Page 49 of Just for the Cameras
“For fuck’s sake,” he mutters as he slides away from me, stands, and then looks down at me. “Are you serious right now?”
I blink a few times, his dark gaze breaking me away from my attempt to fly into a safe space where I will no longer feel. “I…I don’t foresee myself getting up from here. Please tell Phil to find someone worthy enough to look after my pink-feathered friends.”
He rolls his eyes and then bends down and drags me by the legs,straightening me out across the mat. Then he lifts one of my ankles, kneels between my legs, and holds one down while pushing the other up.
“What on earth are you doing?” I ask as his entire body crowds the juncture between my thighs. “I tell you death is knocking on my door, rigor mortis firmly taking hold, and you get me into a sexual position?”
His brow cocks up. “I’m stretching you so I don’t have to explain to my coach why there’s a woman face-planted in our weight room.”
“I am not face-planted.”
“You will be in a second.” He switches legs, making me holler in pain as he stretches the muscles that I thought no longer existed inside me.
“Just leave me for dead. Have them scoop me up with a shovel and deposit me in the back of a garbage truck. Please put my pitiful savings toward a bench that sits in front of the flamingos. And for the love of God, tell Big Hermy he was my favorite.”
He rolls his eyes once more and then, in one fell swoop, he turns me on my stomach and starts stretching my quads.
“Mother of God!” I shout, burying my head into the mat, a mat that is probably infested with things like ringworm and imprinted with sweaty man balls. But it’s my solace right now, my peace, the only thing keeping me from losing all sense of control.
Oh, dear sweet mat, please swallow me into your sanctuary where hairy backs and moist ass cracks find solace.
Graydon spends the next few minutes stretching me out, maneuvering me around like his own personal lump of Play-Doh, and then, when he’s done, he lifts me to my feet and holds me by the shoulders, keeping me in place until he finds that I’m steady enough to walk on my own.
“You good?”
I sway for a few moments, and when the darkness around my vision recedes, I slowly nod. “I think so.”
He grumbles under his breath and then takes off for the exit, but when I don’t follow him, he stops. “For the love of God, keep up.”
I take one step forward and feel that my leg can handle it, so I take another, and another, and find myself very slowly walking toward him.
Thata girl.
“I told you not to do the fucking workout,” he says in a terse voice.
“And I said I could do it, and I did. I did it.”
“With water bottles.”
“Hey.” I point my finger at him. “That was good content, showing people you don’t need a state-of-the-art weight room to get in a good workout—water bottles will do the trick.”
“Whatever you need to say to make yourself happy.”
I reach out and tug on his arm, barely grasping him. “Can you…can you please not walk so fast?”
He sighs but slows his walking, and it makes me think maybe…just maybe, he’s not all that bad.
“And you said you worked out,” he huffs.
Actually, change of mind. He’s bad.
He’s the worst.
And I hate him.
He’s rude and inconsiderate, and sure, he might have stretched meout and deposited me on my feet, but he’s still a jerk, and I hope he steps in gum today.
“I lift things at the zoo. I’m not training to get rammed in the head by another human.”
