Instead, I was feeling a draw to a near stranger, the things I knew about her inciting feelings inside of me on a chemical level. Nerves buzzed with extra excitement and the good kind of anxiety churned in my gut.

Her unique sense of self, so skewed from what the rest of the world thought, the small glimpse I’d gotten of her personality, and the way she held back in a manner that only she could understand or explain—all of it made the “couldn’ts” seem like “shouldn’ts” and really only “maybe shouldn’ts” at that.

It’d all gone wrong from the start, the spit that sealed our first handshake seeming to swear me into an alternate universe.

What was right got twisted upside down, and nothing mattered more than finding the missing pieces of her puzzle.

“Do you want to go somewhere with me?” I called out into the silent darkness before I thought better of it.

And before I realized exactly how it sounded.

“Not for sex,” I clarified loudly, and then rammed my face straight into my palm.

Really, Nik?

Smooth.

It only took five seconds to hear irritated shuffling, a few muttered curses, and an aggrieved but clear, “How’d you know I was here?”

She still wasn’t visible, hidden by the corner of the building.

Not wanting to make the whole scenario any more embarrassing than it already was—for either of us—I decided to lie.

“Your car.”

A couple additional seconds of quiet consideration passed.

“How’d you know it was my car?”

I cleared my throat and called out loudly once more. “I think it was the ‘third Olympics or die’ sticker in the back window.”

“WHAT?” she shrieked, charging around the corner in horrified displeasure.

Angry, confused steps ate up the distance between us.

Of course, when she got there, there was no decal—never had been, thank God.

“Oh.” A deep sigh. “You think you’re being cute.”

I smiled deeper into my cheeks, but verbally ignored the comment.

When the silence became too much, she scrambled to cover herself.

“I, um, fell asleep in the locker room.” She cleared her throat once, twice, and ended with a third time. “What are you doing here?”

Her arms crossed over her chest as though to keep out a chill, but the hot air of a southern summer night sat stagnant around us. Any discomfort had to be coming from her encounter with me.

I wish I could have told her all her bumbling effort to make excuses was for her benefit alone. I didn’t mind that she’d watched.

But my father always told me to think of a man’s logic and completely reverse it. That’s where I would find the answers for dealing with a woman.

I thought it was sound advice. My mother had smacked him.

A confirmation.

“Tumbling,” I muttered instead, keeping it as simple as possible to avoid getting caught in a knot of unintended words.

She forced her eyes to widen and her jaw to relax like she didn’t understand.

“Your dad gave me permission to train after hours. I’m a power tumbler,” I explained simply, cringing slightly on the implication that I still intended to compete. I didn’t.

I only did it for fun and to clear my head. I wasn’t sure how I’d find mental peace when my body grew old and my joints broke down, but for now, it was my solace.

Her cheeks pinked just slightly with the embarrassment of her dishonesty and her hands rubbed roughly at her arms. She really thought I didn’t know she’d watched me.

I let her have it. For now.

“So…I asked if you want to go somewhere with me.”

Her feet drew her attention as her weight shifted back and forth between them. Nervous fingers twined and twisted with each other, whitening the skin with simple pressure. Her eyes jumped to mine, and her question was misleadingly simple. I thought I had her. “Where?”

“Ah, see, I can’t tell you that.” I wagged my brows, leaning my weight casually into the leather seat of my bike. “Ruins all the fun.”

“You want me to go on that?”

“That?” I asked, turning to look in the direction she was looking.

“That,” she said, pointing directly under the cheeks of my butt with emphasis.

I once again hid a burgeoning smile. “That’s a motorcycle. And, seeing as it’s my chosen mode of transportation…yeah.”

“I can’t,” she said quickly, looking to her car to me and back again.

“Why?” I asked, following the trail of her eyes with my own and stopping on her flushed face.

Her brows pulled slightly together, but it wasn’t in confusion. It was in search of an excuse. “Because I shouldn’t.”

“Okay,” I agreed. She relaxed, dropping her arms to her side and staring. I took in her markedly less confrontational posture and couldn’t resist trying one more time. “Just…”

She rolled her eyes.

“One more question?”

She nodded her permission, skeptical but listening.

“How do you know you shouldn’t?”

Distress lined the corners of her eyes, looking eerily like the narrow end of a spider web, as she fought to maintain her normal detached interest.

“I…I…”

My heart thudded in my chest and clamminess formed a pond in the palm of my hand.

“I can’t.”

Unfamiliar disappointment cracked in my chest and splintered all the way into my gut. I normally did far better with hope management. Today had me all fucked up.

There was no reason to push her though.

“Okay.”

She looked disappointed.

Not in me. In herself.

Lifting the corners of my mouth into an easy smile, I sought to put her at ease.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, then. What time do you like to get started?”

Perhaps surprised to have someone else relying on and managing their life off of her schedule, it took her several seconds to think it through. “I come in pretty early to help out with office work. Condition around noon, take a short lunch break and then start event work and drills.”

“I’ll be here at one then.”

“Okay.”

I almost balked at the simplicity with which she agreed, but I was done contemplating for the night. I needed a break and clarity and to not overanalyze every single encounter.

I hoped a good night’s sleep would teach me how to do that.

With a nod-salute combination I’d never even considered trying to pull off in my entire life, I turned to my bike, simultaneously shut my eyes in frustration and grabbed my helmet, slapped it on my head, and climbed astride.

It took effort, but I managed not to look back.

Okay. Everything was A-fucking—

Okay.

I thought I’d known, but I’d actually had no idea.

Nik, Nikolai Bagrov, whatever…was a pretty big fucking deal. He wasn’t just “a power tumbler.” He was considered third best in the world.

The world.

Like, the entirety of Earth.

I didn’t waste time when I got home, rushing to my computer to let Google school me on my lack of knowledge.

And boy, had it. It told me to the tune of sixty YouTube videos and six thousand search results.

Every click of my mouse had me asking one thing over and over again.

Why the hell was he even remotely interested in coaching me?

Coaching anybody, really. He should have been training all the time. Living…well…my life.

The more I watched and read about him, careful to keep to career facts only rather than personal information, the more I started to relate to him. I didn’t want to know about his personal life.

No, that wasn’t true.

I didn’t want to know unless he told me himself. It felt like an invasion of privacy, and more than that, like I might unearth something I wasn’t equipped to handle.