And still, I’m standing here with my phone in my hand, realizing I might have waited just long enough to let him decide without me.
Chapter twenty
Colby
“Morning, assholes.”
Dex’s voice echoes through the weight room before I even hear the door shut behind him.
Bryce follows a step later. “Speak for yourself.”
Dex smirks. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re fueled entirely by caffeine and bad decisions.”
“Keep talking,” Bryce says. “I’ll start messing with your playlist.”
“That’s a federal crime.”
“No, your playlist is a federal crime.”
A few laughs bounce off the walls.
Normal.
I don’t look up from my bench.
Dex clocks that immediately.
He grins anyway. “Well look at that. Captain America’s already awake and mad at the world.”
“Someone has to set the tone,” I say.
Bryce points at me with his shaker bottle. “See? That right there. That’s our guy. Wakes up ready to run through a wall.”
“I call it discipline,” I say.
“Same thing,” Dex answers.
Eli comes in behind them, headphones around his neck. “Morning, ladies. Anyone touch my pre-workout, I’m calling the cops.”
“Your pre-workout is basically illegal already,” Dex says.
“Exactly.” Eli sets his bag down. “I don’t want it diluted by your germs.”
More chuckles.
Bryce drops onto the bench beside Dex, already mid-rant. “Tell me why the smoothie machine downstairs is still broken. Third week in a row. At this point it’s a social experiment.”
Dex nods solemnly. “They’re testing how long before we riot.”
“I give it two more days,” Bryce says. “Then someone’s getting bag-skated out of spite.”
Eli snorts quietly as he starts stretching.
Normal.
For a minute, I almost let myself pretend it’s just another morning.
The weight room smells like rubber mats and sweat and something metallic I can’t quite place.
