Blind Landing (Flipped #1) (6 page)

T
he first night
without Peyton is rough. I head back to the dorm, where her door stands ajar and her room empty across the hall. That sends me into a downward spiral.

The floodgates open, and the tears don’t stop for hours. I feel more alone than ever, my one real friend in this entire place has been kicked out, her dreams unfulfilled. I finished in the middle of the group during the mock meet today. I should have been first. Fucking first. I killed my routines, besides beam. Novak is punishing me for showing weakness. If he didn’t know what was up with me on beam before today, he surely knows now.

It puts my entire eligibility to make the team at risk.

“Fuck. FUCK!” I scream, jamming my head into my pillow.

I hate him. Novak. Hate that he controls every little aspect of this world, that he calls the shots and screws with everyone’s fate like he did all of the hard work. We all got here without him, this is just the final test. He’s the gatekeeper to the Olympics. To victory.

I guess it wouldn’t be the hardest test of our lives if there wasn’t a difficult fucking mission to get through before we get to see glory.

There are rumors that he didn’t use to be this bad. That he had a heart, somewhere back there before his wife Anka died. When they came to America over fifteen years ago, she caught some kind of virus or disease that they apparently don’t vaccinate for over in Poland. Thinking it was just a cold, Novak told her to shake it off, and never took her to the doctor.

Four weeks later, she was dead. They say, those rare people in the gymnastics community who dare to discuss it, that he blames himself. That he never got over it and so he takes it out on the gymnasts killing themselves for him at his facility.

I’m beginning to think those rumors are true.

And then Spencer. He had to come after me, pull at me and shove his nose in my business. He was so understanding, so supportive. I couldn’t bury the words anymore, so I told him.

I’m afraid.

Now that I’ve spoken them out loud, there is no going back. I have to confront it, there is no more skirting around it. And he says he is going to help me. I have no idea how, since I’ve never dealt with anything like this in my entire career, but it makes my heartbeat marginally calmer knowing there is someone out there who might know how to fix this.

By the end of hour two of my crying jag, my eyes are swollen and sore from sobbing. My heart hurts, for myself and for Peyton. My throat is hoarse. I crawl under my covers and submit to the dark sleep that swallows me whole.

* * *

A
knock
from somewhere in the back of my consciousness threatens to rouse me from the coma-like sleep I’m under.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

And there it is again. And now I’m up.

My sleepy eyes blink open, registering the slim columns of early morning light filtering through the blinds. A glance at the red digits of my alarm clock show me it’s only five a.m.

“What the hell?” I blink again, trying to get the sleep dirt out of the corner of my eyes.

Bang. Bang. Bang.
What in the fuck is that?

I stumble out of bed, pissed when I stub my big toe on the floor. I’m still cursing whoever is making that noise when I throw open the door.

To reveal a bright-eyed, delicious looking Spence.

“What the hell are you doing here at this time? How did you even get up here?” I hiss, pissed at him but also mad at the traitorous stirrings that start below my waist.

And speaking of my waist, Spence can’t seem to keep his eyes off it. “Uhhh …”

He licks his lips, the move causing even more warmth to pool in my core. And it’s then that I remember I’m in what I wear to bed every night. A ratty old wifebeater and boy short underwear.

I jump a little, crossing my arms over my chest, although he’s probably already seen my nipples through the see-through white material. There is nothing I can do about the underwear, but he’s the one who came knocking this early.

He’s still gaping at me, so sexy and clothed in his sweatpants and tight black T-shirt. “What? You see me in a leotard all day, practically half naked!”

I whisper yell at him, afraid to wake anyone up. How the heck did he get up here, anyway?

Spence shakes his head, a normal look replacing the dazed one on his face. He holds up a key card. “I have access to all of the buildings on campus. Speaking of leotards, go put one on.”

I shake my head, the coma-like state I was just in still glazing my brain. “What? Why?”

