Page 3 of Going the Distance

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I really, really didn’t have time to be doing this. Nevertheless, I put one foot in front of the other and knocked on Brock’s front door. We’d come up with a schedule for his regular training. Since he was so eager to get back to active duty, we’d needed to add in a few extra sessions at his place when the gym was full. I already had a full-time workload, not to mention training for my first amateur fight. I should have been food-prepping a shit-ton of chicken and asparagus for the week. Instead, I was here, torturing myself. Not to mention the fact that he shouldn’t be training at all. He was right, though; I was the best. He would train no matter what, so better that he had someone to show him how to do it right.

The door swung open, and I sucked in a breath. Brock in uniform was delicious, but dressed-down Brock? Black-t-shirt-and-basketball-shorts Brock? A fucking display case of hand-baked goodies.

“Hey, come on in.”

I moved past him, my elbow brushing against the hard plane of his stomach, and then I stopped dead in my tracks.Oh, my God.

“What’s wrong?”

I pointed to where the biggest, fluffiest orange cat I had ever seen basked in his Garfield-lookalike glory on Brock’s couch. “Who is this?”

Brock rolled his eyes. “That’s Sargeant. Sarg for short.”

“He’s gorgeous.” I all but clasped my hands in front of my chest.

“Yeah, he knows.” The cat in question lay on the back of the couch, the end of his tail flipping lazily from side to side. He opened his eyes as I approached and leaned forward to sniff my hand. My heart melted like a piece of chocolate in the sun as I scratched behind his ear. He leaned into my hands, and I sighed. I hadn’t had a pet in years. Fight training was expensive. I had moved from cheap apartment to cheap apartment, finally ending up living in my brother Josh’s spare room. It was hard to find rentals with a pet, so I just didn’t have one.

Brock lowered himself onto the couch with Sarg by his head. “I bring a pretty girl home, and you steal her attention. What kind of friend are you?” He scratched under the big cat’s chin, but I was stuck on Brock’s words.Pretty?I’d never been called pretty in my life.Pretty seemed to imply dainty and delicate. I was neither of those things.Brock wasn’t exactly a small guy himself. Maybe he really saw me that way. Or maybe I was helping him out with his leg, so he felt like he needed to suck up.

I cleared my throat; I could easily sink into the couch and spend the afternoon petting the fluffy masterpiece that was Sarg. I could equally spend the time in the same place with Brock. We had work to do though, and this was my brother’s best friend. He had come to me for help and the fact that I wanted him to bang me on every surface of his apartment didn’t change the reality that we had to rehab that leg fast. It was his job to watch my brother’s back after all.

“Alright, that leg needs more time to heal so we will do upper body only today.”

He opened his mouth to argue but I silenced him with a look. He got up and started warming up.

I wasn’t about to pack a whole weight room to Brock’s apartment, but I had brought some resistance bands and thatwould have to be good enough. “Alright, let’s start with shoulder press. I tucked the resistance band under my feet and showed him the movement. He took a band of his own and gave it a try. I knew he had worked out before, but he was used to equipment helping to keep your form right. With bands and free weights, he had to do the work himself. More accurately, I had to do the work. He pushed the bands over his head, his arms out too wide to the side and his lower back arching when it shouldn’t.

Alright, Dani, you can do this.

Personal training was a hands-on job, and I was about to have my professionalism tested. “Hold your back straight.” I put one hand on his lower back and one on his stomach, adjusting his posture. His body was warm under my palms, and I caught the smell of whatever soap he used. It was clean and fresh, whatever it was, and I imagined smelling it while tucked under his arm in bed. He did another rep, and I moved around behind him to fix the position of his arms. I put my hands on his biceps and pushed them forward so they were at an angle to his body. Even after taking a break from training, his muscles felt strong and powerful in my hands.

