Page 31 of The Worst Kind of Promise
I don’t answer him. My silence should be answer enough. Instead, I lean over my other extended leg, feeling a nice stretch in my side body.
“Is it because of Hayes?”
A slow blink. Anare-you-stupidblink. More stretching. More silent chastising.
“It’s because of me,” he concludes, mouth in a grim line, arms crossed over his impressive chest.
After I work through the kinks in my legs—and pray not to get a cramp midway through my session—I plant my heels into the mat and rise into downward dog, the backs of my calves aching with a fiery burn. He’s still staring at me.
“This isn’t a free show,” I snip. “You wanna talk, you do yoga.”
“Whatever you say.”
I’m well aware Kit doesn’t have a mat to practice on. I’m also well aware he’s probably going to half-ass the poses. He situates himself directly behind me, and although I can’t see him, I know that he’s staring at my ass.
His voyeuristic gaze births butterflies, and for a second, I imagine the heavy weight of his dick against my butt, the sturdy meat of his thighs bumping against my own in a suction of sweat and cum, how his fingers would feast on my sides and stay there to leave bruises. His breath pluming on my back, his voice a husky whisper, his—
“Why are you mad at me?” Real Kit interferes with imaginary Kit.
Stupid real Kit.
I snort, leaning back as I switch into child’s pose. “I’m not mad,” I gruff before the mat absorbs my hushed grumbling. I try to focus on the curve of my spine, try to imagine a tether pulling me down into the ground, making me heavy.
“You sound mad.”
Three words you should never say to a woman.Ever.
Of course I’m mad. Horny plus stressed equals mad. And confused. And maybe hurt at how unfazed he is by this distance between us.
I lift my head up. “There’s not this much talking in yoga.”
“Tell me why you’re mad, and I’ll stop talking,” he negotiates, surprisingly following through with the pose being shown on the seventy-inch flatscreen. Granted, his child’s pose is more of a roadkill opossum, but at least he’s putting in effort. Hockey players are more flexible than I thought. Ugh. What I would’ve given to discover that a different way.
I know I was the one who set boundaries. I know I’ve been the one avoiding him. I just…I thought he would’ve at least tried to fight for me a little. Maybe it was easier for him to give up. But Kit’s stubborn. He gets what he wants. So when he just accepted us staying friends, it confused me. And that night after family dinner, he couldn’t even be in the same room as me.
After talking with my brother, I should be more stringent about our arrangement, right? Wrong. My guilt isn’t as strong as the emotions I feel for Kit. It’s bad, but it feels so good. I shouldn’t dream about sneaking around with one of my brother’s best friends. But that thrill of not getting caught…it sparks the tinder in my belly and grows into a raging inferno.
A warning growl low in my throat. “I told you, I’m not mad.” I’m about to lob my yoga mat at his big, fat head.
The peppy lady on the screen goes into cat-cow, her shrill voice drowned out by the nonargument argument we’re having. I mirror the pose, palms flat against the mat, my back cycling between a curve and an arch. And Kit is, of course, looking like an idiot doing a feminine—and slightly suggestive—pose with his big, burly body. I don’t doubt that his ass probably looks spectacular though.
“Faye, please…”
My anger comes to a boil, spewing out at full speed, lighting a ring of fire around us. Still on my hands and knees, determined for this cat-cow to snap, crackle, and pop me, I look back at him. “You want to know why I’m mad? You’re making it impossible for me to stay away from you. You’re always there, staring at me too long when you don’t think I notice, purposefully grabbing my waist to move past me in the kitchen.”
“You’re mad that I’m not staying hundreds of feet away from you?” Kit snarls, maintaining the same cat-cow pose, his cold exterior frosting over even further. The only difference is the stacks of tension crammed into his back and shoulders, muscles writhing beneath a tight compression shirt.
“I’m mad that you don’t seem very affected by any of it!”
“I chose to respect your decision and stay away from you. I didn’t want to complicate things for you. And afteryouchose to keep things platonic between us, I’ve been trying to deal with the fact that this is gonna be our norm.”
I whip my head around toward the screen to see what the next pose is, and to my horror, it’s a stretching exercise that requires two people. Two people, in close proximity.
I’m going to soldier on with this two-person pose, even if I want to claw Kit’s face off. This ismyyoga time—precious and seemingly rare with the way everyone’s been helicoptering over me. Kit interrupted my time, and I shouldn’t have to pay for his blatant disrespect.
“Why are you making me seem like the bad guy?” I hiss, yanking him over to me with a strength I didn’t know I possessed, gesturing to the pose on the screen with a stabbing arm. Growling like a caged animal, Kit scoots over to me, taking up the majority of the mat.
“You’re not the bad guy,” he gets out through clenched teeth.