“This is day one of
Operation Fuck Fear
. Or at least that’s the nickname I’ve come up with. I don’t know, we can talk about calling it something else if you don’t like that. But get dressed. We have a beam dismounts’ ass to kick.”

He raises his eyebrows in a sexy, saucy way, and I can’t help but giggle. “
Operation Fuck Fear
?”

Spence plants his hands on his narrow, toned hips and winks. “Yes. Now go get dressed. Or you can workout in that. I won’t mind.”

“Flirty friends flirt. They don’t touch,” I say before closing the door in his face.

Twenty minutes later, Spence holds the door open for me as I walk slowly into the beam gym. The smell of chalk, sweat, stale perfume and moldy mats permeates the air. My temple, my church, the place where I come to worship.

“It’s so peaceful like this in the morning. Sometimes I can actually feel that place in my heart that first fell in love with gymnastics.”

Spence’s hushed words have me almost in tears. It’s weird, how the same thoughts were just running through my head.

“Without the bullshit, and the drama, and the pressure. It’s just this pure, untainted thing.” I nod, understanding exactly what he means.

He goes to flick on the lights, and I reach out to stop his hand. A flush of warmth runs down my arm where I’ve made contact with his.

“Leave them off. By the time we’re done stretching, the sun will be bright enough.”

We walk to the floor together and I put my gym bag in the corner, reaching in for my tape and hair tie.

“You girls have so much shit to carry around. You can’t just fucking workout?” Spence is smiling at me as he does a forward roll and lands splat onto the floor on his back.

“Sorry, we can’t just slap our balls in a pair of man huggers and go to work.” I grin, thinking about Spence in a pair of tighty whities.

I slide into a right leg split and pull my hair up into a ponytail, wrapping the tie four times around so that the hair is pulling the skin on my forehead back. I grab the tape up off the floor as I transition into a middle split, planting my elbows on the carpeted mat and tightly winding the white athletic tape around my left wrist.

“Why don’t you just wear Tiger Paws?” Spence shoots me a look as he takes out a NutriGrain bar and rips the package open.

I keep taping, starting on my right wrist. I could just wear Tiger Paws, a sort of hand brace that Velcros on and off for easy removal. They help gymnasts wrists stay strong, as after hours and hours and years and years of practice and meets, that is the body part that gets worn down the most.

“I think they hinder my hands too much. This way I have the wrist support, but don’t have to strap the Tiger Paws around my palms and fingers. It’s distracting to me. I can’t feel the beam as well.”

I move my body into a bridge, feeling my ribs and ab muscles stretch as I push back on my wrists in a backbend position. I push far enough and my back sounds like firecrackers, six snaps in rapid succession.

“Fuck your back is tight!” Spence laughs as I come down from my bridge, twisting left and then right to get a couple more cracks out of my back.

“Hey, some of us work really hard. Back cracks are the sign of a job well done.”

Spence’s face falls a little and I realize I’ve made a horrible mistake. It’s not his fault he can’t practice. “Spence, I’m sorry …”

“Hey, don’t worry about it. Let’s get going. We’ve got some fear to conquer!”

He shoots to his feet and walks quickly over to the four beams facing the pit. My stomach goes sour, the need to flee so strong that I almost give in and start running for the door. It’s embarrassing enough handling this problem on my own. But to openly stand there, frozen to the beam, in front of Spencer? My neck heats with shame just thinking about it.

“Hey, stop it. We’re going to get you through this. I’m the best coach around, or didn’t you know?”

Right. He’s only doing this as a coach. This has nothing to do with the fact that we’re flirty friends. But I have seen him with the male gymnasts. He’s a phenomenal teacher, having so recently been a superstar gymnast. He can teach things in ways coaches never could.

I mount the beam, swinging my legs up as if I was getting out of a pool and come to stand on the razor thin apparatus.

“Okay, so first, I want you to start with just doing a roundoff and then jumping into the pit.”

I roll my eyes. “I learned how to do a roundoff jump dismount when I was seven.”

