Page 13 of The Encore’s Crown

I can hear it, the concern, the warmth.

“I’ve got it,” I snap, even though there's a flutter in my chest.

“No, you don’t.” His voice is tight now, no performance left in it. “Rack it.”

“I can finish the set.”

“Nat, rack it.”

The command lands hard between us. Protective and so genuine it shakes something loose in my chest before I can stop it. I push up with his help, and he guides the bar back into place with a solid metal clank. Neither of us moves. His hands stay on the bar, knuckles tense. I’m still lying beneath him, breathing fast, looking up at the underside of his jaw, the damp line of his hair near his temple, the way his chest rises and falls like he’s the one who nearly dropped it. Then his eyes drop to mine. There's no mask of coldness left, not anymore. It's all heat wrapped in worry.

“You okay?” he asks.

I can't stand it. The way that it hits harder than flirting would have. I hate that concern looks good on him, that I can see exactly why I liked him in the first place, before the silence, before Rafe’s warning, before he decided my choices belonged to everyone but me.

“I’m fine,” I say.

His jaw flexes. “That wasn’t fine.”

“I don't need a lecture.”

“I’m not lecturing.”

“You have a lecturing-me tone.”

“I have a ‘don’t drop a loaded bar on your ribs’ tone.”

I glare at him. He glares back, and then, against all sense, his mouth twitches. It’s tiny, reluctant and incredibly cute, even if it's annoying.

“What?” I demand.

“Nothing.”

“No, say it.”

His eyes flick over my face, and some of the tightness eases out of him as a smile crosses his face. “You’re fucking stubborn.”

“I’m Polish. Same thing.”

This time he actually laughs. Just a short, small exhale, but it’s warm. It’s his. The sound reaches into some old, stupid part of me that remembers voice notes and midnight messages. The sound of him laughing under his breath like I’d surprised it out of him. My body betrays me with a little rush of heat. Fuck this.

This was supposed to be punishment. This was supposed to be me forcing him to look, making him stand there and feel things while I stayed perfectly untouchable. I didn't come down here to remember that he can be funny or that his concern still has hands he can use when it suits him. He steps back then, as if he remembers, too. The distance returns, but not all the way. He tries to put the coldness back on. I watch him do it. Watch his expression flatten, watch his shoulders settle, watch him become careful again. But it doesn’t work now.

“You should drop the weight,” he says, that cool voice returning.

I sit up, swinging my legs over the side of the bench. “I’m done.”

“You don’t have to stop, just lower it.”

“No, it's fine, I’m finished.”

He looks at me, the muscles in his neck tensing. “Because I said to rack it?”

“Because I’m bored.”

“Bullshit,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief, a smirk on his face.

“What's bullshit is how you've been pretending not to look at me for the last twenty minutes. That's bullshit.”