Page 26 of Healing You
“We can even run slower than usual,” he said.
Yvonne put her keys in the door. “Nuh-uh. Don't blame my dog when you can't keep up. Let me just change.”
“Can I have a look at Daisy while you dress?”
She nodded and held the door open.
Steve and Molly were greeted by Gatsby and Daisy hopping around. She let out the other rescue dog from his crate, a beagle that she had temporarily named Ruckus. The dogs bounced around each other playfully.
A few minutes later, after Yvonne had changed into her running gear, she returned to her living room to discover it had essentially turned into a doggie playground. Gatsby, Ruckus, and Molly were tearing through her kitchen and living room. Daisy was perched in Steve's lap, barking, enjoying the attention he was giving her.
A breath caught in her chest at how casually and perfectly he seemed to fit into her life. Sitting on her couch. His feet propped on her coffee table. Her dogs surrounding him. He leaned back, one arm slung over the back of the loveseat. His gaze swept her body as she walked out of the bedroom and he swallowed hard enough that she could see the movement clenching against his roped neck.
He cleared his throat and stood. “Her infection's healing well,” he said, gently putting Daisy down. “But she should probably sit out this run.”
Yvonne put her hands on her hips. “Something tells me we'll have our hands full with these three anyway.” And thank God for that. The sight of Steve on her couch, in her life... she was going to need her hands occupied to stop herself from wrapping them around his shoulders.
Oh, my God! Steve sucked in any amount of oxygen that his lungs could get. Three miles was typically a breeze for him... a breeze! And here he was wheezing like an asthmatic.
Yvonne slowed to a trot at the top of the West End Promenade that overlooked the park below, loosely holding Gatsby's leash in her hand. There was barely a line of sweat visible on her brow, and she looped around to backtrack to Steve. Jesus, this was embarrassing. His lungs burned, quads ached and his heart was pounding, but even still, he did everything he could to breathe steadily before she got to him. They'd done just under three miles, and damn if Steve didn't need the break before Gatsby. Yvonne was so much faster than him that she'd run ahead, give Gatsby a rest, and then start running again once Steve caught up—basically giving him no time to rest whatsoever. He was a pretty solid eight and a half minute miler—but Yvonne? She must have been almost a full minute faster than he was.
She stopped in front of him, dropping her hands to her hips. A haughty smile splayed across her lips. Somewhere between panting and chugging the remainder of his water bottle, Steve caught his breath. “Where... the hell... did you learn to run like that?” he asked, sucking air between words.
He walked to the edge of the park and plopped down on the grass beside where Molly, Gatsby, and Ruckus were cooling off. He didn't even care at that point if she followed him for the rest or not. Grabbing the tennis ball out of his pocket that he usually brought for Molly, he rolled it down his thigh muscles, working out his IT Band which tended to flare up on his harder runs.
Yvonne dropped to the ground beside him, gracefully folding her body, touching her hands to her toes in a stretch. She peeked at him, her cheek nearly touching her kneecap. “You really want to know?”
Something in how she asked the question made his stomach lurch. But when it came to Yvonne, he could honestly answer yes. He wanted to know everything. “Of course.”
“My rehab from the accident. The doctor was trying to be positive when talking about how much work I had cut out for me. They said they believed that they could get me walking again, but that I would never run a marathon. I decided to prove them wrong. I used that as my goal. My barometer. I jogged a 5K spring of my senior year and took it from there, building up my speed and distance.”
“And now you're at... what... a seven minute mile?”
She nodded. “Seven and a half on longer runs. I have good days and bad days, though.”
“Even your bad days are probably stronger than most people's best.”
She dropped her cheek to her shoulder, giving him a look that would rival the sternest teacher's. “It was never about beating other people. I lived with the fear that I would never walk—let alone run —ever again. And when I found that I could not only run... but run fast, I didn't want to give that up.”
Steve shook his head. He always knew Yvonne was something special. She had always loved animals and spent her free time volunteering at the Laconia Animal Shelter. He, on the other hand, was sent there as a punishment by his ma the summer before his senior year for sneaking out to a party after curfew. He'd been pissed that he had to spend his summer days working instead of lounging by the lake with friends. Until Yvonne showed up to volunteer as well. But she did it out of choice, not punishment. Because that's who she was. He'd tried to resist her all school year. She was his sister's best friend, and frankly? She seemed like a handful. The daughter of blue-blooded debutants. Despite how drawn to her he was, he kept her at arm's length. She was too perfect. Too much like the sort of girl his dad would have loved to have seen him with. Only, no one quite realized that she had a dormant wild side to her, too. It took a few weeks of volunteering for him to really see it. The change of clothes she always brought so that her parents wouldn't see her tank tops with the black bra showing. How she had begged him every day to give her a ride home on his motorcycle. He resisted for two whole weeks before she climbed on the back, pressing her delicate body against his. It was that summer Steve realized how much he loved animals and that he wanted to be a veterinarian. “Jesus, that's incredible. I've been running for years and I've never been able to run that fast consistently.”
Yvonne stretched her arms above her head before falling back into the grass on her elbows. “I'm surprised you can admit that.” She sent him another look, playful, but there was a hint of seriousness there too.
Steve sat a little straighter. “Hey—I can admit when I'm outdone.”
“Even when you're beat by a woman?”
“Especially by a woman. The way I see it, I'd rather stare at your ass as you're running ahead of me than some dude's.”
She smiled, but her gaze drifted off over his shoulder toward a brick house.
Steve followed her sightline to where a red Mustang sat parked in the driveway. “Seems like an impractical car for a region that gets two feet of snowfall on average six months out of the year.”
But this time, she didn't laugh. She didn't smile. Her cheeks flushed with little red circles and she sighed, staring ahead. If Steve wasn't so used to that frustrated expression, he would have chalked her flush up to the run.
“Yvonne?”
“Huh?” She blinked, snapping out of her daze. “I'm sorry—”