Spence rolls his meadow-green eyes right back and scratches at the bronze scruff on his jaw. “Do you think I’m an idiot? Don’t answer that. I know you know how to do this. What I’m doing is breaking this skill down for you in stages. Showing you that you can do each individual part of the dismount in slow motion, so that eventually, your body will realize it can piece all of the skills together and nothing bad will happen to you.”

His idea is actually kind of genius. If I show my mind that I can do all of the skills apart, maybe it will unlock whatever is blocking me from doing them together.

“Okay, coach. Let’s give this a try.”

I launch myself down the beam, running on the four-inch piece of wood in front of me like it’s a runway. I flip my body into a roundoff and spring off of the end of the beam, hitting the foam blocks in the pit with a dull thud.

“Nice roundoff.” Spence smirks down at me from the spotter’s block he’s standing on next to the beam. Coaches stand there to help gymnasts with tricks, but mostly it’s a mental thing. If someone is there to spot you, even if they don’t even touch you, it just eases your mind. I wasn’t even conscious of him doing it until now, but my heart flips over when I realize he’s trying to comfort me.

I climb out, dragging my body back to the other end of the beam before mounting it again. Over and over this cycle continues, until I’ve done so many roundoffs I’m dizzy.

“Okay, now we’re going to do hundreds of Arabians.” Spence ushers me to the end of the beam with a wave of his hand, and again my stomach drops. He must see the panic on my face. “Get out of your fucking head, Meat.”

I spit out a laugh as I join him at the end of the beam, me standing on it and him on the spotting block next to it. “Did you just
Bull Durham
me?”

“I’m surprised you even know what that movie is. Kids these days have no appreciation for the classics.”

I flick him. “Excuse me, you’re only three years older than I am! Well,” I put a finger to my chin, pretending to think, “I guess you are an old man then!”

He swats at my butt, but I hop out of the way just before his hand makes contact.

“Enough joking around, we are working here. Okay, you’re going to stand at the end of the beam, and for the first few I’m literally going to do the Arabian for you. I’m going to lift you off of the beam, twist your body, and then flip you forward. Don’t think, just work on keeping your muscles tight and your toes pointed. Feel the motion of the skill, how your body goes through each part of it. Okay?”

I’m staring at his mouth by the time he’s done. I know I said we were just flirty friends, but something about the way he talks about gymnastics has me flushed and hot. And he’s going to be working my body through a skill? My stomach dips again, and this time it has nothing to do with fear.

I turn, my back facing the pit as my heels hang off the end of the beam. Spence lays a hand on my back, the warmth of his fingers seeping through my leotard. My palms start to sweat and I refrain from wiping them down my legs. He places his other hand on the back of my thigh, right above my knee so he can throw my body in to the skill when he needs to. The tips of his fingers brush the back of my knee, and I have to tamp down the shudder and moan that race through me.

“Ready?” If I’m not mistaken, Spence’s voice is husky when he asks me the question.

“Yeah,” I nod, gulping as his grip on me tightens.

I don’t have time to think about my fear of falling. All I can focus on are Spence’s strong hands on the small of my back, his rough calluses against the smooth skin of my thigh as he flips my body through the air. The way he holds me, secures me and protects me.

The next thing I know, I’m in the pit, my skin and nervous system short-circuiting and trying to comprehend what just happened.

When I stare up, Spence’s expression looks oddly similar to my own confused, flushed stare.

W
omen are beautiful things
. I appreciate their femininity and their enticing, sweet ways. I appreciate their sauciness and their authority; I appreciate how they always seem to smell like vanilla or flowers.

I’ve appreciated my fair share of women up close and personally. But I’ve never appreciated a woman more than I’ve appreciated Natalia Grekov. And neither has my cock.

And he hasn’t even been up close and personal with her. Yet.

Over the course of the last week, my hands have been all over Nat’s body. On the small of her back, brushing against her knees, gripping her shoulder, cradling her head. I’ve been molding, protecting and manipulating her figure. And I haven’t so much as done one sexual thing to her.

