Damn, that was hot. Why hadn’t he anticipated how much of a turn-on it would be to have her barking orders at him?
He pressed pause on his hot drill sergeant fantasy and redirected his mental energy to contracting and extending his quadriceps. Taylor began to count down his reps, starting from ten. He grimaced with every push but made it through the end of her count.
Jamar damn near collapsed. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing.
“I admire the hard work you’re willing to put in, but aren’t you afraid of doing even more damage to your knee, or even worse, to this?” She tapped her head. “I saw that movie with Will Smith. I know about the permanent damage multiple concussions have had on football players.”
“You sound like my mom,” Jamar said. “She’s read every article on CTE there is.”
“Can you blame her?”
He shook his head, a wry grin pulling up one side of his mouth as he thought about the numerous lectures on chronic traumatic encephalopathy he’d endured while sitting at his mother’s kitchen table. She always ended them by saying that she supported his choice to play football because she loved him, but she didn’t like it.
“No, I don’t,” he answered. “And I understand the risks that come with playing. I plan to take every precaution to protect myself.”
“But why?” She gestured to the state-of-the-art equipment surrounding them. “I know it’s not my place to point this out, but it doesn’t look like you’re struggling to make ends meet here.”
No, he didn’t need the money, but an extra three million in his bank account would go a long way in helping Silas’s family. Jamar didn’t have the energy to discuss the complicated rationale behind his push to get back into the League. He didn’t know Taylor well enough to gauge how she would react to the admission that he was putting his body through all this pain because of a promise he’d made to his dead best friend. Because of the guilt he’d been drowning in for the past seven years over the role he played in his best friend’s death.
But Silas wasn’t the only driving force behind this. He had other reasons—less noble causes—that spurred him on. AndthatTaylor would understand.
Jamar locked the leg press into place and climbed off the machine, then went over to the cubby where he’d left his phone. He opened the browser and clicked on his bookmarks, searching through the collection of Reddit posts and message board threads he’d saved over the past year. He found one of the harshest, posted just after his injury.
He handed her the phone, showing one of the reasons he was willing to work so hard. “This is why I’m busting my ass to get back into the NFL.”
He watched her as she read over the posts, her lips moving as her eyes looked at the screen.
“Ugh, why did you read the comments?” she lamented. “You never, ever,everread the comments.”
“Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way, and not early enough.” He shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to it over this past year, but it hasn’t been easy, and I still go back and read over them whenever I feel myself getting too comfortable.” He pointed to the phone. “Those people? They’re the reason I’m pushing myself so hard to play ball again, because they think I can’t do it. Revenge can be a hell of an incentive, and I can’t think of sweeter revenge than signing a new contract.”
She looked down at the phone and then back up at him again. A slight smile drew up one corner of her lips. “Well, if that’s the case, get your ass back on that machine. We’ve got work to do.”
Jamar did as he was told, moving from the leg extension to the leg curl machine. His quads felt as if they were in hell, but he knew the result of that burn would be worth it.
Taylor counted him down through his last five reps. “And rest,” she said. “I know you said you want to go for at least five hours a day, but I think we need to gradually build you up to that.”
Jamar didn’t argue the point. He would need to rest his legs for ten minutes before he could take a single step.
“Tomorrow we focus on your upper body. I’ll be here at nine.”
“I need to push our session back to late afternoon if possible tomorrow. The running backs coach at the University of Texas asked me to join them at practice in the morning.”
“Hmm.” Her brow arched. “That actually sounds pretty cool. Can I come too? It’d be the perfect opportunity to see other football players at work—specifically those who play at your position. I could create a workout that’s even better tailored to exactly what you need.”
“What if someone puts two and two together?” Jamar asked. His gut twisted with unease just at the thought of it.
Taylor’s hands went to her hips. “Do you really think a bunch of college kids will see us together and automatically assume I’m your fitness instructor? They’ll more likely think we’re hooking up, which would hurt my reputation more than it would hurt yours.”
Jamar’s head reared back. “How’s that?” He didn’t mean to sound so offended, but shit, he was. He didn’t consider himself the bottom of the barrel when it came to hookup choices.
“Because when you get back into the NFL in a few months, you will then have to make good on the other part of our deal,” Taylor said. “I don’t want people to think you only chose me as your trainer because we were messing around on the side. So yeah, I’m the one with the most to lose here.”
She was probably right about what people would think, which was fucked up.
Still, this whole thing made him uneasy. He didn’t want to take the slightest chance of someone drawing the correct conclusion about his relationship to Taylor. But, then again, she had a point about tailoring his workouts.
After a minute, he nodded. “Okay, fine. We’ll say that you’re a friend who’s interested in football or something.”
