Page 52 of Gym With Benefits

Jess

Booking it out of the gym, I reached the Bronco a few paces behind Dane. In time to slam the driver’s door closed the second he’d opened it.

Dane jumped a full inch. “Are you insane?”

“You don't get to walk out after what you just did in there.” The adrenaline from the weights room boiled over into hostility.

He took a long breath, his fingers loosening on the door handle as he leaned his hip against it. Nowhere near as pissed off as I was. He looked down at me, but the usual edge in his eyes was missing. Brock’s little revelation about the training room sucker punch seemed to have blunted Dane’s drive.

“First you want me gone, now you're stopping me from leaving? Jesus, make up your mind, woman.”

“I want you to explain why you're being such a dick,” I countered, stepping directly into his personal space.

“I don’t owe you anything.”

“You owe me a reason,” I seethed, and heard myself getting louder despite the painfully public nature of this confrontation. But I didn’t care. “This has gone on long enough, Dane.”

His eyes darted to the entrance where two members in matching neon lifting straps came out, their conversation dying out as they stared at us.

“Get in the truck. You’re making a scene.”

“No,” I said, planting my feet with my arms folded over my chest. “I’m staying right out here. Where there are witnesses.”

A surprised twitch appeared at the corner of his mouth, the first sign of amusement he’d shown all day. He indulged me, some of the tension seeping out of his shoulders. “Witnesses? In case you haven’t noticed, I save my right hooks for people my size.”

“You're a petulant child who can't handle the fact that I don't look at you the way you want,” I said, testing the boundaries of Brock's theory.

The amusement fell from his face, replaced by a tight, defensive stillness. He shifted his weight, shoes grinding a stray piece of gravel into powder beneath his toe. “Brock talks too much. He thinks every woman who walks through that door is an audition, and he projects his bullshit onto me.”

“Then look me in the eye and tell me it’s not true.”

He reached for the door handle again, and again, I slammed it shut. The vibration rattled through my wrist. Dane glared at me, but before he could make another try for the door, I wrestled his keys from his grip and dropped them straight down the scooped front of my crop top. The cold metal lodged firmly against my warm cleavage.

I stared at him, my chin tilted upward in an explicit challenge. For all his bluster and toxic posturing, he wouldn't dare reach in to get them back.

He let out a defeated sigh. “I’m the child? What are you doing? Seriously.”

“I'm getting to the bottom of this,” I said, my voice rising enough to make a woman unloading grocery bags three cars over stop and watch. “I don't know you. You don't know me. But for some reason, you’ve decided to give me hell. Tell me what I did to make you this hateful. If you don't…”

Dane's eyes fixed onto the small bulge where the keys jutted against my top, and he cleared his throat. “You think you have me figured out, don’t you?”

“If I did, we wouldn’t be here… doing this.”

He pushed off the truck, his chest encroaching on my space until the heat of his torso burned my face. “You're distracting. There. Now give me back my keys.”

“Wh— distracting?” I searched his face for a clue, but he was a veteran at hiding things. Clearly.

“You walk in here with your smart mouth and your cute ass, acting like… I don’t know. Just treating the place like—”

“I treat the place like a gym,” I yelled, my frustration reaching a peak. “I pay my membership dues, do my squats, and did you just say I have a cute ass?”

A group of three Muscle Mansion regulars came out, their laughter dying out as my voice carried across the parking lot.

Dane’s neck flushed an angry crimson. “Give me the keys, Jess.”

“No.” Unfortunately for him, I didn’t give a shit about having an audience. “Not until you tell me the truth.”

Dane refused to budge. He let out a dry, breathy chuckle, his eyes darkening as he tilted his face toward mine. “For a smart woman, you really don't catch on fast, do you?”