Game On (A Bad Boy Sports Romance) (23 page)

              With her hand on a point at my hip, she pulled my leg outward, and my whole left side felt like I was experiencing the most intense cramp of my life. I let out a sharp, loud cry as I felt almost as much pain as I did when I collapsed on the fighting ring floor a few days ago, and I jerked my hand back, clenching my teeth to get a grip on the intense pain surging through me.

              “Shit, what the
fuck!
” I grunted through my teeth as Gemma stepped away from me, picking up her clipboard and writing something down. Her posture was stiffer than ever and her lips were tight, but I could see her face was red as a beet in embarrassment.

              After she finished writing, she clicked her pen and looked at me with the most icy stare I’d seen from her yet. “I believe we are finished for today, Mr. Montoya.”

              “Hang on—”

              “Good day,” she cut me off, picking up her bag and making a beeline for the door. As she pushed it open and let it slam shut behind her, I let my head fall back onto the table with an exasperated sigh as the pain in my side subsided.

             
You really fucked up this time, Marc.

              “Trina, can I talk to you about something?” I asked, peering around the corner into her open office space. She looked up from the files spread across her desk and smiled, taking off her purple reading glasses. It was around noon, the day after my third training session with Marc, and I hadn’t been able to get him off my mind. I couldn’t stop thinking about the way he touched my arm, the bulge in the front of his pants, that mischievous, longing glint in his eyes.

              I shuddered and bit my lip. Trina set down her fuzzy pen and got up.

              “Something on your mind?” she pressed, true concern and interest in her voice. I was so grateful to have a genuine friend to confide in here at work. I mean, having Alice to talk to outside of The Fighting Chance was great, but this was not a subject I wanted to broach with my fifteen-year-old sister. Not exactly an appropriate topic of conversation.

              “Uh, yeah,” I said meekly, twirling the end of my ponytail around one finger.

              “Well,” Trina began, closing her laptop and walking around the desk to link arms with me, “it’s lunch time, anyway. Let’s go to that little cafe down the street and talk. I’m starving!”

              I lit up at the mention of food. My stomach immediately growled its approval at this plan. This morning, I’d been feeling so off-kilter what with the situation yesterday that I might have pushed myself too hard during my workout. It was an old habit left over from my running years: whenever something was going wrong in my life, I hit the gym extra hard to distract myself. Physical pain and exertion had always been much easier to deal with than emotional or psychological issues. And sore muscles heal faster than broken hearts.

              “Sounds awesome,” I replied, a grin appearing on my face despite the worry clouding my mind. Trina was always so upbeat and optimistic, it was hard not to be swept up in her contagious, perpetual good mood. I was lucky to have her and Alice around. Their self-confidence and easygoing nature balanced out my own borderline-neurotic worrying.

              “Danny, we’re headin’ out for a bite to eat! Be back in an hour or so!” Trina called out over her shoulder as she flounced down the hallway, arm-in-arm with me.

              “Bring me back a protein bar, will ya?” he answered. We both laughed. Everyone here ran on superfood shakes and protein bars, a diet I was still a little wary of.

When I was growing up, my father always did his very best to make up for the fact that our mom wasn’t around. She died from breast cancer only a year and a half after Alice was born, so my dad had to really step up and become a fully-functional single parent. He never wanted us to miss out on anything, so he taught himself how to cook, clean, and even do our hair in adorable styles. Dad used to watch cooking shows in the morning while getting us ready for school, and on the weekends he experimented with new recipes. Sometimes they turned out terribly and we ended up ordering pizza or getting Chinese take-out instead. But more often than not, he cooked us fantastic, over-the-top meals that looked like they could’ve been plucked straight out of a Martha Stewart cookbook.

Dad, Alice, and I used to spend hours in the kitchen together dreaming up new recipes and experimenting with healthy ingredients. We were always exceptionally well-nourished, with plenty of vegetables, fruits, and lean meats. He didn’t deny us anything, even when we craved ice cream or cake-- he just taught us the value of balance, in all things, including in the kitchen. It was just another way he helped us become the well-rounded, independent young women we were today.

So food had always been important to me. I couldn’t bear to reduce my diet to boring old fads, restricting the foods that made me happy and added variety to my life. I still loved cooking with Alice whenever we actually had the time to do so, and I refused to jump on the fit shake and protein bar diet everyone at the gym raved about.

Luckily, Trina was in the same boat as me. We both loved to cook for those we cared about, and we both loved to eat!

“Yuck,” she blanched as we walked out of earshot. “I know it’s supposed to be good for you and everything, but I just don’t think my stomach would let me subsist entirely on granola bricks and spinach shakes!”

I shook my head, laughing. “Me, neither! Call me old-fashioned, but I’ll take a turkey sandwich and a salad over a flavorless nutrient stick any day.”

Trina inhaled deeply and closed her eyes as she looked up at the sky. “What a gorgeous day. How ‘bout we just walk to the cafe?”

“Fine by me,” I replied. It really was beautiful outside today, the sun beaming down on us through just the thinnest veil of fluffy white clouds. The world around us was basking in the warm, golden glow of noon, and I instantly felt a little better about everything going on.

Even Marc Montoya and his hand on my ass.

“So, what’s going on, honey?” Trina nudged me as we walked along.

“Well… it’s weird to talk about…” I began awkwardly, not sure where to start.

She gave me a questioning look. “Let me guess. Does it have something to do with that delicious MMA guy you’re training?”

“Trina!”I laughed.

“Come on, is it?” she pressed, grinning.

“Yeah, yeah! You’re right,” I relented.