Maybe it’s the fact that she’s a female gymnast and I hardly ever work with the girls who train here. I’m strictly a men’s coach, though that doesn’t mean I don’t know how to work with the women gymnasts. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t gotten laid in a month or two, too preoccupied with helping others get to the Olympics that I’ve put their needs before my own.

I can keep telling myself that. But in the back of my mind, I know. I’m wound up about the mysterious, European-looking blonde in the tight leotards. The one I sneak out of my dorm every day at five a.m. to go see. Our private practices are exciting, almost illicit. It feels like we’re having a secret affair or something. We kind of are. If any of the other coaches found out about this, not only would Nat’s chance at making the Olympic team be at risk due to her fear of her dismount, but my ethics would be called into question. I might lose my job here.

But it doesn’t stop my heart from kicking up a notch every step I get closer to the beam gym. It doesn’t prevent me from putting my hands all over Nat’s strong, petite body. None of it makes my swelling dick, who can’t be held accountable for his actions, tame itself.

And that’s what I’m thinking about when Jared comes to the door of my room, ready to head out for the second round of workouts for the day.

“Dude, you ready to …” He trails off, and then I see his eyes bug out.

Looking down, I see my hyper-aware cock is on the fritz again.

“Fuck, man, I can leave you alone if you need a couple of minutes …” Jared’s cheeks look redder than a fire engine.

I snort, turning around and thinking about dead fish and my grandma. “Nah, man. I’ll be ready in a second. Just haven’t gotten any lately. You know, my cock is starving. Maybe we should go out this weekend.”

I hear Jared uncomfortably chuckle behind me. “You could have fooled me, what with your early morning sneak outs.”

I freeze, my hand stopping in midair where I’m fanning my slowly descending cock. I don’t really know why I was fanning it, but it works for people’s faces when they’re hot. Why not my rigid dick?

“Uh, what are you talking about?” I finally turn around to see a sullen Jared.

“Spence, I’m not dumb. You don’t think I hear your loud ass trying to sneak undetected out of the dorm each morning? At first I thought you were just running or some shit, but you never come back up. Meaning you’re somewhere for two hours each day before practice. What’s with that?”

I have no explanation that will make sense, and even my cunning brain is caught off guard. I can’t tell him about Nat, not because he would tell anyone, Jared would never do that. But because it’s not my secret or my fear to divulge. This is Nat’s business, and I’m only helping her. I’d never want to tell someone without her permission.

“I … uh … I’ve been trying to gain back some of my strength.” It’s a shitty lie, but it’s also a believable one.

And one that gets Jared immediately off the scent of anything else. “Shit, Spence, I’m sorry. I get it, fuck me for trying to confront you about anything. So uh … how is it going?”

I roll my shoulder as if I’ve been working it hard, digging myself further into the lie. “It’s slow man, I’m just trying to build up some strength.”

“You think you’ll ever get back to where you were? I thought the surgeon said you’d never regain full mobility …”

“I won’t.” I snap at him, pissed about my life predicament. When I see the apologetic look on Jared’s face, I shake it off. “Hey, sorry man. Let’s get going or you’ll be late for your vault hour.”

With my boner long forgotten and the epic failure of my career in the forefront of my mind, I trail Jared as we head off for the gyms. As we round the corner of one of the big brick warehouses, I almost run smack into a lithe blonde.

“Watch where you’re going!” The woman screeches at me as I get tangled in her gym bag.

My hands go to her shoulders, keeping both of us steady, and as soon as my fingers hit the thin expanse of skin between her leotard and collarbone, a vicious jolt shocks my system and zaps straight to my balls. One glance down as soon as I know I won’t topple her, and I see it’s Nat.

“Again? Are you trying to maim me? First your chair in the cafeteria and now your fucking gym bag?” I smile through it all, loving the way her face gets pink with annoyance as I tease her.

