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“Ah, okay.” Rhett never said he was sorry when people were dead. Sometimes death was the way to go, especially if suffering was involved. Sometimes, the dead in question had been assholes in real life, and nobody was sorry they were gone. Why speak ignorantly about what you didn’t know?
Constance got really quiet, sat there and blinked at him with lashes that were much darker than her hair.
“So you’re here to get your groove back.” Rhett refocused his interview. Stay professional, find out her needs and do his best to meet those needs. “Used to be a runner. Maybe you’ve let things go, and now you want to get back into it. Maybe get a little stronger than you were before?”
She crossed her arms over her chest again. “I’m...um...”
“I’m listening.”
Constance blew her breath out in a sharp exhale. “You know what? I’m not interested in running much anymore.” She glanced toward the interior of the gym, still in darkness. “One of the ladies told me you’re more into weight lifting than anything else. I’ve never actually touched weights. Not like you were doing yesterday. With the weights on your back? Maybe...” She paused and blew her bangs out of her face; they had lost some of their static and had started to dip into her lashes. “Maybe you can show me that.”
Rhett thought for a moment. He’d done a lot of things yesterday. Right before class, though, he’d been doing back squats. Powerlifting. My Pretty Pony wanted to do powerlifting, which made her even more interesting than she seemed. He thought briefly on how he’d told Kitty to check in with Zoe, who was the Level 1 lifting coach, whether for powerlifting or weight lifting. Rhett didn’t typically mess with the beginners.
“All right,” Rhett heard himself say. “Let’s see what you’re made of.”
Rhett Santos pointed to his phone, which he’d attached to the stereo equipment, and told her to pick some music she liked. He started to collect equipment. For just a moment, Constance hesitated. What the hell was she doing? She’d woken this morning, after a pretty sleepless night, to roads covered in ice. Despite that, she hadn’t been able to stop herself from driving here. She hadn’t eaten breakfast or made coffee. She just got in the car and drove to this insane gym, as if she weren’t even in control of her own body. She hadn’t really thought anyone would be here at this hour, in this weather, but the light that shone from one small window of the gym had somehow seemed like a lighthouse beacon in the middle of a stormy sea. Now here she was, alone, with a very large, strong man.
Rhett glanced up. “All good?”
Constance jolted, unfreezing herself. “Sure.” She clicked on the Pandora icon, ignoring the voice in her head that told her she shouldn’t have listened to Sunny. She couldn’t blame Sunny. She’d have come here, no matter what, though she still had no idea why. She selected what Rhett had been listening to last—Reggaeton Radio. A song called“Pobre Diabla”woke the silent speakers with a Latin beat. She waited, the music livening her blood, as Rhett tossed a ginormous rubber band and a long plastic pipe into his pile.
“You can change the station,” he offered.
“I don’t want to.”
He smiled a little bit. “I saw a bit of what you can do yesterday. You move pretty well. But let’s just run through the basics.” Rhett put his arms straight out in front of him, then settled into a squat, no bar on his back this time.
Constance’s eyes were fixed on his quads. Those might be the strongest quads she’d ever seen in real life. He wasn’t bearing anything but body weight and she could still see the delineation of vastus medialis. Too bad men’s shorts were so long these days, affording her only a peek around the knee. She’d love to see those quads in all their glory, working together. Totally from a professional standpoint, of course. She’d been observing him for half an hour now, assessing him from an orthopedic standpoint, and had already figured out how she would go about helping him if he were her client. That sort of thing happened automatically in a variety of settings, but she wasn’t going to deny that assessing Rhett’s gait, posture and movement patterns was far more enjoyable than the average old lady with kyphosis.
“Hip crease below the knee. Knees stacked over the ankles and in line with the toes,” Rhett was saying. He rose back up, towering over her. “Let’s see it.”
Constance squatted.
“Keep your weight in your heels.”
She shifted.
“Good. Give me ten of those.”
Rhett ran her through a warm-up of squats, something called Good Mornings with that giant rubber band, sit-ups, push-ups on her knees and lunges. By the time she was finished, her sweat had doubled, despite the meager heat running inside the gym.
“Are you sore from yesterday?”
Constance nodded. “Biceps.” She squeezed her arms. “Hamstrings. Quads. Delts. Abs.” She touched all the places on her body.
Rhett flashed a smile. So far, he had two different kinds. One was mostly in his eyes, with a tiny bit that escaped around the corners of his mouth. The other was a full smile that backed off at the very end, just enough to be genuine, but not enough to let you inside. “You know your muscles.”
“Yeah. A little bit.”
“Okay, Constance.” He grabbed the long white plastic pipe and slipped it on his shoulders. “I want you to do that same squat, with this PVC on your back.” He demonstrated. “Remember, keep your weight in your heels and your chest up.”
Constance took the pipe and settled it on her shoulders.
“Nope.” Rhett came behind her and moved it down a little. “I want the PVC right here, on the upper traps.” He touched his own. “See how they make a shelf? Right there. Not up on your neck.”
“Sure, yours make a shelf.” Constance laughed, despite herself. “Mine are more of a slope.”
Rhett adjusted her hands, his own large and warm over her cool fingers. “Right there.” Then his hands went to her hips. “And right there.”