“I knew it,” she said, sighing dramatically. “I just knew that boy would be trouble. I told Danny you could handle it, but I do know all about his reputation, honey. I told Danny that if Marc Montoya lays a single finger on you, he’d need a lot more than physical therapy when I got done with him!”

“Wait, wait, two seconds ago you called him ‘delicious!’” I backtracked.

“Mhmm, trust me, a man can definitely be both at the same time. Delicious, but bad news. A really good time, but a huge mistake. You just gotta learn to recognize which ones are worth the storm,” Trina advised me sagely.

“Does Danny know what happened yesterday?” I asked, panic starting to take hold of me. “Did Marc go to Danny and complain or something? Oh god.”

Trina shook her finger back and forth. “No, no, no! Don’t worry, Gemma! Nothing like that. Nobody’s said anything, as far as I know! I just assumed he pulled some kinda rude stunt on your or something, sweetheart. And obviously I’m at least half-right, since he’s got you all riled up and freaked out. Come on, tell me what happened.”

The flood gates burst open and I started to ramble at top speed. “I really thought I could handle him, but I might just have to get him transferred off to another therapist. I’ll just tell Danny I’m really, really sorry, and I tried my best, but it just isn’t working out, and it’s my fault, I take full responsibility for -”

“Hold up, hold up! Calm down,” she said kindly, putting her hands on my shoulders to center me back in this dimension. She cocked her head to the side and gave me a more concerned, motherly look. “Gemma, what did he do to you?”

I sighed, hanging my head a little. “Ugh, it’s so embarrassing. And we were doing so well. I mean, yeah, we started out on the wrong foot but he was really coming along and I thought he was starting to warm up to me and then… Well, he kind of warmed up a little too much, I guess,” I concluded lamely.

Trina bit her lip, clearly trying not to giggle. “Um, what happened,
exactly
?”

I started blushing, regretting ever even bringing it up. I should have kept this to myself and dealt with it on my own terms. But it was too late to back out now.

“We were having our third session yesterday and everything was going really well. He’s been making excellent progress and we were finally getting along.” I paused, unsure of how to word what came next. “And, um, he got a little friendly with me.”

“As in…?”

“Oh, Trina, don’t make me come out and say it,” I begged her, shaking my head.

“Nuh-uh, honey. You can’t back down now. No take-backsies.”

After a moment of hesitation, I blurted out, “He got
hard
, okay?”

Trina tilted her head back and cackled, pulling me in for a hug. “Aww, honey. That happens sometimes. Especially with some of the nasty old men we get at the gym, you know, they get one touch from a pretty woman in workout pants and suddenly they can’t control themselves. No big deal, sweetie. It happens from time to time. Goodness, was this your first occupational boner?”

“Yes,” I admitted, blushing. I was relatively new to the field, and I had mostly worked with women so far. But even the men I had worked with had never shown this kind of… enthusiasm for my work, until Marc.

“Well, that’s nothing to worry about,” Trina said, waving her hand dismissively. “He can’t really help it, you know. Blood circulatin’ and all that. Not your fault, either.”

She started leading me down the road again and we stopped in front of the cafe. She pushed the door open for us and we found a table in the corner. We both ordered iced green teas and chicken salads and then I worked up the courage to continue the whole humiliating ordeal. After all, the erection wasn’t even the part that bothered me all that much. I was relatively used to guys being lewd around me at various gyms. The one I worked at when I was younger was filled with horny guys who hung around my desk while I was working on the off chance that I’d go out with them. But what happened yesterday was different. He didn’t do it to upset me. And it wasn’t entirely one-sided, either.

Although, I wasn’t quite ready to admit that part out loud yet, not even to myself.

“Trina… that’s not all that happened,” I confessed quietly. She looked up from her menu and fixed me with a narrow-eyed glare.

“You mean, there’s more to this story?” she asked, leaning forward interestedly.

“Well, yeah. He-- he came onto me a couple of times during the session. Even before he got the, you know,” I muttered, glancing around nervously to make sure nobody was close enough to eavesdrop. The last thing I needed was for someone to leak to the media that big-time MMA fighter Marc Montoya was flashing a boner for his nobody of a physical therapist.

“How so?” Trina questioned, folding her hands in front of her. The waitress walked over and set our green teas on the table and we thanked her.

I unwrapped my straw, stuck it into the glass, and took a long sip before going on.

“Marc just kind of made some offhand comments. Nothing too obscene or obvious, of course. He’s smarter than that. But then he, um, he grabbed my ass,” I whispered, feeling my face start to burn. Trina’s expressive brown eyes grew round and she covered her mouth.

“Oh my goodness,” she gasped quietly. “That’s a little out of line.”

“A little?” I repeated. “More like a lot.”

“Yeah, you’re right. It’s definitely not okay. What did you do?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, a little afraid to admit what I did to him in retaliation. I mean, it was my job as a physiotherapist to be understanding and compassionate, not to purposefully cause my patients pain. But I had to be honest. My dad didn’t raise me to lie.

“I might’ve applied some pressure to his weak points,” I said, barely audible.

“Please tell me that’s a euphemism for kickin’ him in the junk.”

“Oh, god no!” I laughed, feeling relieved that she wasn’t angry with me. I respected Trina immensely, and I wanted her to take me seriously. We joked about a lot of ridiculous stuff that happened at The Fighting Chance, because sometimes silly things just tended to happen in our line of work. But I never wanted to take it too far and have her or anyone else question my skill or dedication to doing my job well.

“I just did what I had to do to distract him, you know,” I said softly. “I kind of panicked a little, I guess, but I didn’t want to make a bigger deal out of it than it already was.”

Trina raised an eyebrow and smirked impishly. “And just how big
was
the deal, anyway?” she asked slyly.