He smirked.
Okay. So that was how he wanted to play it. I knew I looked small, but even being unable to properly work out for a couple of months hadn’t changed the fact that I was a gym teacher. I did fitness for a living.
I threw the ball harder. He caught it, wobbled, and lobbed it back with more force.
It hit my gut, and I almost lost my breath, but I wasn’t going to take this lying down. I lobbed it back hard enough to makemy biceps burn. This time, he had to hop sideways to keep from falling over.
He bared his teeth at me, and fuck—it was scary…and hot.
The ball came sailing, and I caught it, but then I realized I was no longer upright. I curled to take the fall easier, and it knocked the wind out of me, but I managed to keep the ball in my grasp. I tried to suck in air as I heard feet hitting the mat, and a second later, Kent was helping me sit up.
“Seriously?” he demanded.
I coughed. “He’s the one who hit me!”
Kent shot me a flat look. “You think I wasn’t watching that whole thing?” When I was stable, Kent took the ball away from me. “Seriously, boys. I have eight-year-olds more mature than you two.”
Creek and I both had the decency to look ashamed, though when he caught my eye, I saw his lip twitch again. He was far from done. And so was I.
“Just…get through the sit-ups,” Kent told us. “One hundred,” he emphasized. “I can multitask, and I will be counting.”
He walked off, and I could hear him apologizing to his new patient as I scooted over to where Creek had dropped to the ground. Our gazes locked again, and I felt a hot wave of…something…in my gut.
“Tell me if you’ve had enough, Point Break.”
“Get more clever than that, Sergeant Grumpy. I fucking love that movie. Keanu Reeves is not only a national treasure, but he’s responsible for my gay awakening.”
“That figures. Men like you always love that shit.”
I squared my shoulders. “Men like me? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Buddy, don’t play ignorant with me. I know your type. You fucked around, chased the summer, decided surfing was a lifestyle,” he sneered. “Then you picked up some job—likea gym teacher—so you could screw around without any real responsibility.”
I swallowed against a hot, tight throat. A small part of me wanted to pin him to the mat and scream in his face until he understood how off-fucking-base he was. But men likehimwould never get it. They saw some lazy asshole—not the man who gave up everything for what he had.
In my experience, men like him would never understand what it was like to walk in my shoes, constantly searching for safe spaces to be myself.
But there was no point.
“You trying to delay because you know I’m going to kick your ass? I mean, I get it,” I said. The words coming out of my mouth didn’t sound like me. The anger in my chest didn’t feel like me. But I couldn’t stop it. “I know you’re jealous that big, bad sergeant man is getting his ass handed to him in PT while the scrawny surfer iswalkingcircles around him.”
All the humor—even the cruel humor—left Creek’s face. I felt guilty, but I took none of it back.
He dropped to the floor and stared at me. “One of these days, your mouth is gonna get you in trouble, son.”
I laughed as I dropped to my back and put my arms behind my head. Old, lingering pain from before the accident rose to the surface of my chest. “Funny you can’t tell it already has, grandpa.”
He grunted, then started his count, and I quickly caught up, refusing to let him get under my skin.
Never mind that he already had.
CHAPTER FIVE
CREEK
It was PT time. Again. If I were the praying type, I woulda asked Jesus for some patience, but alas. I wasn’t asking, and god sure as fuck had better things to do than help me control my temper.
Heath was walking around the room, slow but pretty steady, with Kent right behind him, his hand stretched out and hovering near Heath’s harness. I was watching his every move, his every step, my stomach churning with bitterness. He was doing it. He waswalking.
