Jesus, she still smelled good enough to eat, and I wasn’t just referring to the scent of vanilla buttercream clinging to her hair.
“So, what are your goals?”
Katie looked up at me, a mix of regret and disdain crossing her sweet features. “Uhm...if I'm being honest...to get the hell out of here as quickly as possible at the moment.”
Her breathing had ratcheted up a notch, the stretch of her cotton shirt across her heavy chest setting my fingertips on fire with the need to feel her skin on mine again.
“Well, I don’t think that’s the reason you walked in here. I hope Jocko didn’t scare you off.”
“It’s not Jocko that scares me.” She answered plainly and then covered her mouth with a shocked hand.
“Stop,” I caught her wrist, a zing of adrenaline singing my nerves. “Don’t let me scare you. I’m sweeter than a teddy bear.”
Her eyes clung to mine, a frown forming before she finally nodded and stood. “I know you are, Sawyer. It’s our past that scares me.”
Hell, I’d forgotten how fucking good my name on her lips sounded.
“Katie…”
Katie
“Please, give me a shot.” Sawyer's warm hand on my skin made me want to scream. It tingled with awareness, burned with regret, made me want to run faster out of Rise Fitness than I'd ever run in my life. “I'm the best in the city.”
His grin slid sideways, his touch on my arm loosening so his fingers grazed softly, hovering at the underside of my wrist. I gulped. “The best?”
His cocky grin deepened, and then he did the unthinkable and locked my hand in his, pulling me out into the main room of the gym where that bear of a man, Jocko, was forcing his poor client into a hundred pushups.
“I'm not ready to work out or anything tonight, I just thought--”
“Here,” he swung a door in the corner of the gym open revealing a small room lit only with pink salt lamps and relaxing lounge chairs. “It's the salt cave, we just added it. There's a float tank in the corner which feels crazy intense after a workout, and a cryo-chamber in the room next to this one. It's a great place to decompress, without or without the workout.”
“I don't even know what a cryo-chamber is, but this place has a serious mood.” It was dim and relaxing, the soft trickle of water from a fountain in the corner the only sound, even Jocko's barking commands felt a million miles away. “I think you just sold me, Sawyer.”
His hand dropped from mine then. Holding his hand had been so natural, I hadn't even realized we were still doing it, until we weren't.
I swallowed my heart, currently lodged in my throat, before turning to him. “So where do I sign?”
He smiled triumphantly. “I just need your phone number. I'll fill in the rest of your paperwork and you can sign it at your first session.”
My heart thrummed, his expectant eyes watching me intently, sweeping me back to that time that felt so long ago. I felt like a little kid then, my schoolgirl crush on him so silly when I thought back on it now.
From the moment we'd met in high school when I’d been assigned to tutor him in English, I'd been enamored with him.
Not because the hard angles of his face, even then, made me want to chase my fingers down the slopes and dips. Not even because he was the school’s star football player, scoring touchdowns and winning state championships. But because of his eyes.
From the first moment he'd looked at me, it felt like he'd seen me. Kindness and warmth radiated back at me, when every other boy in school taunted or teased or begged for attention in some pathetic form, he was real.
I spent nearly three years tutoring Sawyer, until the final month we graduated. When he was crowned Homecoming King, he didn't stay out all night partying with his boys after the game. He was with me, reading Hamlet. He didn’t even have a date. Maybe that was the reason I thought he felt the same. As long as I had known Sawyer, he was never with a girl. They all hung around him, waiting for him to pick one, but he never gave them a second glance.
He'd always treated me so special, but by the time we were in our last year and I'd dropped what felt like a million hints that I would maybe like to be his...anything, nothing more had come of our friendship.
And then the night of graduation happened.
I remembered the way he'd called my name that Sunday in the parking lot, jogging across the warm asphalt in his leather shoes, clasping both of my hands in his and gazing into my eyes. My family hung back, but eyes glued on us. They'd always known how I felt about Sawyer. He was practically a part of our family, we'd spent so much time together. So when he'd leaned close, close enough that I could smell the peppermint of his chewing gum, I'd shuddered my eyes closed. My breath suspended, I waited for the gentle brush of his lips along mine, wondered what he'd taste like, if his kiss would be hard and demanding or soft and gentle, just like his eyes?
And I'm still waiting.
Instead of dusting my lips in the worlds greatest first kiss ever, he'd whispered, “Have a great summer in Paris, Katie.”
And then I'd never seen him again.
Until right now, staring back at me in his damn salt cave.
“When would you like to start training, Katie?” His question yanked me from my memories.
Never.
“Uhm,” I shifted on my feet, my life growing more mortifying by the moment. “Actually, I've got this wedding, my sister is getting married, soon, so...”
“Whoa, Hallie is getting married? That's great.” He looked genuine.
“For her,” I genuinely responded. “Mom's already told me she wants me to...slim down. Her words, not mine.”
Sawyer nodded, leaning back against the wall, glowing amber and coral salt lamps causing the harsh slashes of his cheekbones to grow even more angular and delicious looking. I groaned, thinking my own struggle to lose the weight for this wedding would be cardio, turns out it would be keeping my eyes off the trainer and focused on my feet to avoid tripping all over said beautiful trainer.
“So when's the wedding?” He crossed his ripped biceps over the hard slab of his chest and I had to suppress a groan.
“Less than three months.” I cringed.
“Oh, this is going to be fun, then.” He bounced off the wall, chest coming to within inches of mine before pausing, his eyes on my face and smiling. “It's my turn to give it back to you.”
“W-what?” I felt crushed by his presence, that flight or fling myself into his arms response tingling to life inside of me again, just like old times.
I pushed it down with thoughts of chocolate cake and vanilla buttercream.
“You single handedly got me through high school. Coach would have benched my ass in tenth grade if it wasn't for you working with me on Shakespeare, and everything else.” He nudged himself closer, until my breasts were nearly grazing the hard planes of his pectorals. “Now, I've got something to give back to you.”
A nearly audible groan stumbled out. Why did it feel like half the things he said were double entendres? And if they were, why did I like that thought so much?
Espresso and cinnamon tiramisu.
I remembered the recipe I'd learned in Italy at a cooking school for tourists on the coast just to distract me from the warm, inviting natural scent of his skin and the manly soap he'd probably used in the shower this morning.