Page 41 of Never Date A Player
“Fallen Leaf Lake. The cascades.”
Sightseeing? “I thought the purpose of this torture—I mean, lovely morning gathering—was for training?”
He pulls down a narrow road south of the Camp Richardson store. “The cascades are the obstacle.”
Why does that sentence sound alarms inside my head? I gingerly return doughnut number five to its box. Maybe I should ease up on the sugar. Plenty of time after the workout.
Several minutes later, Fallen Leaf Lake glistens through the trees. It’s dramatically smaller than Lake Tahoe, but just as beautiful—and probably equally freezing. I really hope this outing doesn’t involve swimming. I’d like to keep my ass where it’s located and not freeze it off.
We pass the marina and Lewis pulls up a winding hill beside a creek that supplies water to the lake. He eases onto the shoulder and sets the brake.
Lewis reaches behind my seat and his hard chest brushes my arm. A frisson of attraction spreads through me, the scent of pine and Lewis making my mind go blank.
He hauls a backpack forward. “Ready?”
“Uh, yeah.” No. So not ready. I climb out of the Jeep.
The stones of the cascades are gray and brown, like earthen paper crumpled and laid at an angle with shallow streams running through. I glance over the edge. I have a terrible feeling I’ll be getting to know these rocks intimately.
“Wait here.” Lewis climbs over the side and down to the cascades without explaining what the hell we’re doing. He makes his way up the steep rocks, his backpack secured.
It doesn’t look difficult with his long legs eating up the distance across the rocks, but that doesn’t reassure me. He’s at home in this place. I’m used to exercising on sidewalks and whatever urban setting I call home. This is the wild, untamed part of life I try to avoid.
When he finally stops, Lewis is a small speck in the distance. He pulls off his backpack and waves me over.
And here we go.
I climb down, attempting the same path he took, and as predicted, it’s not as easy as it looked. I’m sweating and breathing heavily when I finally reach the cliff he’s standing above. “Now what?” I pant.
He punches something on his phone. “Too slow. Took you ten minutes to get here.”
I glance around. The rocks are sharp with a severe incline. This can’t be safe. Running stairs would be better. “Why the cascades?”
He pauses from fidgeting with his phone and spears me with a look. “Half the mudder terrain includes a steep climbing element. The cascades are part of your conditioning.”
He jerks his head in the direction we came. “There and back, eight minutes. Eight repetitions.” He holds up his phone to the zeroed time clock. “Beginning now.” He presses the start button and tenths of seconds fly upward.
Shit.
I spin around and go back the way I came as fast as I can. I’m not even going to consider how many times he wants me to do this. That number shall not be repeated, because it causes doughnut bile to rise in my throat.
Minutes—hours?—later, my quads are a mix of fire and sludge. Lewis holds up his finger in what I assume indicates the last lap. I’ve climbed the cascades close to a thousand times by my estimation. All the while, he’s exercised from his perch, performing push-ups, sit-ups, and other calisthenics, while shouting that I’m going too slowly, not watching my center of gravity, using my back instead of my legs… Really, I’m about to hurt him.
“Time,” he calls as I creep below his mountain-god cliff. He holds up the stopwatch, also known as his phone. “Scale this last rise and you’re done.”
“The one that’s five feet above my head?” I gasp.
He nods.
He really is trying to kill me. My face is blazing hot from overexertion, my legs quivering, and I’m pretty sure I’m medically dehydrated. Lapping up water from the cascades sounds reasonable right now. “I can’t. Too high.” He knows I have no upper body strength.
“You can. If you’re afraid to try it, you should quit the race. Climbing walls litter the mudder course.”
He had to say the one thing that would get me to scale a sheer rock.
I’m not backing out because of fear. It’s why I’m in this, to take risks and build self-confidence—and he challenged me again, damn him.
Bracing a squirrely foot on a ledge the width of a pencil, I reach for a crevice above my head and pull by my fingertips. Forearms burning, I slide a shaking palm up the stone several more inches.
