. But, when the peace is supposed to come, Cross’s handsome face comes instead. I feel a smile inch across my lips as my insides grow warm.
My hips sing as the memory of his hands gripping them yesterday as he showed me how to punch again lights up my mind. The heat of his breath on the back of my neck. The wicked combination of tenderness and ferocity that danced in his eyes.
It’s only natural to be almost-smitten already with him, but it’s also irresponsible. I’m not a child anymore, hardly the teenager that fell in love with a boy a couple of years older than her with the crooked grin.
I need to adult this relationship. Potential relationship. Letting my walls come down without realizing my fears are still absolutely warranted would be careless. And stupid. And so, so easy.
“So?” she prods.
“So, what?” I ask. “Yes, I saw him. He’s …”
She watches me carefully, not saying a word. I don’t either. I have no idea where to go with this statement. I could say he’s more handsome than he was when I left. It’d be honest to say I didn’t want to leave him last night. I’d be lying if I said I’m happy he didn’t kiss me or that the look in his eye didn’t make me feel all sorts of things. All of that would be true.
But I could also tell her I was up all night worrying about it. That it’s all too soon. That I’ve been poked enough in the last year between my job and my ex-boyfriend to want to get into anything serious again. Especially with Cross. One toe in with him is as good as diving in headfirst and I don’t need that risk.
“Come on, Kal,” she says. “I know him. I know you. I know him and you together.”
“No, you don’t.” I set the computer on the table in front of me to mask the epic gulp of air I take. “I don’t even know who he is or who I am, let alone who the two of us are together.”
“That’s not true. I’ve been your best friend all these years plus I’ve been around to watch him. Maybe the part about me not knowing you two together now is kinda true, but I can imagine.” She swipes her thumb over her lips. “So, you still love him.”
“No,” I insist, swinging my head side to side emphatically. “I don’t. Stop that.”
She holds her hands in front of her, signaling she’s done with that line of questioning but the harm is done.
So, you still love him.
My feet beg to hit the floor and pace a good, solid circle to get rid of some of the energy bursting through my veins. Instead, I fiddle with a piece of fringe on the pillow next to me. It’s less panicked-looking.
I’d always hoped if I saw Cross again that it wouldn’t feel like the Fourth of July. That somehow, I wouldn’t be drawn to him like a sunset to a horizon. I told myself it would be like meeting any other man I’d known and would prove the thing between us was just a juvenile obsession.