Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 69428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69428 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut.
I’d felt that one other time before, when I was saving a woman from an assault a couple years ago. Just like back then, now I felt my heartbeat starting to pick up speed, and I had the almost violent urge to stomp over there and demand she be mine.
That, or tell her to hug me because she looked like she could really use one.
“Calm it down a notch, bro,” Madden whisper-hissed from beside me. “You’re giving her the ‘cop’ stare.’”
I blinked, trying to rein it in.
I couldn’t help it, though. Once a cop, always a cop.
I saw threats where there weren’t any. I looked at every single person that walked in my door, sizing them up, wondering if I could take them down and protect myself as well as everyone with me.
Francine, however, looked like she needed my protection.
She looked like she’d welcome it, too.
If she found out she could trust me, that was.
I blinked and tried to shove that protectiveness I could feel toward her down into that cage that I tried to keep it in, shoving it deep and locking it up tight so I wouldn’t run her off.
Then I gave her my back and started to roll the whiteboard toward the middle of the room where I was going to use it today.
All in all, eighteen people had shown up for the bootcamp, nineteen if you counted Mavis who was going to work out with her sister and not go to the regular class that was about to happen on the opposite side of the gym.
Once the clock struck six in the evening, I reluctantly uncrossed my arms, tried in vain to look approachable, and said, “Hello, class. Happy Monday. Everyone excited to be here?”
There was a shit ton of grumbling coming from the class, but only one in particular that I was interested in.
The woman that Mavis crowded closer to.
“I am Coach Brady. I’ll be instructing your six-week bootcamp,” I announced to them all. “Why don’t we start right here and work our way around the circle, introducing ourselves and what we do.”
I, of course, chose Mavis first.
She smiled. “I’m actually a veteran CrossFitter, if there even is such a thing. I’ve been here for a year and a half. I came to accompany my sister, Francine.”
Francine smiled and waved at the class.
“You can call me Fran.”
CHAPTER 2
Maybe if we tell people that the brain is an app, people will start using it.
-Text from Fran to Mavis
FRAN
“Did you know one of the worst workouts in CrossFit is named Fran?” the sexy man, our coach, asked me.
And when I say sexy, I felt like even that word didn’t give the man standing in front of me enough justice.
Even him saying I was named after an awful workout wasn’t enough to keep me from staring at him.
Something I’d been doing ever since I’d noticed he was there.
Jesus, he was severely breathtaking.
“I did not.” I shook my head. “I have to admit, I was kind of unwilling to try CrossFit until recently. I don’t want to look like a bodybuilder.”
The man’s lips twitched, but he didn’t smile. He did have amusement in his eyes, however.
“You won’t,” he promised. “Bodybuilders have to eat and bulk up to get to their growth. I highly doubt you’d like ingesting five thousand calories a day and lifting weights for six hours. Plus, you don’t have enough testosterone flowing through your veins.”
I automatically shook my head, unable to answer him.
My tongue was twisted and refused to work properly.
My eyes went over his body as he thankfully moved to the man beside me.
His name was Herb, and he hadn’t worked out in fifteen years. He secretly hoped that he didn’t die today.
All the while Herb was speaking, my eyes took the coach in.
Coach Brady was tall. Very tall. At least six-foot-four.
I’d never really been into tall guys, mostly because I was on the short end, and always looking up was a pain in the neck. Literally.
The coach was also very muscular. As in, he could probably pick me up and break me over his knee with little to no effort.
What had me not freaking out about his size, however, was the color of his eyes.
They were a pale green, like the color of the Gulf of Mexico in Florida on its very best, most clear day.
Eyes that very same shade had been the soothing balm on about two years’ worth of nightmares.
Nightmares that I had, living and awake, since the assault that had nearly killed me.
The man that had saved my life had eyes that color.
I remembered seeing them and only them that night in the dark. He’d had a flashlight that’d reflected off my white shirt and lit up only a small portion of his face, giving me the color of his eyes.