Chapter 14
We were hot breath and sticky skin before the sun came up. Leo stayed at my pace the entire run. Side-by-side, we made it down the foggy beach. The sand was easier on my knees than gravel. And the sound of waves helped take my mind off the hurricane that was my current mindset.
“Break?” Leo asked when my huffing and puffing sounded more like wheezing.
I gave him a thumbs up and stopped immediately. “This is harder than I remember. Nice but… hard.”
My words sounded forced as I tried to speak and breathe at the same time. I rested my hands on my knees as I caught my breath.
“Are you okay?” Leo pulled out his earbuds.
I waved a hand and straightened myself up again. He needed a partner who was going to challenge him, not hold him back. That’s who I was going to be. Or who I was going to at least pretend to be.
“I’m good.” I wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand. “Just give me two minutes.”
Honestly, I needed like two days. Weeks would be even better.
“We’re done for the day.” Leo looked at his watch. “This is good for a first day back.”
“You sure?” I raised a brow. “We can go longer, we still have time before sunrise.”
Take the out, Kira. Please take the out.
Leo wore a warm smile and shook his head. “We’re done. But, don’t stop moving now. We need to cool down.”
I groaned a little at the thought of moving, which earned me an amused look from Leo. He laughed when I tried to fix my face to look calmer and less like my heart was about to explode from exhaustion.
“Running is the most punishing kind of exercise,” I defended and pushed myself to walk. If it was a cool down Leo wanted, it was a cool down he’d get. No matter the burning of my lungs.
“You spend eight hours a day in the summer sun doing yard work.” Leo fell into step beside me with an annoying amount of pep in his step. Running at any time of the day took all the excitement out of my body. For Leo, it appeared to be the opposite. From the very moment we met up at the boardwalk, he was all smiles and loose limbs, ready to tackle the day like a motivational speaker.
What he didn’t seem ready to tackle was our make-out session last night. I couldn’t find much of an opening between the huffing and puffing, so I let it go for the time being. Because in all honesty, I too needed some time to gather my thoughts and figure out what exactly was going on.
“Yardwork yields visual results,” I explained while pausing for a second to dig a seashell out of my sock. “I can see the progress and it’s motivating. But this…”
I gestured to the beach that stretched on for miles and miles. It looked endless.
“There’s nothing happening.”
“I beg to differ.” Leo held up his watch, showing me how many miles we’d run. “That’s something.”
“Those numbers just remind me of how far we have to walk back.” My cheeks warmed when he laughed. “Sorry, all I’m doing is complaining.”
“I enjoy hearing you complain,” he said. “Your voice… you have a nice speech pattern.”
“A nice speech pattern?” I touched my hand to my throat as if I could feel speech patterns.
“That probably sounds weird.” It was Leo’s turn to blush. “I don’t know how else to describe it. You talk like the narrator of an audiobook.”
“A narrator?”
“Yeah, it’s soothing.”
“Thanks,” I murmured and tried to come up with another topic so he wouldn’t notice his words were making me blush. “Want to talk about your motivation problems? Might be good to discuss since you’re feeling the high of a run. You could use this feeling as motivation.”
When he looked confused, I added, “The whole reason I’m your accountability partner is because practice isn’t bearable anymore, right? Since I’m out here running to nowhere, in particular, I’m kind of curious as to why.”
“Right.” He slowed down a bit. “Are you limping?”
