Chapter 197: Mike, Just Kill Me.

An hour and a half later, Liam was lying flat on a bench, staring at the ceiling and questioning every decision that had led him here.

His quads were on fire. His hamstrings had filed a formal complaint. Somewhere around the fourth set of Bulgarian split squats, he'd stopped being able to feel his left calf entirely, and he wasn't sure he wanted it back.

Mike had kept his word. No catching up. No easing in. Liam had lifted exactly what the programme said he should be lifting today, and the programme, as it turned out, had big plans for him. Liam knew from the get go this wasn't going to be like any other day, Mike was about to make him not want to meet any session and he had successfully imparted that into Liam.

Rachel, on the other hand, was sitting on the leg press machine with her ponytail slightly loose and a light sheen of sweat across her forehead, sipping from her water bottle like she'd just finished a brisk walk.

That was the part Liam still couldn't wrap his head around.

He'd expected her to tap out in twenty minutes. He'd been quietly planning how to console her when she did. But Mike had built the entire session around legs, and somewhere between the goblet squats and the hip thrusts, it became obvious that Rachel's lower body was in a different league.

She'd matched every set Mike gave her. Then she'd asked if she could add weight to the leg press.

Mike had stared at her for a long moment, then added weight.

She'd pushed it. Clean, controlled, twelve reps.

Liam had watched from the floor with his mouth slightly open. For someone her size, with no real training history, it shouldn't have been possible. Then again, he knew it wasn't unusual. Plenty of women carried more natural strength in their lower bodies than men did. Rachel just happened to be an extreme example of it.

Mike walked over and looked down at him, blocking out the overhead lights.

"You see her?" Mike said, nodding toward Rachel.

"I see her." Liam responded flatly.

"First day. No complaints. Good depth. Good control." He pointed a thick finger at Liam's chest. "You could be more like her."

From the leg press, Rachel burst out laughing. She tried to cover it with her hand, which only made it worse.

Liam turned his head slowly toward her. "Wow, really?"

"I'm sorry," she said, not sounding sorry at all. "He's right, though."

"I've been coming here for days."

"And I've been coming here for ninety minutes." She grinned. "Maybe I'm just gifted."

"Maybe you're a mutant." Liam said suspiciously with a raised brow.

"Maybe you skip leg day."

"I don't skip leg day. I skip *days*. It's different." Liam shrugged.

Mike grunted in a way that sounded suspiciously like agreement with Rachel. "Same time Thursday," he said to her. "You, I will push harder." Then he looked down at Liam. "You, I will push much harder."

"Can't wait," Liam wheezed.

Mike smiled, wide and gentle as ever, and walked off to terrorize someone else.

The thing about Mike was, he made the gym interesting. He knew how to keep the people who chose him as a trainer motivated even though his methods were unorthodox.

-

The walk to the car took longer than it should have. Rachel was fine. Liam was not.

"Do you need me to carry you?" she asked as he lowered himself into the driver's seat with the grace of a man three times his age.

"I'm fine." Liam lied.

"You made a noise." Rachel pointed out.

"That was the seat." Liam tried to shrug it off.

"The seat groaned?" Rachel said with a snicker.

"It's an old car."

"It looks like a new car, Liam."

"Then the seat's just dramatic."

She laughed and buckled herself in, and as they pulled out of the lot, Liam noticed something different about her. She wasn't tugging at her jacket anymore or hiding behind him. She sat back comfortably with one arm resting on the window ledge, humming along to the radio. The nervous woman who'd walked into Pike Peak that morning had left the building somewhere around the third set of squats.

"So," Liam said. "Thursday?"

Rachel thought about it. "Thursday," she said. "But only because I want to watch Mike destroy you again."

"That's the spirit."

"I'm serious. That was the best part of my week."

"Glad my suffering entertains you."

"It really does."

He smiled at the road.

This was good. For weeks, everything between them had been tangled up in the divorce, the building, late nights, and whatever had happened last night that neither of them was talking about yet. Today had been none of that. No case files, no tears, no tension. Just two people at a gym, giving each other a hard time.

It was the kind of thing friends did.

And that mattered. Not every part of a relationship had to be romantic. Friendship was a relationship too, and so was trust, and so was simply enjoying someone's company without expecting anything from it. If he and Rachel could build that side of things, everything else would stand on firmer ground.

He pulled up outside her building twenty minutes later.

Rachel unbuckled and paused with her hand on the door. "Thanks for today," she said. "Really. I didn't think I'd actually enjoy it."

"You were incredible in there."

"I know." She grinned. "Ice your legs, old man."

"I'm twenty-five."

"You definitely could've fooled me."

She climbed out, waved over her shoulder, and disappeared inside the building.

Liam sat there for a quiet moment, watching her backside barely stay contained within those leggings, then drove home.

When he finally made it through his own front door, he dropped his gym bag on the floor, stretched out across the couch, and let out a long, slow breath.

His legs were going to hate him tomorrow.

But for the first time in days, his head felt quiet.