“Perfect!” Mom scampered off toward the stairs. “I’ll get showered and dressed. By the time you train, get back, shower, and get ready, I should be almost finished.”

I laughed at that. “I could probably eat and take a nap beforehand, too.”

She giggled, but didn’t deny it, before trotting up the stairs. At least she seemed better than when she’d come down them. It took a lot to knock my mom down for longer than a few minutes. After the hell my dad put her through when I was younger, there wasn’t much that could faze her. Though, when she told me stories about her before Dale, it was always so hard for me to imagine. To me, she’d always been a wealthy, classy, refined woman. It was hard to imagine the poor, rough around the edges version of her.

In fact, I didn’t really know much about that time in her life. My dad left her when I was born, not even leaving so much as a note. She met Dale two years later and only a year after that they were married. He’d been around my entire life. Dale was my father, as far as I was concerned. Still, my grandmother often told me how Dale brought out the best in my mom and saved her from a really dark time in her life. I guess in a way, Dale sort of saved me, too.

I shook off the feeling of the house as I made my way to the Rover. I wouldn’t say I was necessarily excited about going to the gym, but I wasn’t dreading it, either. I was nervous to see Rhodes, but anxious to workout. There were plenty of things I wanted to get my mind off of, and unlike my mother, shopping wouldn’t help. But, working out might.

On my way to the club, I dialed Willow. She answered on the first ring.

“Okay, I’ve decided you can’t hate me. Because you’re my best friend, Nat, and if you hate me, my life will plummet into a downward spiral the summer before college and I’ll never come back from it. I won’t get in the early admittance program, I’ll probably fail out of college my first year from sheer depression, and then I’ll live the rest of my life trying to be a carny at the Poxton Beach fair and wondering where I went wrong that fateful night years ago.”

Willow was breathless by the time she finished spouting off her story and I couldn’t help but laugh. “Lo, I’m not mad at you.”

“Oh my God,” she said, exhaling a long breath. “I’ve been freaking out all night. I’m so sorry. Whatever happened, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have forced you to go out with everyone. I don’t know what’s going on with Mason and his chick but I’m sorry I pushed you. We don’t have to hang out with anyone else the rest of the summer. Just me and you. I promise. I’m so sorry.”

“Lo,” I cut her off. “It’s fine. I promise. I’m good.”

“What happened?”

Sighing, I gave her the cliff note version in the five minutes I had left before I would pull into the club. She cursed the entire time and vowed to strangle Shay the next time she saw her, which made me laugh more.

“So did you just go home? Did you call Dale? Or your mom?”

I hesitated. “Um…”

Willow waited a moment before speaking again. “What? What is it?”

“Well, don’t freak out, but I may or may not have gone home with Rhodes.”

“Oh. My God.” She said the first word with a punch and the second two altogether. “Shut up.”

I cringed. “Well, he kind of found me. And—”

Willow squeaked, drowning out my explanation. “I need details. Now. All of them.”

This time I laughed. “You’re going to have to wait. I’m pulling up to the club for my training session. But,” I started just as she began whining. “My mom wants to go shopping this evening. Come with us?”

“Like that’s even a question. Call me when you’re on your way. And I better get every single detail with you making me wait like this.”

With that, Willow ended the call and I tossed my phone in my gym bag and trudged into the gym. When I entered through the double glass doors and saw Rhodes running on the treadmill, sweat pouring down his face and drenching the top of his shirt, the nerves I was feeling earlier rushed back in full force. His eyes lifted as soon as I entered and he killed the machine, wiping himself with a small white towel as he made his way toward me.

“You’re late.”

“Sorry,” I murmured. “My parents were… well, it doesn’t matter. I’m here.”

He nodded, and I waited for him to rip into me. About last night, about being late — anything to get him to just get it over with before we started. But, surprisingly, he didn’t.

“Do you know how to check your heart rate?”

I scrunched my nose. “I mean, I watch it when I’m on the treadmill or the Stairmaster.”

“But do you know how to check it without a machine?”

I shook my head.

“Okay,” he started, moving closer to me. “You know how I tell you to get your heart rate up to at least one-hundred-and-sixty beats per minute when we’re doing treadmill drills?” I nodded. “That’s because at that rate, you’re in the hard-core cardio zone. If you’re between one-forty and one-sixty, you’re in cardio. One-twenty to one-forty, fat burn. Anything over one-eighty is max effort and anything less than one-twenty is warm up.”

I was looking at him like he’d just told me I have a thigh gap.

He chuckled. “I’ll get you a chart. But, the point I’m trying to make is that you should be able to do this on your own, without a machine. You should always monitor your heart rate to know what zone you’re in, regardless of if you’re working out outside or on a treadmill.”

“Okay, so how do I do that?”

Rhodes took my wrist and my stomach dropped, but I didn’t let it show. Turning my arm so that my palm faced upward, he pressed two fingers into my skin on the thumb side of my wrist. “Using two fingers, push hard between the bone and the tendon over your radial artery right here. Then, count how many beats you feel in fifteen seconds and multiply by four to get your heart rate.”

“You can feel my heart right now?”

His eyes lifted to mine and the slightest smile curled on his lips. “Yeah. Yeah I can feel your heart.” For a moment, he stayed staring at me like that, but then he cleared his throat and dropped my wrist. “You can check it on your neck, too, but I like the wrist way myself. Try it.”