THREE: 2:36 AM
I push the weight up with my legs, straining, aching, and fighting the agony in my right knee. I manage to straighten my legs, and I desperately want to lower them and release the strain. I start to do just that…
“Hold it there for me, Ben,” Cheyenne says. “For ten seconds. That’s all. Ten seconds. You can do it, I know you can.”
But I can’t. I’m a fucking pussy, and it hurts. I try, though. I shake all over, sweat sluicing down my face. I strain, and a growl escapes me as I fight the urge to let the weight go.
“…nine…eight…seven…six! Keep it up, Ben! Five more seconds, come on!” She’s kneeling beside me, her voice patient and encouraging as always.
My leg trembles, and the pain in my ruined knee is so bad I could almost cry. “I can’t—fuck, I can’t. I gotta let it go.”
I start to lower the leg press, but my knee gives out. And Cheyenne is there, catching the weight and lowering it. I slide to a sitting position, grab my right leg near the knee and lift it over the bench, and then collapse forward, elbows on my thighs, gasping.
The most pathetic thing about this? The press only has a hundred pounds on it. And I only managed two sets of ten. I used to be able to press over twice my body weight, six or eight reps of twenty each. Now, a hundred measly fucking pounds pushed twenty times and I’m out of breath, sweating, and my knee hurts so bad I don’t dare speak in case the tremor in my voice shows.
I feel her hand on my shoulder, and a white towel appears in front of my face. I take the towel and wipe my face, neck, and chest, and then accept the bottle of water she hands to me.
“That was great, Ben. You’re making excellent progress.” She sips from her own bottle of water, another towel slung over her slim shoulder. She toys with her hair, a sleek blond braid hanging down her back. “Next time we’ll try for three sets, huh?”
“I barely managed two today, Cheyenne. Gonna take awhile to get to three.” I hate how defeated I sound.
She crouches in front of me, and my eyes go involuntarily to her gray-and-pink sports bra, visible beneath the white tank top, and then to her muscular thighs, encased in black knee-length stretch pants. I force my eyes back to her hazel-green gaze. If she noticed me checking her out, she doesn’t give anything away.
“Ben, you’re too hard on yourself. It’s only been a month. It’s going to take some time, okay? You have to be patient with yourself.”
“I know,” I sigh, and roll my head around my shoulders to loosen the tension. “It’s just frustrating to be so limited.”
She smiles, warm and understanding. Only the slight wrinkles in the corners of her eyes give away the fact that she’s older than me by quite a bit. I don’t know how much, but enough. She has a daughter in college, so she’s got to be at least forty. But, Jesus, what a gorgeous forty.
“I get it, Ben. I do.” She pats my knee, the good one. Is it me, or do her fingers linger a few seconds too long? “I went through it too, remember? I know what you’re going through, how hard it is. You can do this. You just have to be patient and stay the course.” She stands up, turns away and grabs two ten-pound hand weights from a rack.
She’s facing away, so I let myself eye her ass. Taut, all toned muscle.
Fuck, what’s wrong with me? She’s got a daughter in college, for fuck’s sake. She’s my physical therapist. I should not be checking her out. But yet, every time I’ve been here since being injured in the game that ended my chances at a football career, I check her out. I struggle to keep my eyes off her, especially when she’s looking my way.
Like she is now. Shit. She totally caught me staring. But she doesn’t turn cold, doesn’t scold me, or glare at me. She just offers me the same kind, warm, patient smile she always has for me.
“Come on. Time to walk that knee out, mister. Come on. Up, up, up.” She grabs me by the hand and pulls me up to my feet.
Her hands linger in mine, just for a moment, but it’s enough to make me wonder. And then she hands me the weights and gestures to the track that leads around the perimeter of the gym. She walks beside me, twenty-pound weights in her hands, and sets the pace. She ignores the fact that I’m fighting to keep up, that I’m hobbling so bad it can barely be called walking.
And then a ripple in the carpet catches the toe of my cross trainer, and I trip. I lurch forward, hobble, and my bad knee twists and goes out from under me. I fall, the weights dropping from my hands. My knee crashes into the floor, and pure agony lances through my leg, shooting from toe to hip, throbbing so hard my gut tightens. I roll off my knee, clutching it, gasping, fighting the urge to curse a blue streak.
“Ben! Shit! Are you okay?” She’s kneeling beside me, helping me sit up.
Her hand goes to my knee, and she rips open the snaps of my track pants up past my knee, baring my hairy thigh. Her hands are warm and strong, flexing my knee, straightening my leg until I yelp.
“Fuck!” I pull free of her hold on my leg and lie back. “Fuck, that hurt.”
“I think we’d better call it a day,” Cheyenne says, a concerned expression on her face. “I’m worried that’s going to swell.”
“Yeah, no shit.” My voice is hoarse with the effort needed to breathe through the pain.
“Can you stand up?” She’s taking my hand, pulling.
“Yeah, I can fucking stand, okay?” I snap, jerking my hand away.
“Fine then, stand up.” She backs away, not quite hiding the hurt before I see it.
I scrub my hand through my hair. “God, Cheyenne, I’m sorry. I’m being an asshole and you don’t deserve it.”
And just like that, the smile is back. She holds her hand out to me, and this time I take it and let her help me to my feet.
“Okay, see if you can put any weight on it,” she tells me, not letting go of me.
I hobble, get my balance, and gingerly put weight on my knee. “Nope, nope, nope. Not happening,” I grunt, hopping as my knee gives, wincing.
“Okay. Lean on me.” She slides her slim shoulder under my arm and supports me.
She’s a lithe little thing, barely five-five to my six-two, and I outweigh her by at least seventy pounds, but she still manages to support my weight and help me limp out of the gym and into the locker room. I lower myself to the bench and straighten my leg, closing my eyes as the motion sends pain shooting through me.