“None of your business.”
“So this is a Naomi situation all over again?”
Naomi? I mentally mark that name to ask Knox about later.
“No. Rian is just…”
“What?” Jax eggs him on.
Dylan groans. The same tone he uses when his employees call in sick and he has to go in. “Different.”
“She’s into girls?” Jax asks.
“No!”
“So you want to nail her and are afraid, by comparison to me, you’ll come up short?”
“Fuck no!” Dylan yells.
I slowly back away from the door. I guess that answers the question I’ve never asked anyone but myself.
I’ve wanted Dylan since he moved in across the hall with Knox. They’ve known each other since high school. But when the question comes to his feelings for me, the answer isn’t only no—it’s hell no.
I sit on the edge of my bed. Someday I need to get over this crush I have on a guy who doesn’t even know I exist—at least not in that way. Maybe I should list all the reasons why we would never work. Perhaps our differences are too big to ever allow us to meet in the middle.
It’s the classic tale—good girl wants bad boy. Cliché enough to be a romance novel. Not realistic. I shouldn’t want a guy who thinks of commitment as a life sentence. He sure as hell doesn’t want a girl whose only experience is a handful of half adept short-term boyfriends.
God help me.
I pick up a pillow and groan. I’d scream, but they’d hear me and I’m pretending like I’m not up yet. Which shows how much Dylan knows my schedule and routine. I’m always the first one dressed and ready.
Their voices grow softer. Dylan’s door next to mine shuts minutes later.
I slide my shower cap on my head. Now’s my time to escape, so I open my door and tiptoe across the living area to the bathroom.
“Good morning,” Dylan says.
I jump and circle back around. He’s in workout clothes and has a bag hanging from his shoulder. My gaze goes to the microwave clock in the kitchen. It’s only seven-thirty. The shop was open last night, and he didn’t return home until after one.
Someone hit me with a sledgehammer. It’s so pathetic that I know that.
“Morning.” I slide my shower cap off my head. “Where are you off to?”
“The gym.” He grabs a bottle of water from the fridge. “Ethan asked me to start going with him first thing in the morning rather than later. I guess love makes you eat. Seth’s supposed to come too.” The way his mouth scrunches to the side on the word love means he never wants to find out. More evidence to mark under commitment-phobe.
“Enjoy.” I wave and keep to my mantra to take a shower and get ready for work. I miss being able to work from home but my job changed their requirements and now I have to work from the office several days a week.
“You should be fine. Jax just got home smelling like he closed the bar down. He’ll probably pass out. Shouldn’t bother you.”
I pause by the bathroom door. Usually I’d turn around and smile and thank him. Be polite and courteous. But a bitter taste fills my mouth—because he’s acting like one of Blanca’s older brothers. I never asked for, nor do I need any saving from Jax.
“Have a great workout.” I step into the bathroom, shut the door, and flick the lock.
Have a great workout? Way to really give him a piece of your mind, Rian.
I turn on the shower to the hottest possible temperature so that the mirror will fill with steam and I won’t have to look at myself. I need a life. One where my obsession with Dylan isn’t the main focus.
Screw him. I’m baking lemon cake today.
Chapter Two
Dylan
“We don’t need to go balls to the wall on the first day,” Ethan says next to me, his finger hovering over the treadmill’s buttons, his feet pounding on the moving belt.
“I thought you worked out?” I ask, not adjusting my speed or incline.
“I run. Occasionally. I’ve been blessed with a great metabolism.”
I glance at him. “Until Blanca?”
He groans. “You should see what she can consume. And then there’s something inside me that says I’m the man, she can’t out eat me.”
“Hence the gut.” I pat my stomach.
He cringes. He hasn’t gained enough to be that noticeable, but no harm in him thinking he has. It’ll keep him coming to the gym with me and get me out of the damn apartment while Rian is getting ready for work.
Ethan looks down at his stomach and I want to bust out laughing, but I up the incline.
“Fucker,” he says, clicking the button on his machine. Ethan can’t back away from a challenge.
“Come on. After this, we’ll do weights so you don’t turn into a pansy-ass who can’t lift his fiancée to fuck her against the wall.”
An older woman with a displeased expression stops in front of my treadmill. I’m about to apologize before a smile forms on her lips and she looks Ethan up and down. “I bet he has no problem with it.”
Winnie, my foster mom, taught me to respect my elders, so I swallow my amusement and watch Ethan smile nicely to avoid offending the woman.
She slowly walks over to the bikes and spends five minutes finding the television show she wants to watch before pedaling. Even then, she has no headphones.
I turn off my treadmill, sliding back until I can hop off.
“What the hell? We can’t just stop,” Ethan says.
“Why not?” I ask.
“Sir! Wipe your machine,” the man who works here—and wears his shorts too tight—calls to me.
I put up my hand and grab a pair of the cheap earbuds the gym offers for free. I wink at the girl behind the counter. She’s been trying to flirt with me for the last two weeks, but she’s got to be only twenty-one or something. The younger they are, the more attached they become.
“Dylan!” Ethan calls, his hands up in the air, his eyes tracking my movements toward the elderly lady.
I take the headphones out of the plastic disposable bag and hand them to her, plugging the cord into the television portion of the bike. She gives me a thumbs-up and a smile.
“Sir!” the guy says again.
“Relax there. Are your shorts so tight they’re cutting circulation off to your brain?” I pull a sanitary wipe from the container and head over to my machine.
Tight shorts guy huffs and stalks off.
“You left me hanging?” Ethan says, shutting off his treadmill.
“You telling me you didn’t want that over with?”
Ethan says nothing. Yeah, he’s happy as shit I turned off my treadmill.
“Weights then.” I hold up my wipe so moose-knuckle can see me dispose of it in the trash can.
He rolls his eyes and shifts his vision away.
“What’s with you today?” Ethan asks, throwing his wipe away right after and grabbing a towel.
“Nothing.”
“Really? Because you’re being an ass to everyone but that old lady over there. Since when are you responsible for handing out earbuds? Did you get a job here I don’t know about?”