Page 7 of Can't Fight It

We can be adults about this, though. Right? “So, I should clench my butt?”

She nods, a strangled noise escaping her. She pounds on her chest twice before dropping into the chair behind the desk. “Let’s move on to the thighs.”

She doesn’t join in on the exercises for the rest of the session, and I finish up my thighs, legs, and feet by myself, following her instructions.

Her cheeks return to a normal shade by the time she’s finished, her professional mask in place again as she asks me how I’m feeling after completing the sequence.

I take stock of my body, not sure how to describe it aloud. “You said something earlier about the relaxation spreading throughout me. It’s like that, I guess.” A warm easiness in my joints, different from the warmth that runs through me after an intense session at the boxing gym. “I don’t know, I’ve never been good with words.”

Not like with her. Everything she’d said during the lesson today had been… soothing. Flowing. Peaceful.

Except when it comes to butts. Is she that put off by me?

“No, no. That’s fine,” she assures me. “You should feel relaxed. That’s the goal.” She runs a hand up and down her arm. “Thanks for being so cool about everything. After all the stuff I said.”

“You don’t have to keep bringing it up.”

She bites at her bottom lip. “Right. Well, I’ll see you here next week?”

I stand, putting on my jacket. “Or at home.”

A sheepish expression crosses her face before she tilts her head down. “There, too.”

Ah, shit. I didn’t mean to rub it in.

I grab the papers she gave me earlier and leave before I can say another wrong thing, speeding past the woman at the front desk and down the stairs, slowing as I exit the glass doors. Picturesque snow covers the grounds, stately historic buildings within sight as far as the eye can see. What must it be like to go here? To be smart enough to attend a university like this?

A group of girls in wool pea coats and knee-high boots passes by ahead, looking over at me, then twitter among themselves, obnoxiously obvious. Two of them glance over their shoulders again, then one whispers loudly, “Do you think he goes here?”

Do they recognize how out of place I am? Wondering why I’d be in a psychology building when I can barely spell the word?

I shrug off the thought and make my way down the sidewalk toward the parking lot where my bike is. Undoing the lock around my helmet, I stuff it on my head, appreciating the meager warmth it provides, and throw the papers in the tail pack on the back.

Raising the kickstand, I climb on and rev the engine, letting it warm a bit before I go. At least the roads aren’t icy. But that leaves me time to think again.

Is all this worth seventy-five a week? Having to come here on campus, knowing a place like this has never been an option for someone like me? Dad would laugh his ass off if he saw me here pretending to fit in.

Not that I pretended anything. I’d told that girl I wasn’t a student. And she’d seemed surprised of all things. Does that mean everyone else in the study is? I’m the odd man out? She’d said it wasn’t a big deal, but that could have been pity talking.

You know what? If she believes I’m good enough for her study, then that’s all that matters. Any issue she has with me as a neighbor is just that—her issue. And if she wants to avoid me outside of the Stress Lab, that’s fine.

Doesn’t bother me any.

CHAPTERTHREE

TESSA

At what pointcan I justify buying my own washer and dryer?

If I spend five dollars a week on doing laundry, annually that’s… I do some quick mental math. Two-fifty? No, there are fifty-two weeks in a year, not fifty. Two-sixty a year. Now how much do machines cost?

I hitch my basket higher on my hip, careful not to let it tip as I walk the last few feet toward the apartment complex’s laundry room. I punch in the code, freezing in the doorway as I recognize who’s already seated in one of the room’s two chairs, elbows braced on his knees.

Of course he’d be here.

A brisk wind blows from behind me, and I let the door slam shut, huddling into my fleece jacket. “Hi.”

He glances up, doing that head nod thing guys do, his steel-gray gaze seeming to penetrate me.

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