Page 38 of For Flag's Sake
My fingers twitch.
He’s killing himself for us. He’s doingcardiofor us.
A bead of sweat slides from his hair to his neck to his spine, and he heaves one huge breath before hopping back onto the belt and resuming his jog.
My lashes flutter.
His calves really are rather strong, aren’t they?
And his thighs…
And hisback.
I take a step backward, slowly, then another, faster. One more. Two. Three, and then I turn, walking quickly to the lobby where a basket of art supplies waits for me beside my easel.I grab a sketchbook and a pencil quickly, pausing only long enough to wave at Etta and Mary as they speak to new guests before I hightail it back to the gym hallway. Once there, I fall to the floor, leaning against the wall opposite the glass with my knees up. I scoot a couple of feet until I have an angle that will afford me the best view possible without making Iverson aware that I’m here.
I settle the skirt of my dress around me, tucking it under my feet to ensure no passersby will see anything they shouldn’t, then rest my sketchbook against my risen knees. I turn to an empty page, poise my pencil over the paper, and aim my eyes at my husband.
I am distracted from my task immediately. For as often as Ivy and I are together, I’ve never been with him when he exercises. I know—because he’s told me—that he has a gym in the basement, and I also know that he uses that gym in the mornings before work. AKA: when I am sound asleep in bed. I knownowthat when he has been working out all of these years, I should have been dragging myself from the comforts of my mattress to observe him a time or two hundred.
Even haggard, he oozes masculine appeal. I wonder how much better it is when he’s doing an exercise he’s practiced at. How many sketchbooks could I have filled in all this time…
Why am I not filling the one in my lap now?
I blink and shake off my stupor. Then, I draw the magnificent lines of my husband on my pages, and I commend myself for not drooling on them as I do.
Maybe I can’t put a canvas together to save my life these days, but this? Sketching the contours of a man I have always loved?
This, I can do.
Happily.
Chapter Nineteen
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Iverson
An hour and a half after my foray into cardio torture, I can say definitively that it is not the route for me, and I should have listened to Malcolm when he told me as much ten minutes in. Stubbornly, I did not. Stubbornly, I now suffer the consequences.
“I’m dying,” I heave, holding on to a cramp stabbing my ribcage. “I’m dying, and I’m not even a better man for it.”
Malcolm presses his lips tightly together and hums noncommittally while I hobble beside him toward the hotel lobby. We had met at my home gym this morning and swiftly discovered we needed an alternate location. It turns out that when a man avoids cardio like the plague, his gym doesn’t have any equipment for the torture. Malcolm said he knew somewhere to go, but it was across town, and I happened to know from my post-runaway-bride research that Maple’s hotel had exactly what we needed. So we rolled out, tortured ourselves, and confirmed that running is horrible and useless.
When we reach the lobby, Malcolm turns to me, reaches up to ruffle my sweat-dripping hair, thinks better of it, and delicately pats my shoulder.
I wrinkle my nose at his pristinely coiffed hair before something behind him catches my eye.
Maple is here.
I straighten to my full, horribly strained height. “Goodbye,” I say, pushing past my brother. “Thank you for being here. I’ll see you later.”
He mutters a sardonic farewell behind me, and I toss a wave over my shoulder as I beeline for my wife. She stands beneath a ray of awful fluorescent light, clutching a sketchbook in her hand as she glares at an easel. Her dress, a flowing purple that brings forth visions of flower fields and armored knights, swirls around her legs as she shifts to say something to the workers at the counter to her side.
“Mr. Swallow,” the older of the two behind the counter calls out, alerting the room to my presence, “I trust the gym was to your satisfaction?”
“It’s a horrible place, and I will be quite happy to never set foot in it again,” I reply, jerking to a stop next to Maple. “I recommend getting rid of the treadmills.”
“We’ll take that under consideration,” Etta says wryly.
