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It’s empty except for Liam. He sits on an inclined bench at the far end of the gym, angled away from me. Both his hands are wrapped around massive dumbbells as he methodically raises and lowers his arms.
My eyes go wide at the size of his muscles, enlarged and unbelievably cut from the pump. When he dips his arms down, he struggles for a moment to overcome the inertia and raise them again; he lets out a deep, guttural groan that makes my stomach do backflips, and I can practically feel the force radiating from his body as he strains himself to elevate the weights to the apex of his lift.
With a loud, heavy exhale he drops the weights. They clatter on the floor, the sound making me jump. From the sound they make and how comically huge they are, I doubt I could lift even one of them an inch off the ground with both hands.
Liam gets up from the bench and turns around.
Our eyes lock, and time stands still. I try to open my mouth to explain why I’m here, but my lips and tongue don’t listen to my commands. Nor do my thighs listens to my command to stop buzzing, or my cheeks to stop flushing red, or my nipples to stop pebbling into tender nubs.
“Zoey,” he says. Hearing my name as a jagged, exhausted warble on his lips sends a rush of electricity racing up and down my spine.
“Hi, Liam,” I finally manage to say. “I’m here for …”
“The social media thing?”
“Uh, yeah,” I answer, surprised he knows.
He grins. “Coach told us you’d be working with the team this semester.”
I fill in the blanks and assume that announcement also came with a warning.
“I just spoke with Megan. You know, the social media director?”
Liam nods. His thick and messy hair, now sweaty from the workout, bobs with the motion. Gosh, it should be illegal for a man to look this good when he’s this sweaty. “Yeah, I know her.”
Liam walks over to the towel rack at the side of the room and dries his face. His muscles pop as his arm flexes with the movement, and when he towels off his head with both hands, the hem of his shirt rises to expose the sharp V-shape carved low on his abs.
I straighten my back and puff out my chest. I can’t let myself get flustered and tongue-tied every time I’m in the same room with Liam.
I need to act like the professional I’m going to have to be in just a year and a half’s time when I graduate and go out into the real world. Like Dr. Hoover said, I might find myself in any number of awkward situations throughout my career.
Hopefully not quite as awkward as needing to do a week-long profile on a guy who screwed me silly in a bathroom and then left me on read for three months—but, still, I need to learn how to deal with working with people I might be uncomfortable around.
“We’re doing a profile on you,” I explain. “A Day in the Life of Liam Newcastle.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “So, what? We’re spending the whole day together?”
I can feel heat crawling up my neck just at the suggestion, but a long, measured breath is able to calm me down enough to keep it from spreading any further.
“No,” I answer, “nothing like that. We’ll just need to meet a couple times for me to snap some photos for the social media posts. Megan suggested that starting off with giving our follows a glimpse into your workout routine could be a good idea. She says workout photos do well with engagement.”
Liam laughs, the low, confident rumble making my insides feel mushy. “That’s for sure. You should see some of the messages we get under them.”
I don’t doubt that Liam reads them. The kind of guy who hooks up with a girl and doesn’t text back after three months even though he was the one who suggested exchanging numbers in the first place is probably just cocky enough to really enjoy …
I clamp down on the bitterness that prompts those thoughts. I blink my eyes tightly twice to reprogram myself back into professional mode.
“So, I was thinking I’ll just snap some shots of you working out and include a summary of what times and what days you usually hit the gym. Sound good?”
Liam shrugs. “Works for me.”
He walks over to a leg extension machine. When he inserts the pin into the stack of weighs, I angle myself to see just how much he’s planning to lift. When my eyes lock on the number, my jaw drops.
“Three-hundred-twenty-five pounds?” I ask, incredulously.
Liam shrugs. “Yeah?”
“You’re not just loading up the weight so people will be impressed by the pictures, are you?” I ask, skeptically. “If you hurt yourself doing this, I don’t want anyone to blame me for ruining the season.”
