I clicked my tongue at him. “I feel sorry for you, but thank you. Because of what you did I met a great man who makes me happy and treats me with respect.” A spiteful glee made my feet feel lighter as his shoulders hunched and his hand went to his stomach. I knew that feeling well, and he’d caused it more than once. The bruising beneath his eyes told me he was stressing too hard to sleep, and I didn’t care. “Like I said, talk to my lawyer. Goodbye, Chris, hopefully forever.”
I took off, leaving him behind, both literally and figuratively. River could take him on and win, and Chris could stay where he belonged—in my past.
I made it back to my car in record time, flying high on adrenaline. Excitement for the future coursed through my veins. Right now I could run up a million steps while “Eye of the Tiger” blared in my ears, I was that happy.
“Excuse me, sir?” A timid male voice had me turning, and I smiled at the young man behind me. He couldn’t be older than Judge, with a cute, freckled face—although, he was ripped, more muscular than me. He passed me a flyer. “If you’re interested. We’re running PT classes.”
“PT? Personal training?” I glanced down at the flyer withPumping Pulsein bold black letters across the top.
“Yep. You look in shape anyway, but if you want more training give us a call.” He winked before he moved on to the next jogger.
I stared down at the flyer curiously, an idea forming in my head.
What if.... Judge loved working out. He spotted me and trained with me, and now that we lived together he meal planned. He encouraged me every day, and when I gave up on adding weights, he pushed me.
I grinned. Maybe this was his future. He could take a course or two, become a certified personal trainer, and we could approach Genie at Iron Warriors and see if he could put Judge on the schedule there. I tucked the flyer in my pocket. I couldn’t wait for Judge—my Charming—to get home.
18
JUDGE
Genie grinnedat me and shook his head as I sidled up next to the tower of weights. This morning his dark hair was wet and combed in a part to the side, and his auburn beard glinted in the overhead lights. His muscled chest stretched the blue tank top he was wearing to the limit, and I could see his nips underneath the thin fabric, but maybe the shirt was the biggest one he’d been able to find. He was huge in every way possible.
I’d been contemplating what I wanted Flynn to do for me this morning, and Genie had startled me out of my thoughts. He crossed his thick arms, and while I couldn’t help but notice his sculpted body, I was also smug because I’d helped Flynn tone his shoulders just a little more, and I’d gotten his biceps a tad more rounded by switching between hammer curls, regular bicep curls, and reverse curls, then having him do a fuck ton of pushups.
“Haven’t seen you here this early in a while.” Genie patted my back in a friendly way that had me chuckling. “You guys doing a-okay? I was starting to get worried.” His thick eyebrows furrowed.
I shrugged, happy on the inside that maybe Flynn and I had more friends than we realized. “My life got weird. We moved in together and stuff, but I wanted to get back into a real routine with Flynn at the gym. I justified fucking with our schedule, but no more. You know how it is, it’s easy to get distracted when you’re around each other all the time.” And Flynn had been saying exactly that to me every time I shoved him down to fuck him around the house. He also kept saying that he wasn’t “young” anymore, as if that somehow meant he wouldn’t blow his wad for me when I fucked him. To date, he hadn’t asked me to stop “distracting” him or failed to give up his load to me. As much as he complained sometimes, especially when he had paperwork spread across the kitchen table, he was quick to get naked.
Genie nodded and laughed. “What have you been doing with your life?”
My face heated like it had been recently when anyone asked me that question. I’d never been excited to tell people I was in law school, but this was so different. “Right now, I’m working at an organic grocery store on Vert Island, but I’m also looking into taking some online courses in nutrition and stuff. I’m probably going to take some business classes and other things. I might become a trainer. You know.” I shrugged as if it was no big deal, but Genie’s eyes lit up, and I couldn’t stop the smile that spread across my face. Flynn had been right. He’d sworn Genie would want to hire me if I had the qualifications to work at the gym, and I was so relieved this wasn’t a dead end.
“You got any leads for that yet? It is a business, you’re not wrong. You have to find clients.”
“Only one. I talked to the guy who runs Pumping Pulse, it’s that LGBT gym that opened downtown near Black Out. They have a sauna and stuff, so I think it’s sort of a bathhouse.”
Genie raised his eyebrows. “Really? I haven’t gone in to check out the competition.”
Nodding, I laughed. “Yeah, I went over with Flynn, and while no one outright said anything, and even though there are a lot of women there, too, it has that vibe. You know what I mean? It’s a meet up spot, not a pay-for-company place. Anyway, they said they might have an opening for me after I have a couple of classes under my belt.”
“Me too! I’ve seen you put Flynn through his paces, and it’s a thing of beauty.” He smirked and winked at me, and I grinned. “Sometimes trainers work out of more than one gym, and as long as you don’t pull my clients over there I wouldn’t care.” Had he maybe taken a peek at me doing a few other things to Flynn during those early morning locker-room hours? The twinkle in his eyes made me think it was a definite possibility.
“You help people learn to lift?”
Genie and I swung around and a guy, who was probably a couple of years younger than me, sat up from a nearby weight bench. He was cute with dimples and short spiky brown hair that glittered with sweat, and the only thing he wore was a pair of shiny green basketball shorts. Genie let out a warm sigh, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing at him.
“Well, maybe. I’m not certified to do anything yet, but I coach my boyfriend.” It sounded weird to say the sensual dance Flynn and I did in this gym was only working out, even if it was the partial truth.
The guy’s eyebrows flew high and he blasted me with a megawatt smile. “Could you tell me what I’ve been doing wrong? I want to look like him,” the kid said, pointing at Genie, whose face flushed.
“You’re too short, they call this guy Giant,” I said with a laugh.
Genie smacked my arm. “It takes years, bucko,” he said in a gruff tone and wandered off, and I shook my head at him as he left.
“First of all,” I said, studying the huge weights the kid had been using. “You loaded on too many pounds.” He wasn’t anywhere big enough for the ninety he’d stacked on. “And you shouldn’t have been doing this without a spotter.”
His expression fell to something outright pitiful. “I don’t have anyone to work out with.”
