Page 8 of Gym With Benefits

“She’s nothing like the others.” I tried not to be too offended by his reaction. He’d heard me declare my undying love for about three different women in as many months. “She’s… she’s…”

"You've got a problem, Golden Boy," he murmured, watching me measure out the neon powder. "Who even is she? I saw you walking her past the training rooms earlier. She looked like she wanted to sprint out the emergency exit."

"Her name’s Jess," I said, dropping my voice to a conspiratorial whisper as I poured cold, filtered water into his shaker cup. "Came in on a voucher from a friend to check it out. But I’m telling you, man. She’s something else. I tried to do my usual routine, the whole 'welcome to the family' bit, and she just called me out on sounding like an infomercial.”

“I like her already,” he chuckled, stealing one more glance in her direction.

“She’s got this wedding coming up in a few months,” I said, unable to derail the excited rambling of my brain. “Some old college drama. She thinks she’s let herself go, which is an absolute crime because she’s the most breathtaking specimen of a human I’ve ever seen."

Brock’s eyebrows shot up. “How about you tell me how you really feel about her?”

I snapped the lid onto the shaker and agitated it with a sudden, aggressive burst of energy, my eyes tracking right back to the green turf section of the Sweat Sanctuary.

He took the drink from my hand, popping the cap and taking a long, slow swallow. He wasn't much of a romantic. A ladies’ man, sure, but he was so much cooler about it than I’d ever been. Too cool to make a fool of himself.

Back in our high school football days, while I was writing terrible poetry in the back of the team bus and trying to figure out how to talk to the cheerleaders, Brock was memorizing defensive playbooks and studying film. He viewed the human body as if it were a machine, and he was the engineer. Clean lines, torque, efficiency.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his gray eyes narrowing as they locked onto Jess’s silhouette.

"Her form is a disaster," he noted, a little less clinically than usual. It caught me off guard, but I didn’t have time to say anything about it. "She’s gripping the guide bars like she’s trying to choke them to death. Her weight is shifted entirely into her toes instead of driving through her heels. Her lower back is going to be screaming by tomorrow morning."

"Can you please turn off your PT brain for five seconds?" Then, to get him to move his gaze from the love of my life, I added, "Look who’s got the machine next to hers."

Brock’s posture hardened just a fraction.

The towering, broad-shouldered silhouette of our favorite local corporate crisis manager was now firmly entrenched on the elliptical directly adjacent to Jess. He’d slammed a huge pair ofover-ear, noise-canceling headphones onto his head, effectively walling himself off from the rest of the universe.

We’d known Dane for three years, ever since he rolled into our Penn Quarter branch looking like a walking ulcer. The guy worked some high-profile, high-stress job downtown, fixing political disasters and corporate nightmares. He used our weight room like an anger-management clinic, lifting heavy enough to snap ordinary tendons just to blow off steam. Usually, he kept to the shredding side of the Muscle Mansion, completely ignoring the rest of humanity. But today, for whatever twisted reason, he had marched straight into the Sweat Sanctuary at the same time as Jess.

Even from across the lobby, through two sets of open double doors, the sudden spike in atmospheric tension was palpable. I clocked the exact second the friction hit them. Jess’s entire body went rigid on her machine, her shoulders snapping back into a defensive stance despite herself. She ripped one of her buds out, her mouth moving in a furious twist as she sneered something directly at him. Dane didn't even blink. He was too desensitized for any of that shit. He just tilted his head, his face a mask of cold, unyielding arrogance as he threw some venomous retort right back into her face.

"I’m going over there," I muttered. My feet were already moving, my body tensing to vault around the side of the bar. "Dane is a shark on a good day, but when he’s in one of his corporate-crisis moods, he doesn't care who he tears to pieces. She doesn't know him. She’s going to get chewed up."

"Hold your horses, Golden Boy," Brock said, his arm a steel security gate as his hand pressed firmly into my chest. "Look at her. Look at the way she’s holding her ground. Most people shrink back when Dane rolls up his sleeves or gives them that no-bullshit glare. But she’s giving it right back to him."

"Brock, come on." I tried to swat his arm away but I may as well have been using a feather instead of all my upper body strength. I kept my voice low, intensely aware of a couple of gym-goers walking past the lobby toward the locker rooms. "You know he can be a pain in the ass. Or do you want another customer complaint on our hands?”

“Don’t pretend this is about optics.”

“It is,” I argued. “And it’s my job to keep the peace. I need to go over there and make him back off. This isn’t an anger-management tank, and she shouldn't be his collateral damage."

"And I’m telling you, she’s got grit," Brock countered, a rare grin tugging at the corner of his mouth as he watched the distant silent movie play out. "She’s aggressively pacing him now. It’s more fun to watch it unfold this way. If you go break it up, you’ll ruin her competitive drive."

Through the wide glass partition, Jess pointed a finger directly at Dane’s face. He reached up, casually tapped his oversized headphones, and mouthed something that made her chest heave with an angry breath. I clenched my fists under the counter, watching her try to block him out by picking up her pace. I wanted to march in there, declare a zero-tolerance policy for being an arrogant prick, and escort him right out to his precious Bronco.

"Hunter? Hello? Are you actually working today, or just daydreaming?"

A demanding voice snapped me completely out of my trance. I blinked, tearing my eyes away from the Sweat Sanctuary to find a woman standing at the bar. She tapped her long, neon-pink manicured nails against the countertop. It was Victoria, a regular who worked at a law firm down the street and treated the Nutrition Nook like her private catering service.

"Oh, hey, Victoria. Sorry about that," I said, instantly forcing my customer-service smile back into place while my heart still raced from the adrenaline. "What can I get started for you today?"

"The usual green detox, but add a shot of ginger and double the ice," she said, sighing dramatically as she squinted past me at the blenders. "And please make sure it’s completely smooth this time. Yesterday there were actual kale chunks at the bottom, and it blocked my straw. I don't have time to chew my liquids."

"You got it. Completely smooth, no chunks, extra ice," I promised, spinning around to yank the frozen ingredients from the refrigerator. My hands moved on pure muscle memory, throwing spinach, green apples, and ice into the blender container, but my eyes immediately darted back to the window.

While the blender whirred to life with a loud, grinding roar that drowned out the lobby noise, a tall, athletic woman in a designer tennis skirt approached the pickup counter. She ignored me completely and zeroed in on Brock. I recognized her instantly as one of his high-paying personal training clients who corporate-laddered her way through D.C. real estate and took her glute days very seriously.

"Brock, thank God you're still here," she said, dabbing a nonexistent bead of sweat from her brow with a designer towel. "For our Tuesday session, are we doing the Romanian deadlifts again? Because my hamstrings are still completely locked up from last week, and I have a big charity gala on Thursday night. I can't be limping down the red carpet in five-inch Louboutins. That’s not the aesthetic I’m going for."