I'd tried gyms, including the one in my office building, but I was not interested in shvitzing all over my coworkers. Something about gym treadmills felt utterly hopeless to me, like I was a little drone walking on a mechanical road to nowhere. I couldn't do that.
So, this was my routine, rain or shine: one full loop around the pond at six every morning, Do Not Disturb mode on, The Backstreet Boys blasting. Get my steps in and get ready for the day, even if that meant waking up, getting dressed, leaving my house, boob-sweating around the trail, andthengoing home only to shower and dress and leave the house all over again. All while pretending that I loved exercising at the ass-crack of dawn. It made sense in some strange world.
There was one definite drawback to the ass-crack of dawn: some of the woodland creatures were still living it up and popping out of the bushes like they were at a fun little forest rave with a sticky-fingered toad on the turntables. On most days, it was nothing more than a squirrel or pair of mourning doves, and I could handle those dudes. Today wasn't one of those days.
A raccoon-possum-evil-monkey-stegosaurus hybrid darted out from the brush, stopped in the middle of the path, and hissed at me. It was possible that I peed just a tiny bit.
"Oh hell no," I screamed.
I stopped in my tracks, holding my breath while I waited for the beast to run off but it went right on snarling at me.
"Okay, this must be the day when the animals rise up and enslave humans because you, sir, are possessed by—"
The words stuck in my throat as a pile of bricks slammed into my back and knocked me to the ground. Then again, maybe it wasn't a pile of bricks because bricks weren't known to have arms or chin scruff, and bricks didn't smell like sweaty pine trees.
Sweaty. Pine. Trees.
Yeah, I said it. Thought it. Whatever. It was one hundred percent accurate.
I barely had time to register the shock of hitting the ground before the man-brick was muttering to himself and running his hands over my arms, legs, and torso, and bless us, oh Lord, for granting us these hands from your bounty.
"Unffff," I sigh-groaned as his fingers moved over my ribs.
His hands stilled, and then he pressed my sides again. "Did that hurt?" the man-brick asked.
I shifted away, suddenly aware of the stinging pain in my knees, palms, and chin. My breasts took most of the impact, but several layers of fabric protected them from the trail. And it wasn't like boobs bruised. Right?
"Just tell me the beast is gone," I said, teetering into a sitting position to tend these scrapes. "I can live knowing it's still out there, but I can't handle it being in my line of sight."
Man-brick was suddenly beside me, hooking his arm around my waist and bringing me to my feet.Oof. That hurt. Standing, breathing. Everything hurt in that glorious everything-was-worse-after-turning-thirty kind of way.
"I need to take care of this." He frowned at the battered skin on my hands and thin trails of blood running down my legs. "For fuck's sake. I can't believe I did this to you."
"Can we focus on the real priority? Seriously, tell me that creature scurried back into the pits of hell," I said.
He blinked as if he hadn't heard me correctly and then glanced from side to side. "We're about a quarter mile from the trailhead. Do you think you can make it? Is that too far? I want to know if it's too far," he said.
"Not too far at all," I lied. "I'm fine. I can walk."
He stared at the scrape on my chin, his jaw locked. This man-brick, he was a looker. Square jaw straight out of the Disney princehood, long limbs, frown for days. And everything he said was rumbly-grumbly. Mutters and murmurs and growls. But for all his Prince-Hans-of-the-Southern-Isles-ing, he was gentle. He brushed his thumb over my chin, his touch little more than a mild breeze.
Please don't be a Prince Hans. Only Kristoffs allowed here.
"Okay. We'll walk," he said. "But you'll stop me if anything hurts."
"You can bet on it." He shouldn't bet on it because that was another lie. I didn't have a reason for this tough girl routine but I was committed to it, and sticking with things long past the point of reason was my most charming trait.
His grip on me was fierce, and despite the fact I was not a small woman, he was shouldering the majority of my weight while also walking faster than I could run.
He toggled between asking whether I was all right and apologizing for knocking me to the ground. He led me to an older SUV, opened the tailgate and directed me to sit while he rustled in the back seat for his first aid kit.
I expected a wallet-sized container of bandages and out-of-date antibiotic ointment. Instead, I got a battlefield backpack stocked with more equipment than most ambulances.
"This is handy," I said, my eyes wide as he pulled on a pair of gloves. He snapped those babies on like he meant business.
"Started out as a medic. Army Rangers. Some habits are hard to shake."
He pressed a gauze pad to my bleeding knee and in the process, he stroked the back of my calf with his free hand. It tickled in the best way and I yelp-squeaked. For that one moment, I studied the sweaty-pine-scented man-brick with the squee-inducing hands. Andbrickwasn't too far from the truth: he was broad and strong and could probably run through a fucking wall.
