Nick wasn’tsure what the fuck chair pose was supposed to feel like, but he was pretty sure it shouldn’t be making his quads and traps shake like he was coming off a three-day bout with the flu. Next to him, Gabe held the pose like a fucking statue. The only sign that there was a living, breathing human beneath all that muscle was the steady drops of sweat raining down on the mat.
“Swan dive back down into your forward fold. Feel your hamstrings lengthening. Feel yourself rooting to the mat.” Wander’s voice soothingly insisted his body do things it wasn’t comfortable doing. His hamstrings felt like they were shredding like a piece of lunch meat.
Nick peered between his feet at Canon, who was also sweating profusely, but he didn’t appear to be shaking like a goddamn leaf.
He was sweating his way through plank pose when Wander’s feet stopped next to his mat.
“Shifting forward into cobra pose,” she instructed, straddling his ass with her feet and pulling his shoulders up and back into a position he didn’t know he was capable of getting into. “Beautiful extension,” she said.
Behind him, Canon snickered. Gabe made moony eyes at her.
In front of him, Riley’s ass tempted him from those short shorts as Wander told them to transition to downward facing dog.
His girlfriend was hot.
He felt the weight of a disapproving stare. This time it wasn’t coming from Elanora. It was coming from his own mother busting him as he checked out his own girlfriend.
He shrugged at her and nearly toppled out of downward dog.
Marie rolled her eyes and then got distracted when Gabe’s unnaturally large biceps rippled as he opened his arms for one of the warrior poses. It was Nick’s turn to shoot a judgmental stare in her direction.
When she shrugged, Wander paused behind her. “Let’s drop these shoulders, Marie,” she said, adjusting his mother’s upper body.
For the rest of the class, Nick kept his attention divided between Riley’s ass, the door, and his manly competition. When Wander announced it was time for corpse pose, he almost broke down and cried. Between spending the night on the fucking floor, finding out his girlfriend was the target of a killer, getting sucker-punched by Ham Hands, and trying to keep up with stupid Canon in sun salutations, he was in desperate need of a beer, a burger, and a nap with Riley glued to his side.
The scent of hash browns and old people reached his nose, and Nick guessed that Mrs. Penny had arrived with the rest of the neighbors in tow.
It had been a long fucking day, and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. And his gut was telling him his girl was in trouble. Big trouble.
33
10:35 a.m., Tuesday, August 18
“Idon’t know if anyone ever told you this, Nick,” Blossom said, approaching them after yoga class. “But your mom’s got a real stick up her ass.”
Riley spit out the water she’d just swigged down. “Mom!”
“What? I’m only speaking my truth. She comes in here every Tuesday and looks down her nose at us. She doesn’t even know that Wander is our daughter!”
“You wouldn’t be the first to point out the fact that my mother’s ass has no lumber shortage,” Nick said.
“Still, that’s not a very Blossom-like thing to say about someone,” Riley argued.
“Puh-lease. I’ve been nice as pie to that woman fortwoyears.”
“Enough chit-chat,” Elanora announced from the front of the room. She thumped the floor with a sizable staff.
“Who gave mean Granny a stick?” Nick wondered.
“You will all sit. Now,” she ordered.
They all did as they were told. Even Roger. Though Riley saw him sneak earbuds into his ears.
Canon took the cushion next to her, and Riley thought she heard Nick growl audibly.
But any testosterone-fueled growls were drowned out by an ear-splitting screech as Mrs. Penny dragged a metal chair from the back of the room all the way to the front. Lily, Mr. Willicott, and Fred all did the same.
Elanora glared and waited until the elderly troublemakers were seated and eating their hash browns.
