Blurb
Taos was tired.
Tired of everything that came with living. Not to the point where he was suicidal or anything, but tired enough that he just didn’t give a crap anymore.
He’d seen all the ugliness this world had to offer due to his job as a police officer for way too many damn years of his less than stellar life. After finding a way to sustain his spending habits that didn’t include having criminals point guns at his face, he quits without a backward glance.
Only, he just can’t step away from old habits.
Old habits that have to do with a beautiful young woman that makes his heart feel like it isn’t nearly as broken as it is.
Fran has experienced more than her fair share of crap. After an attack that nearly took her life, she stays hidden in her house, fearful that stepping out of her comfort zone will be the final nail in her coffin.
Then her sister forces her to face her fears, and she joins Madd CrossFit.
There, she meets the man that saved her life a year ago, and realizes rather quickly that he doesn’t even realize who he is to her.
He’s everything she ever thought a man should be and wants nothing to do with her.
Maybe she’ll have to give him a reason to look her way.
And damned if she doesn’t find a way to do it.
She didn’t plan on nearly getting killed for that to happen, though.
At least not again.
CHAPTER 1
Will work out for food.
-t-shirt
TAOS
“You ready?”
I grimaced at those words. “I guess.”
Madden grinned. “Come on, it’s not going to be that bad.”
I rolled my eyes.
Ten years ago, I’d never have thought that I’d go into business with my best friend. I thought that I’d always be able to hide in the shadows, get my work done, and go home.
Madden had forced me out of the shadows. He’d also forced me into instructing a bootcamp class at our CrossFit gym.
I didn’t teach classes. At least not with any consistency. Madden taught them, and, if upon occasion, he needed an assist, I would reluctantly take over. But only until he was able to do his job.
I was a silent partner.
I lurked. I worked in the office. I worked out on my own when there were no other classes or people there. I went home and worked some more. What I did not do was teach classes until forced.
Why I’d agreed to teach this bootcamp, I didn’t know.
Call it a weak moment. My friend since we were kids had shamed me into doing it.
I can’t do it myself. Everyone else is busy. This will be good for business.
All things that he had thrown at me to get me to do it.
Madden didn’t beg.
But there’d been one woman, one of our veteran members, who’d all but implored us to start the bootcamp class so that she could have her sister join. And Madden, into her since she’d joined, hadn’t had the heart to tell her no.
“It’s going to be really bad.” Sophia, Madden’s daughter, and my might-as-well-be daughter, looked over between the two of us. “Dad, Tay doesn’t teach classes. He works, works out, and then goes home where he works some more. You’re actually taking him away from another bestselling book right now.”
I rolled my eyes.
I was an author of horror fiction.
At first, writing had been a way to get me the fuck out of my own head and into someone else’s. Someone that had a hell of a better life than me.
But eventually, when I sent my book to the publisher and it got accepted, my entire life changed.
Well, the money in my life changed.
Though, at this point my thoughts and scary dreams were serving a purpose. I just wrote those into my manuscripts rather than allowing them to continue to scare the absolute shit out of me.
The door to the gym opened, and I groaned.
I didn’t look behind me, mostly because I didn’t want to fuckin’ do this.
But Madden would do the dirty work, he’d promised.
Getting them signed into the system, signing their waivers, getting them ready for their first day.
All I had to do, according to him, was teach the class.
I could do that.
“You’ll be okay, Tay,” Sophia whispered into my ear.
I looked over to find her staring at me with the biggest blue eyes I’d ever seen.
“I know,” I grumbled.
When I’d first come into Sophia’s life, she’d been a baby. A tiny, very small baby.
Her dad had become part of my extended family. Madden, Sophia, his daughter, and Jasper, his son. Our other best friend Haggard, and his kids, Clem and Boston.
I wasn’t sure why I’d latched on to Madden so hard. I had just been adopted by my current family, just like Madden had been taken in by his foster family. After years of insecurity, I had needed a friend.
I’d been just a teen myself, but the moment I’d seen Madden, so fuckin’ mad just like me, I’d instantly stuck out my hand and introduced myself.
Then I’d told him that he needed a haircut because he looked like a douchebag.
That’d been the start of our best friend relationship. And the start of his kids being in my life.
There were times over the years that Madden—like Haggard, who’d entered the military young to help support his young kid and wife—had gone his own way, but we always made our way back to each other.
After Madden’s divorce, he’d come home and moved into my place. After my divorce, I’d gone to his place. When we’d graduated from college, and neither one of us really knew what we wanted to do, we’d moved in together.
Though we both always left, we never went far, and we never went long without speaking or seeing each other.
And that included his kids.
I didn’t have any of my own, and though his kids were both adults now, that didn’t change how I treated them.
I was the really cool uncle.
The one that would give them absolutely anything if they only asked.
“So, Dad wasn’t going to say anything, but I think you need to know.” Sophia bit her lip.
I grumbled under my breath. “Please don’t say what I think you’re going to say.”
I had a feeling. That was why Mad had asked me to teach this class. Begged me.
He’d also begged me not to ask any questions.
I hadn’t been able to tell him no.
“Maria is going to be in this class,” she whispered.
I cursed underneath my breath. “You’re fucking joking.”
Sophia grimaced. “Nope.”
“Nope, what?” Jasper asked.
I looked over to find him, in uniform, coming into the gym headed straight for us. Taking great care to go the long way around his father that now had three new members crowded around him.
“I just told Tay that Maria’s going to be in this new bootcamp class,” Sophia explained, looking her brother up and down.
I looked at him, too, making sure there were no signs of injury.
Jasper, like I had once been, was a police officer for the city. There were times he came in and looked like he’d gone three rounds with a brick wall. There were others, like now, where he looked tired.
I remembered those days, and I didn’t care to repeat them.