Page 43 of Keep Your Guard Up
With a shared mutter of curses, people scrambled to get their shoes on.
JJ ran past Chance, smacking his ass on the way through. Chance scowled, that annoyingly beautiful face scrunching.
“Fifty burpees on your tally, Jones!” he shouted.
“I look forward to it, Coach!” JJ saluted and caught up with Wazza to lead the group.
I found one of the quieter dads who trained with us and buddied up with him for the run of doom, knowing he would at least leave me to my own thoughts for the duration of it.
“Nine minutes, ten seconds, Trevino,” Chance interrupted, staring out at everyone leaving. Though, through that mask of stone and faux boredom, something was locked up tight beneath a swirling storm.
“The hell is your problem, Riordan?”
His eyes flickered down to mine for a beat, as if I was nothing but a goddamn fly buzzing by. “That’s ‘Coach’ to you, Trevino,” he growled. “Now get moving.”
Chapter 22
Mari
“Would you look at that! Jayden dropped a knee! Time resets!” Everyone groaned in unison at the torture of the timer reset.
Much to our chagrin, we did not make it back from the run in ten minutes. Or twelve. The last of us rolled in at fourteen minutes. The back end of the burpees had a few out the front, throwing up the leftover drinks from last night.
Then we had Cejudo drills.
Then push-ups.
Then sprints.
Then wall sits.
Then skipping.
Then sprawl call-outs.
Until we’d gotten here. The final leg of this class of sadism.
A plank—simple, right? All we had to do was hold it until Chance called ‘time’.
‘Time’ never came. We’d reset the clock three times now, with Jayden being responsible for two of them.
“Fuck sake, Jayden,” I muttered, my core violently shaking.
“Shut thefuckup, Mari!” Jayden roared, his body trembling from fatigue.
If I hadn’t been so quick to look, I would have missed Chance landing a kick into his ribs, making him clatter to the floor once again.
“Uh-oh! Jayden dropped again!” Chance called.
No one said anything that time, except for the daggers Jayden glared my way.
“Told you,” JJ muttered beside me, solid as a rock but dripping sweat all over the floor. The Japanese warrior he had tattooed on his left delt stared at me as my muscles began to tremble with fatigue.
“Told me what?” I forced out.
“Told you it wasn’t a good idea to leave before he woke up,” he replied coolly, fumbling with his fingers to distract himself from the lactic acid burn. That same lactic acid burn seared my muscles, but I stopped hearing the screams from my body at his revelation.
He shrugged at my gaping expression. “He’s pissed, borderline on a sadistic rampage—”