We got into a groove for the rest of the workout. He was working up a sweat, and I was getting wet for completely different reasons. He started doing a set of lateral raises, and I stepped close in front of him to fix his form. “You don’t want your hands to lead; your elbows should always be higher than your hands.” I placed a hand over each of his to angle them down, realizing just how close we stood. We were almost chest to chest, and when I looked into his face, he was studying mine. I’d never been this close to him before. Definitely not with him looking at me like I was a snack. He’d stopped doing the exercise but was still breathing heavily.

It would only take the movement of a few inches, and my lips would be on his. I’d imagined what his kiss would feel like moretimes than I could count. I knew it would be soft but demanding. He’d work me up with his tongue and run his hands down my spine and over my ass. Then what? He’d realize he wanted to date a petite little thing that made him feel big and strong? Or he’d realize that fooling around with his best friend’s sister would never work out, and he’d tell me he regretted it. I took a step back and looked away. “Let’s call it a day. Make sure to stretch it out; I have to get back to the gym.”

I collapsed onto the couch when I got home. Physically, I was wiped out from training and being trained, but mentally and emotionally, I was a real mess. Brock would never be interested in me. He knew that. I knew that. So why had he looked at me with heat in his eyes?

Josh came into the living room, throwing ice water on my overheated libido. He dropped onto the couch beside me and raised an eyebrow. Some days, grunts and facial expressions were all I got out of him communication-wise. He was half caveman, I swear. In this case, it was a good thing he wasn’t peppering me with questions about my day. I was hard-core crushing on a man who was not only his best friend but also his partner in the police force. It didn’t get much closer than that for guys.

“How was your day, big brother?” Josh and I had always been close. We were only two years apart in age and didn’t have any other siblings. Our parents were on the older side when they had us, so it felt like two generations were separating us rather than just one.

He grunted. “The usual.” He leaned his head back against the couch and closed his eyes. I was the one who got punched in the face for fun, but he was the one with the truly dangerous job. Being a cop, no matter what size the city, was putting yourself in harm’s way every single day. That was all the more reason heneeded a partner he could trust. I had to help Brock pass that fitness test, and I had to keep my hands to myself while I did it.

Chapter 4

Brock

Another day of desk duty passed slowly, and I was not excited about it. My muscles had all been sore as fuck since Dani started kicking my ass four days a week, made worse by sitting all day at work. I knew it took me in the direction I wanted to go. Back to active duty. Back to watching my best friend’s back.

Of course, there was a glaring problem with it all. I’d almost kissed Dani at our last training session. More than that, I think she actually wanted me to.

I’d had a thing for Dani since we were teenagers. She’d picked up MMA when she was sixteen or so, and I was in my last year of high school. I remembered going to their house to see Josh and catching her shadowboxing in the backyard or doing some crazy cardio routine. She stood out, something she seemed to hate but that I couldn’t get enough of. She had this intense passion for fighting that was mesmerizing to watch. It didn’t hurt that I found her long legs and strong round ass to be sexy as hell.

Now that we were spending time together in the gym, my crush on her was getting harder to ignore. Something I’d almost made glaringly obvious at our session at my place the other day. She’d been correcting my form, close enough to touch. Her eyes roamed my body in a way that was professional for her but excruciating for me. I could smell her skin, feel its heat, see thesmoothness of her lips, and I almost went for it. She caught my eye, and I held it, debating on making the move. She’d moved away before I could decide on yes or no. That was probably for the best. It was bad enough that I was leaving my partner without backup while my leg healed. If I went and kissed his sister on top of it? I wasn’t sure our friendship would recover. He didn’t think I had a long-term relationship in me. I didn’t think I did either, unless it was with Dani. I couldn’t prove to Josh I was serious about her without dating her, and I couldn’t date her without losing my best friend.

I’d known this catch twenty-two existed for years. I’d worked around it. I had a lifetime to get over her, to get under someone else. Everything would work itself out. That line of thought died screaming in the last month for two reasons. One, I was spending way more time with Dani than I used to, and two, I could have died that night. The knife that plunged into my leg could just as easily been aimed at my neck. That kind of thing gives a man a new perspective on life.

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