Page 26 of Lifeline

“You’re not covering for him?”

“Now why the hell would I do that?”

Xander crossed his arms. “Look, just because you think Colin was keeping me away from you doesn’t mean I didn’t notice shit. Something is going on between you and him.”

Ah, hell. “Look⁠—”

“Don’t,” he interrupted with a growl. “I don’t want to hear your bullshit, Mika. Especially because you’re one of the ones I rarely expect bullshit from, but I can see bullshit all over your face right now. All I care about is that you’ll both do your jobs and not bring any drama into this place.”

“There’s not going to be any drama,” I assured him.

“Uh-huh, wanna try that again?”

“No drama you’ll have to worry about,” I told him, feeling my temper come to life. “And he’s here to do his job. But he’s going to be a little green when it comes to going out and doing search and rescue. He’s not had to do something like this before.”

Xander stared at me before frowning. “Fine. But I’ll be keeping an eye out.”

“Keep two out if you want, assign someone to report back to you, throw up cameras,” I said. “Whatever it takes to make you feel better, Xander. But whatever you do, don’t act like I’m going to lie to you or that I’m keeping something from you. And yes, I know I’m keeping stuff from you. We all are, just like you keep stuff from us. Because some shit is none of your business, and I have no intention of making it your business. So unless you want to strip-search me for boo-boos, I’d like to change into warmer clothes.”

His frown deepened, and he gave a grunt. “Fine, go.”

“Great,” I said and marched back into the main building.

I didn’t use my assigned room as much as some others, but I still kept my things there and grabbed dry clothes from my closet and a towel before heading toward the locker room. I came to a halt when I found Aidan sitting on the bench and Colin with him, looking over his ankle. It seemed he had been intercepted on his way into the shower because there was still drying mud in his hair, but he was stripped to his boxer briefs, his towel on the bench behind him.

“And it has gotten better?” Colin asked doubtfully, and Aidan snorted.

“It’s been feeling better since the drive back,” Aidan told him. “If it were getting worse, I would have said something. Right now it’s barely in need of an ibuprofen, but if it’ll make you feel better, I’ll pop a couple and stay off the ankle for a few hours…after my shower.”

Colin eyed him. “Will you?”

“He will,” I said, and when they both looked at me, I shrugged. “Unless something changed over the years, he’s the first one to take a rest when needed. He’s not going to push himself unless it’s necessary.”

“There’s nothing manly about not letting your body recover, and pushing yourself unnecessarily is nothing to be proud of,” Aidan said dryly. “Trust me, I like my body, Colin. I don’t want to wreck it just to prove a point.”

“Hmm, considering this group, you’re going to be the odd one out if that’s the case,” Colin said as he stood up. “We’ll see if you two are telling the truth down the road, but fine, get your shower and kick back.”

Colin’s doubt felt less offensive than Xander’s. Mostly because Xander could just be an asshole, whereas Colin at least did his best to appear personable. That, and well, considering his professional history, it made sense that he didn’t trust someone to follow his medical advice without a lot of bitching at minimum, if not outright coercion and blackmail to get the job done.

Shaking my head, I went to the locker and glanced over to see that Aidan had stood up, towel and bag in his hand, and an unsure look on his face. I realized we were alone, and he kept glancing at me.

Oh…right. This wasn’t a case of two coworkers having to share a shower, because we weren’t just two normal coworkers. We weren’t something, but we weren’t nothing either.

The realization made me suddenly aware of his state of undress. He looked away as if afraid I might read something into his expression. It was the first time I’d really seen how his body looked, and I couldn’t help but search his frame. My previous assessment had been right; he had been keeping up at the gym. He was bigger, not a lot bigger, but he had filled out with muscle in the intervening years. Dark hair speckled his chest in thick wisps, like I remembered, and it seemed he had stopped trimming his stomach hair to a single strip and had kept it as the ‘treasure meadow’ he’d jokingly called it. Except unlike back then, his stomach didn’t have a slight pouch but was flat and faintly defined.

I snapped my head back to the locker and realized it was empty because I hadn’t dumped my clothes in because the wet, dirty things were still on me. And they were on me because I was suddenly aware of the fact that I would have to strip and shower around my ex-boyfriend, and I still wasn’t totally clear on how I felt about him. He might have been thinking the same, considering how wary he was being.

He broke the awkward silence. “You can go first.”

“You can go; you’re the one who needs to rest your ankle, remember?” I said, pulling out my phone and pretending to read the screen so I didn’t make it more obvious than it already was that I was unsure what to do next.

“Most of what I said to Colin was to make him feel better,” he said, and I could see him shrug out of the corner of my eye. The movement was almost enough to make me turn around, but I thought better of it. Whether my awkwardness was because it felt weird to think we could be so comfortable as to be naked around each other without second thoughts or because there was still lingering attraction that needed to be dealt with, I didn’t know. “The ankle is fine. I’ll pop the pills and probably end up sitting around. I’ve got some writing to do; it’s not going to kill me to stand on it for a bit longer while I wait.”

“Or you could just shower now since you’re already halfway there,” I pointed out, finally meeting his eyes and definitely not looking anywhere else.

“Yeah, I guess,” he grunted, shifting and knocking over the pile of clothes he’d left on the bench. “You also don’t like to linger in showers like I do.”

“I mean,” I began, but stopped when he grunted in annoyance and bent down to scoop up the clothes. It meant I was accidentally given a free show as the fabric of his underwear stretched over his ass. Which is when I remembered how he had always been dismissive of his ass when we’d been younger, stating that there was nothing impressive there even when I couldn’t keep my hands off it…when I was allowed to, anyway. He clearly had taken his self-criticism to heart, though, because his ass had definitely grown, and I wondered how I hadn’t noticed before.