No Rep by Lani Lynn Vale

 

 

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.

Not one single bit.

“Fuck.” Jas shook his head. “That fuckin’ sucks.”

He looked at me sympathetically.

I rolled my eyes and turned when a familiar voice filled the room.

Maria’s. My ex-wife.

The woman who, no matter how hard I tried, never wanted to do CrossFit. She’d said it would ‘bulk her up’ and she ‘refused to look like a man.’

Well, apparently, she didn’t care anymore.

Evidently, she liked to make my life a living hell no matter what.

“That was why he didn’t tell me anymore info,” I grumbled. “Because he knew I’d find out she was going to be in this class, and then refuse to teach it.”

“She’s not really supposed to be in the one you’re teaching after today, if that helps,” Sophia admitted. “This is only the first introductory class. The one where you learn the basics, the gym, and then do a short WOD—workout of the day—and go home.”

I rolled my eyes.

The gym door opened again, and a woman’s voice instantly had me turning toward her.

“Oh, aren’t you just adorable?”

Her voice was whispered, almost hesitant, as she bent down and petted the gym cat, Rogue.

Rogue, loving the attention that he hadn’t gotten from any of the other new bootcamp members, twirled around her leg.

Her shapely leg that was encased in a tight pair of black leggings that made her ass look phenomenal.

The cat rubbed hair all over them, and she didn’t even seem to care.

Mavis, Madden’s gym crush, walked in right behind her, and then stuck her knee out to attempt to knock over the new girl. The new girl caught herself before she could tumble forward and then tossed a glare at Mavis.

My eyes took in the two women, and it wasn’t hard to see the resemblance.

This was the girl that Mavis had begged Madden to do the bootcamp for.

I hadn’t heard the exact ‘why’ of her wanting it, but I knew that Madden would do absolutely anything for Mavis due to his crush on her.

“Why did she want you to start this class?” I quietly asked Madden who had come over to my side, watching Mavis interact with the new girl.

Mavis bent over and caught up two foam rollers, then tossed one at her sister like a javelin.

The girl caught it and grinned.

“I wondered how long it would take you to ask me that.” Madden smirked. But that smirk faded. “From what I understand, something really bad happened to Francine. To the point where she was scared to work out anywhere. Mavis finally talked her into working out here, but she wanted to wait until there was another bootcamp. And Mavis didn’t have the heart to tell her that there wouldn’t be any more because we didn’t like them very much. That was why she begged.”

I sighed.

“Shit,” I grumbled. “Now I feel bad for giving you shit.”

Madden grinned. “She’s a cute little thing, isn’t she?”

She was.

The girl, Francine, wasn’t much taller than five-foot-three-ish. If not smaller.

She had a high ponytail on the top of her head, with white-blonde-colored ringlets cascading down around her face, down her back, and over her shoulders.

She had a navy-blue headband on that matched her eyes, and the cutest little nose that I’d ever seen.

She wasn’t what I would consider ‘in shape.’ Though, saying that, I knew that if she stuck with this, it wouldn’t take her very long to get there. Looking at her, however, I could see muscle definition in her legs that spoke of once being in very good shape.

The six-week bootcamp might very well do a lot for her.

Though, I quite liked the small little roll that I could see poking over her tight leggings. A roll that was exposed by the crop top that she wore, revealing the cute little thing.

“That she is,” I said as I let my eyes roam over her body.

Then she turned fully, leaving Rogue the gym kitty behind, and made eye contact with me.

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.”