Page 98 of Falling Back to You

“Your pasty white skin is blinding me.” It was a lie, such a lie, but a sanity-saving one. “And we said no more flirting.”

“No, you said that,” he corrected, tugging off his gloves. “How else am I supposed to win you back?”

He . . . what now? “I . . . didn’t know you wanted to.”

Cal tugged a shirt on, lips twitching. And I caught the faint smudge of ink on the underside of his bicep. A tattoo?

Not your business!

“Where are the pads?” I asked, scanning the small home gym.

He barked a laugh. “Don’t worry, you won’t hurt me.”

“Not you I’m worried about,” I grumbled. “I’d like to keep my no-broken-bones record, thank you very much, Mr. Hulk.”

Grabbing the training pads, Cal instructed me on where to stand and wrapped my knuckles.

“Too tight?” he asked, fingers brushing over my skin.

“Feels good,” I whispered. “Uh, I mean, it’s fine. Not too tight. All good.”

He chuckled but didn’t acknowledge my slip. “Have you ever done this?”

“Not unless you count when I broke Denver Donovan’s nose in tenth grade.”

Cal howled with laughter. “And then I drove you to urgent care for a dislocated thumb. That definitely doesn’t count, though I’ve never been so proud. You have a killer right hook.”

The words shouldn’t affect me, but they did. He’s proud of me. No, was proud. There’s a difference.

Following his instructions, I threw a few punches and practically preened under his praise when he called me a natural. We fell into a rhythm, but instead of feeling calmer, a hot flush of anger burned deep in my chest. Building until—

The floodgates broke.

“I thought exercise released happy endorphins, not made you madder!” I snapped. Exercise hurt, but I was too hopped up on feelings to care about the extra pain coursing through my body. I threw another punch.

Cal caught it. “Must be a glitch in your matrix.”

When the tears blurred his handsome face and my shoulder screamed in pain, my arms sagged, and I choked on a sob.

Cal yanked me against his chest. His hands gently slid up and down my back. “Let it out.”

I gripped his soft cotton shirt as the tears poured out of me. I wasn’t even sure why I was crying. Stress. The events of the last month catching up with me. Or maybe . . . Cal still felt safe enough for me to let my guard down. The one person I didn’t have to have it all together for. I didn’t need to be on. I could simply be.

“I don’t know what happened,” I whispered against his chest when I finally caught my breath.

“Remember I said it’s a stress reliever? Sometimes you have to let the emotion out instead of stuffing it down. And you did.”

“Is that why you do it? To stop masking your emotions?”

Cal stiffened slightly. “Yeah, I guess.”

I could take the hint this wasn’t something he wanted to discuss. Instead, I brushed the wet spot on his T-shirt. “Sorry for crying on you.”

“Anytime, Elle.”

And he wasn’t flirting. Sincerity rang through every word, curling around the cracked edges of my heart. He meant it.

It wasn’t until I crawled under my quilt with an I Love Lucy rerun that I realized I’d completely forgotten to ask him about the community festival.