I walk into the training room and see Hawke on one of the treadmills, running at a breakneck speed. He’s drenched with sweat and his face is beet red as he pounds the rubber belt that whizzes under his feet. I’m due to train with Vale in about ten minutes, but I always arrive a little early to get in a short, easy run for warm-up.
I hop up on the treadmill next to Hawke and look over at his screen. He’s going into his tenth mile and I blink in surprise. He’s not a long-distance runner.
“Dude,” I say as I start my treadmill up, set it to a moderate pace and begin a jog. “You’re killing it.”
He responds with nothing but a grunt. I take this to mean he’s too winded to talk so I leave him alone and focus on my own run. Well, not really focusing on the run, but rather enjoying memories of last night with Jules. I ended up taking her to her apartment and going home myself because she was right…I needed a good night’s sleep and her couch would not have given that to me.
But rather than pull right up to the staircase that led almost directly to her apartment door, I pulled into the back of the lot, right under a large streetlamp that was burned out. In the dark, I leaned across the console and I made out with Jules. We went at it for several minutes, necking in a dark car and fogging up the windows.
We didn’t do anything but make out, although I did jack off when I got home, thinking about making out with Jules because she is so fucking fantastic, just memories of kissing her is part of my spank bank.
After fifteen minutes I look at my watch and note that Vale’s late.
She’s never late, and the first thing I do is worry that something may have happened to her father, although if that were the case, surely Hawke would have said something to me the minute I walked in, right?
I turn my treadmill off and as it slows to a walk I turn to Hawke, who has slowed down his pace quite a bit, and ask, “Where’s Vale? We’re supposed to train.”
He’s silent a moment and then his hand reaches out and he stabs the Stop button while he mutters, “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” I ask in confusion. “Gone where?”
“Back to Sydney,” he says, and turns to hop off the treadmill, grabbing a towel he had draped over one of the arm rails and rubbing his face. He doesn’t look at me but starts to head out the door and toward the showers.
I grab my own towel along with my iPhone, which I’d put on the treadmill tray, and scramble after him.
“She went back to Sydney?” I press, hot on his heels. “Sydney, Nova Scotia?”
“Yup,” is all he says, but there’s no mistaking the underlying hint of anger in his voice.
I reach out, grab his arm and turn him toward me. He pulls violently and wrenches away from my grasp but pins his eyes on me, and they are blazing with fury.
“What the fuck, dude? Why did she leave?”
Hawke actually gnashes his teeth together and practically spits out, “Because apparently I can’t tell her I love her and so she’s punishing me for that.”
“What?” I ask, completely dumbfounded.
Hawke takes a step toward me and lowers his voice. “Last week she told me she loved me. I couldn’t say it back to her. Thus, she decided she can’t be around me anymore and just chose to leave.”
“I can’t believe it,” I mutter, my eyes dropping down in contemplation.
“Well, believe it. She jetted out of here last night.”
“No,” I say as I raise my gaze back to his. “I can believe Vale left. I can’t believe you didn’t say it back to her.”
Hawke actually rears backward, his face awash with stunned surprise. “Are you serious?”
“Yeah,” I tell him honestly. “I am. Life’s too short to be hung up on past bitterness. Let it go, man, and wise the fuck up.”
He narrows his eyes at me. “I can’t make myself feel something that’s not there.”
“Bullshit,” I tell him smoothly. “It’s there, you’re just too fucking chickenshit to acknowledge it.”
He opens his mouth to say something back to me, but then snaps it shut just as quickly. He stares at me a long moment, and I cringe a little when I see disappointment in his eyes that I’d take Vale’s side.
I should tell him though that I’m not taking her side. I’m taking love’s side, and if Vale were here right now, I’d tell her to get her head out of her ass too and work with Hawke to figure this shit out.
Some of the anger fizzles from Hawke’s eyes and his lips press together in a grimace. He gives me a little nod of acknowledgment for my position, but I can tell he doesn’t agree with a thing I just said. He turns away and walks into the showers, and I turn in the opposite direction, deciding on a longer run for my workout today, since clearly my session with Vale is not going to happen.
After I get done with my run, I hit the weight room and work on lats and shoulders, finishing up with some core work. I then head into the hallway that winds around the arena and do some reflex work. It’s one of my pregame rituals but I also do it when I need to think about something in my personal life.
I take a small ball, bounce it hard from the floor to the wall and then catch it as it comes back my way. But I do it fast, zipping the ball with lightning speed at the floor so it hits the wall and flies back at me in a nanosecond, only to sling it away just as quickly. Someone once told me I looked like Forrest Gump playing Ping-Pong and that I was moving so fast you couldn’t even track the ball with your eyes.
I liked doing this though while I let my mind wander, so that my inherent reflexes would get sharpened and my brain wouldn’t think too much about where the ball was. I did it so my body just trusted itself to snatch the ball from midair, and while my mind drifted from my actions of catching and throwing, I could ponder other things.
I set up a quick pace, ball going from concrete floor to painted cinder-block wall then back to my hand. I walk down the length of the hallway as I do it.
Throw, bounce, grab, throw again.
“Max,” I hear from my left, and my rhythm is broken. My fingers miss the ball by a millimeter and it zings by me to hit the back cinder-block wall before bouncing off the back of my head.
I turn to see Garrett walking toward me.
“What’s up?” I ask as I bend over and pick up the ball, which is rolling away from me.
He comes to a stop before me and says, “I take it you haven’t seen it yet.”
“Seen what?” I ask as I snap the ball to the ground again. I get ten more repetitions in while I see from my peripheral vision Garrett pulling something up on his phone.
“It’s a SportsGab article,” he says, and I snatch the ball from flight as I turn to him.
“What the fuck’s a SportsGab article?” I ask.
“It’s like this online blogging community that has articles on all different types of sports stars, focusing in on their personal lives rather than the actual sports they play. Stevie apparently saw this a little bit ago, showed Olivia, and she called me.
I step to Garrett’s side and my gaze drops to the screen of his iPhone and I see a headline in big bold print that says, “Cinderella or Gold Digger?”
My eyebrows knit inward in confusion and I look up to Garrett. He nods back down to the phone, which he hands to me and says, “Just read.”
I take his phone and with my finger start to scroll the article as I read along silently.