“In your dreams, Russell. I only maim people that I like.” She nods her head in challenge.

I bend down to whisper in her ear, our bodies still woven together. “I’d love to know what you do to people you want to fuck.”

I shouldn’t say that to her. I shouldn’t even think it. I’m a coach, her coach right now even if no one knows it, we agreed not to do this, I’m only torturing myself. The list of reasons goes on and on. And I want to tear them up and throw them in the chalk bucket to bury.

Someone coughs from over my shoulder, and I turn to see Jared assessing us with a curious gaze. I disentangle from Nat and step back, my pores aching to rub against her skin. She smirks and walks off, the curve of her pert ass in that shiny black leotard enticing me to run after her.

“I think you might have just found the problem solver to your not-getting-laid problem.” Jared snickers and opens the door to the vault gym.

If only he know how on the money his assumption was.

* * *

“
I
barely even touched you
that time!” I jump up, punching my fist into the air and feeling the soft blue spotter’s block cushion my feet as they touch back down. It’s only a few days after our encounter outside the vault gym, but she’s made so much progress with her fear that I can’t help but get psyched up.

Nat smiles up at me from where she’s buried in the pit, barely any part of her body visible, save for her shoulders and head. “I know! I barely felt you. But it was good to have you there, it makes me more comfortable to actually throw the Arabian.”

She drags her body up and out of the pit, and I swear it’s a workout just to get out of the gymnasts version of quicksand.

“I think we can move to the regular beam with a solid mat soon.” I know that’s pushing it, but I need to move the process along. She’s only got about a month or so left before Olympic Trials. She needs to be solidly unafraid of her beam dismount in the next week if she has any hope of being in the right mental headspace for Olympic Trials.

“Slow your roll, coach. I need to bang about a hundred more of these out into the pit before I tackle the competition set up.”

Nat swings her body back up onto the beam, her long, athletic legs distracting me from anything else. Lately, it was all I could do to stop staring at her lush crimson lips.

“You’re bossy, you know that?” I rub my bare abs, the heat of the summer suffusing every gym on Filipek’s campus and making me sweat in the non-air conditioned buildings.

“Someone around here has got to take things seriously. We can’t all be a fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants type of man.” Nat plays around on the beam, doing a few turns and random jumps while we chat.

“Oh, so you’re a man? Coulda fooled me, you know those leotards don’t leave much to the imagination.” I can’t help it if my gaze rakes up and down her body.

And I don’t miss the way her denim blue eyes dilate, the way her hands fidget at her sides.

“No more flirting,
friend
. I have dismounts to conquer.”

She gets into her takeoff position, tensing her body and squeezing her muscles so that her entire body looks like a strong, sexy athlete’s wet dream. Or man’s wet dream. Or mine. Fucking fine, she’s my wet dream.

I ready myself, holding my arms out in the mock-position as if I’m going to spot her or touch her to help her through the skill. Even though I won’t. She just did the dismount flawlessly, and her body knows how to execute it even if her mind doesn’t.

Nat is rigid, indecision in her eyes.

“Come on, superstar. You can do this. You just did it. Fuck the fear. Shut your mind off and run.” My voice has a biting tone in it, like I’m talking right to the fear paralyzing her brain.

Determination filters in and dilutes the indecision and Nat starts to elegantly trot down the beam, her lithe muscles all working together to catapult her into the dismount.

But while I’m so busy studying her, my hands aren’t ready. I did the one thing that coaches should never do; take their attention off the gymnast.

Nat’s leg clips my arm as she pushes off of the beam and flips into the Arabian. My center of gravity topples, sending me flying through the air in an awkward spiral with her.

The walls and equipment flash by in a blur as I soar through the air, my off-kilter body aiming for the pit below.

And the next thing I know, I’m face down in the blue foam blocks. Only, I’m not alone. Nat lays under me, her leotard-clad body pressed firmly to mine as my cock nestles between her open thighs.