Page 32 of Lessons in Forgiving
“Oh, come on,” he pleaded, getting onto the next machine over. He started it with a single tap, and with a muted roar it put him into a leisurely walk.
Turning to look at me, he walked backwards. “You’re already wearing workout clothes. You might as well get one in.” His eyes traced my frame so quickly, anyone else might have missed his gaze dropping. But I wasn’t anyone. “It would be an outfit wasted.”
My eyes twitched into a glare. “No.”
“Paula,” he teased. My stomach dropped at the way my name sounded off his lips. “You want to write about me, you gotta get a feel for what it’s like tobeme. Right?”
“I didn’twantto write about you.” And despite myself, my gaze drifted to the treadmill next to his wearily. “I was forced—blackmailed actually.”
It’s this or nothing.
I could hear the grin in his next words. “Oh, really?” He turned to the front of the treadmill again and quickened his pace.
Goddamn it.
Maeve had been right. I was clearly possessed, because a hesitant moment later, I was standing on that forsaken thing, and it started moving beneath me.
“Yes. Really.” My eyes sliced to Henry, narrowed in annoyance. “You owe me answers to five deeply personal questions for this, Pressley.”
At the very least, that way I could get something out of it.
“One.”
“Hah!”Outrageous. “Three.”
“Two,” he proposed.
“Three.” To press my point, my finger hovered over the redEnd Workoutbutton on the screen. While he dropped the negotiations with a slow nod, judging by the smile on his lips, I’m not quite sure I wasn’t still the one who’d lost.
He held his hand out across the empty space between our treadmills, and I shook it. Ignoring the way one innocent touch scorched through my veins. Shot up my spine.
“By the way,” I drawled when I dropped his hand. “For a business student, you are incredibly bad at negotiating.”
“For a journalist—” He began in the same tone, laced with irony and sarcasm.
“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence.” My threat hid behind a wide grin I had no control over. It kind of defeated the purpose, but Henry still listened.
“I wouldn’t dare lie to you,” he said earnestly, then laughed the comment off and powered up his treadmill. His walk quickly turned into a light jog, and another minute later, he was running beside me at an impressive mile pace of five minutes.
All while I enjoyed my leisurely walk. That’s all he was getting.
Every time my eyes involuntarily drifted in his direction, he was a little sweatier, a little more flushed. After mile two, I tried to ignore how his shirt had come off. Then, when the treadmillcame to a stop and he theatrically collapsed on top of it, I tried even harder to ignore him.
His chest rose and fell rapidly, feet planted firmly on the ground, eyes on the ceiling, arm resting on his forehead. Breathing heavy with a smile on his face, sweat clinging to his muscled chest and abs, his arms. Curling the hairs at his nape.
None of the words in my head were in the Bible.
As perfectly practiced in the past fifteen minutes, I diverted my eyes quickly. “Yeah,” I nodded, ordering my own treadmill to a halt before sitting on the edge of it. “I feel the same.”
Henry panted a laugh before his head turned in my direction. “Walks can be very demanding,” he agreed thoughtfully, the sentiment buried beneath more heavy breathing and an ironic undertone.
But I wasn’t here for a workout or to ogle my ex-boyfriend after his, and I set to stir our conversation back to what I was here to do. Signaling to my phone and the record button, I continued once I pressed it. “This is what you usually do? Fifteen minutes of… a light jog?” I couldn’t help the sarcasm, and it earned me another deep rumble of a laugh.
“Yeah,” he said, loudly inhaling, exhaling.
Please stop panting, I chanted in my head.It’s really distracting.
“A light jog,” he said pointedly, ironically. “Followed by forty-five minutes to an hour of weight training, then another half an hour of cooldown in the off season. Well—” He cut himself off, unsure. His eyes flicked to me before he thought about it, then said, “For about a year now, anyway. I changed it up around that time, put more of my focus on running.”
