Page 53 of Moms of Mayhem
“Okay, boys.” Frankie clapped his hands. “On that note, this lovefest is over. I gotta run. Emmy, you got this?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
I squeezed my eyes shut, needing to forget the sound of those words coming out of her mouth if I had any chance of making this not awkward as hell. Frankie ended our call, and I breathed through my nose in a sharp inhale, trying to ground myself before I lost it entirely.
“Does that hurt?” Emmy asked, and I opened my eyes to find her standing right in front of me. The way she looked at my hip, so focused, so close, felt like a personal invasion.
But I was staring at her, memorizing every single freckle across the bridge of her nose, the soft curve of her lips, the way her dark hair fell just right around her face. Everything about her felt dangerously close, like if I took one more breath, I’d cross a line that could never be uncrossed.
“No, Peach.” My voice came out lower than I meant, gravelly and rough. “You can touch me however you like.”
When she looked up to meet my gaze, everything shifted.The air between us thickened, and I wasn’t sure what she saw there, but I knew exactly what I felt. A pull, like gravity had taken over, and no matter how hard I tried to fight it, I couldn’t stay away.
Violin music blasted through the speakers above us, and Emmy jumped away from me, her hand over her chest. The tune changed until I recognized the beginning notes ofBust Your Windows.
I chuckled, then looked over my shoulder toward the entry to the studio where Shannon stood, eyes mere slits on her face as she stared at us both.
A timer on Emmy’s watch went off, and she tapped the screen. “I think that’s enough for today. I have a Pilates class starting here in 10 minutes. I can walk you through some of it as a starting point if you want to stay.”
She kept talking, but my brain was lagging, still trapped in a lust-filled spiral. I nodded, willing to agree to anything she said right now.
Emmy beamed, then patted me on the shoulder, walking backward into the main studio space. “This is great. I’m glad you’re open to it.”
I gave myself a minute to recover, willing my body’s reaction to her proximity to dissipate with thoughts of the least sexy things I could think of: Coach Tremblay’s locker room speeches, the time I got hit in the face with a puck and had to pick my tooth out of my mouthguard, the smell of the Mayhem’s locker room after a game.
It helped. Barely.
I adjusted the waistband of my shorts and muttered, “Get it together, man.”
Voices filtered in as other patrons came into thestudio, and I got up, headed that way. I didn’t know what I was expecting to find, but a dozen geriatrics that made my mom look spry was not it.
I stared slack jawed as, one by one, they took their places on the reformers. Most of them had silver hair and several wore sparkly grip socks. All of them looked like they made a mean funeral casserole and had literal war stories, but when they started adjusting straps and tightening springs like pros, I realized I was the one out of my depth.
One of the ladies shot me a wink and cracked her knuckles. Another flexed her bicep at me, and she haddefinition.
“Pick a reformer, hotshot,” Emmy said, her smile so big I could tell she was barely containing her laugh. “Hope you’re ready. Ruth gets competitive.”
I swallowed hard and shuffled my feet, trying to ignore the smug little grin on Emmy’s face.
This wasn’t just Pilates.
This was initiation.
I took the spot Emmy pointed to between two-guns Ruth and a lady in a neon tracksuit who offered me a Werther’s Original from her pocket like we were about to board a cruise ship.
Emmy clapped her hands from the front of the room, then adjusted her little headset microphone. “All right, everyone! Today’s focus is hip mobility and pelvic alignment. We’ll be starting on the mat. Beckett’s joining us for the first time—be nice.”
A chorus of greetings echoed around me like I’d just walked into a very supportive cult. I nodded, trying to keep the nerves off my face, but this was the weirdest thing I’d everdone.
Emmy led us through some preliminary moves to warm up our lower body, pacing between the center aisle and fixing our posture as needed. I did okay, proud of my ability to keep up, even if it was with eleven octogenarians.
“Let’s start with some basic pelvic tilts,” Emmy said from the far side of the room. “Feet flat, knees bent, back pressed gently into the mat. Inhale to prepare, exhale to tuck the pelvis.”
Sounded easy enough.
Except my abs didn’t seem to remember how to work, and my hip protested even that small movement.
“Good, now slowly roll your back off the mat, one vertebra at a time, until you lift your hips up.”
