He racks the bar and sits up. Pushes his hair back with one forearm, the motion pulling his shirt tight across his chest for a second. He says something to Bennett that makes him laugh. Then his eyes lift above Bennett's shoulder and find mine in the mirror.
I freeze.
He caught me.
His mouth curves.
Not a full smile.
Something smaller.
Something that says he knows.
My pulse kicks and I look away too fast.
Too fucking obvious.
I grab my water bottle from the bench and take a drink even though I’m not thirsty. My hand is wrapped too tight around the plastic. It crackles under my grip.
Get it together. He’s your teammate.
He’s your teammate and you’re his captain and this team is finally starting to respond because you stopped treating him like a problem and started treating him like a person. That’s it. That’s all this is. But my body doesn’t care about logic. I can’t talk my body out of it. My traitorous body keeps tracking him.
The way his shirt sticks between his shoulder blades when he bends to pick up a plate. The way his forearm flexes when he tightens a collar on the bar. The way he jokes with Bennett, then sobers immediately when Fitch demonstrates the next circuit, eyes locked in, focused. It’s the focus that gets me more than anything. The rest I could dismiss.
The body, the mouth, the cocky grin, the tattoos, the way he looks at me like he’s daring me to do something about it. Butthe focus? That’s the part that makes it harder to hate him. That’s the part that makes it dangerous. Because I know focus. I trust focus. I understand what it means when someone can lock in like that. It means there’s something underneath the bullshit. Something real. And I want to know what it is.
The thought hits suddenly. Hard enough that I stop moving. The realization so sharp I almost throw up, so I push it down hard enough it almost hurts. I need to get myself together. This sudden peace we found is really fucking with my head.
“Captain?” I turn and Bennett is looking at me from the squat rack. “Can you check me?”
“Yeah.” My voice sounds normal. Good. “Set up again.”
I make it through the next fifteen minutes by sheer force of will. Then Rhys ends up beside me at the dumbbell rack. He reaches for a weight at the same time I do. Our shoulders brush. His arm against mine. Bare, damp, solid.
Skin against skin.
The whole gym keeps going around us. Plates dropping somewhere. Music through the speakers. Cooper's voice. None of it touching the inches of space where his arm is pressed against mine and neither of us have moved, even dared to breathe.
“You okay, Captain?” he asks. There’s humor in his voice, but not as much as usual.
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve been watching me.”
My grip stiffens on the dumbbell.
He’s close enough that I can see the sweat caught at his temple, the faint shadow of stubble along his jaw, the way his eyes aren’t black exactly, but dark enough to feel like standing too close near the edge of something.
“I’m watching everyone,” I respond tightly.
His mouth tips up, that cocky grin of his, a quick flash of whiteteeth. “Sure.”
Something in me snaps.
I should step away.
Again, I don’t.
