Page 80 of Forever Relentless

“Actually, yeah, I do.” I slid to the end of the booth. “Let me wash my hands and pay. You good to wait?”

She looked like she was going to argue, but instead, she gave a sigh and then nodded. “Just make it quick.”

“Yep.”

I made it really quick, but she still wasn’t where I left her when I came out the washroom. I found her outside, leaning against a wall, texting on her phone.

“Thought you’d ditched me,” I told her gruffly as I approached.

“Happen to you a lot?” She didn’t look up from her phone, but I saw her smile.

“More than I should admit.”

That made her look up, a frown marring her forehead as she looked at me to see if I was lying, speculation in her eyes.

“You get ditched on dates?” Briar snorted. “Yeah, right.”

“We’re on a date?”

Her face flushed again, and I was beginning to enjoy her discomfort too much. “No, you know what I mean.”

“Nope. Pretty sure you said we were on a date.”

Briar jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “If that’s the caliber of your chat, I can see why you get ditched.”

“What? You wound me,” I mocked with my hand on my heart. “You got food, water, I paid, what more can you want?”

Briar was grinning. “A bucket to myself? Not sharing a water glass? Not choking on your chicken?”

My eyebrows rose. “Well, we haven’t got to that part yet, things don’t usually move that fast on the first date, but if you’re offering . . .”

“Shut up.”

I didn’t hide my smirk as we walked down the street.

“Stop laughing at me,” Briar grumbled, digging her elbow into my side.

“You make it really easy, though.” I nudged her back, and she scowled up at me.

“Ugh, why are all jocks dicks?”

“Nothing to do with being an athlete here, you tell anyone what you said, man or woman, they’re going to laugh.”

“You’re still a dick.”

“Life’s full of us.”

She muttered something under her breath that was too low for me to hear. We stopped at a doorway. It was quite dark, and I looked around for any obvious sign of a gym. Briar was unperturbed and opened the door, jogging lightly up the stairs, and I followed, trying very hard not to be the typical guy who watched her ass.

I heard the familiar sounds of a gym, and when she opened the door at the top of the stairs, I was hit with the smell of stale sweat, fresh sweat, an air freshener that was clearly not doing its job, and the sound of drum and bass playing lightly over the low hum of people.

My eyes widened as I looked around. There were treadmills, elliptical machines, weight benches, weight bags, and at the end of the room, several mats and beside them, a ring.

The gym ran the whole floor, and while it had people in it, it wasn’t crowded.

This was exactly what I needed. “This is awesome.”

Briar looked up at me. “Really?” She didn’t push. She pointed to the mats beside the ring. “Yoga class.”