On My Knees Read online

  She finished her set, breaking my steady survey of the intricacies of her body. We moved away from the free weights, and I set her up on the cables.

  “I’m not sure I’m cut out for this,” she said.

  “You’re doing really well.”

  She blushed, reinforcing how uncomfortable I suspected she was. Half of my job was making people feel more comfortable in the gym. Though I had a few clients who basically paid me to watch them work out in one-hour increments. Business was business, so I didn’t argue. When they realized they weren’t getting anything more out of it, they typically moved on. Sometimes to Darren.

  Maya had always been headstrong though. I knew she’d take the challenge, even if it meant spending time with me that she might not have wanted. After I’d nearly kissed her and she left me in front of her office, I’d had mixed feelings about the whole thing. We hadn’t exchanged contact information, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to keep stalking her at her office.

  “I didn’t think I’d be seeing you again so soon,” I said, hoping to get her to open up.

  “Me neither.”

  “Why is that?”

  She winced, straining against a motion, her biceps flexing with the effort. “Eli dragged me out for the yoga class. I had no idea we were coming here.”

  She stepped back and took a breath between sets. Her face was flushed from exertion. Time was ticking down. I couldn’t push her hard just to spend more time with her.

  “I didn’t know you had a roommate.”

  “Yeah, well there are a lot of things you don’t know about me.” She shook out her arms.

  “Maybe we can change that.”

  Her calm expression didn’t change. “Oh?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged, trying to sound casual. “I’d like to be friends, I guess, if you think we can.”

  She looked down at her feet, toeing the floor beneath her, a chink in her otherwise cool demeanor. “I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  She huffed. “How are we supposed to be friends when you’re… You know, you kind of blindsided me yesterday.”

  “I know. I didn’t plan that. I’m sorry.”

  “We have too much history, Cam.”

  “Mostly good history, don’t you think?” I leaned against the machine, crossing my arms.

  Her eyes went soft for a moment. Her throat worked on a swallow before her features hardened, an impassive blanket washing away any emotion I might have recognized moments ago.

  “What’s next?” she asked, her voice clipped.

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Are we almost done or what? I’m dying here.”

  “One more,” I muttered, straightening again.

  I switched out the hardware and demonstrated the motion for her. I adjusted the weight again when I finished. When I stepped away, she’d launched right into the first set of curls with fevered determination. With every motion her cleavage pushed up out of her tank top. I blew out a slow breath and tried to look anywhere else. I caught her reflection in the mirror and studied her ass in her skin-tight yoga pants. Christ. I’d have no chance of hiding a hard on in my gym shorts.

  “Take a break after this. Then do two more sets. I’ll be right back,” I said brusquely.

  I left her there without making eye contact. I needed water. What I really needed was a cold shower, because I was losing my damn mind reliving the memory of her body. I grabbed a couple waters from behind the front desk. I chugged the first one, stopping to take a few more steadying breaths. I needed to get her out of my head. She didn’t want this trip down memory lane either. What the hell was I doing?

  “Everything okay?”

  Darren strolled up to the counter, his eyes narrowed. Fuck, he could read me like a book. Unlike Maya. Her thoughts were still a mystery. I’d been able to read her so well, once upon a time.

  “Yeah, just grabbing a water for a client.”

  Maya walked up with Eli at her side, her eyes as cool and calm as they had been earlier. “Okay, I think you’ve tortured me enough. I’m heading out.”

  Darren swiveled to face her, his face lighting up when he sized her up. I tensed.

  “Hi, I’m Darren,” he said, holding out his hand.

  She shook his hand and her eyes brightened. “You must be Cam’s brother? I’m Maya.”

  Darren’s smile slipped for a second. They’d never met, but they sure as hell knew of each other. He flashed me a look before returning to her. “Yeah. You’re the Maya?”

  “I guess,” she muttered, almost too quietly to hear, as she put on her coat and tugged her hat back on. She looked to Eli and turned to leave.

  “So, Maya. You interested in coming out with us for drinks later? Old man Cam is going to tie one on. You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?”

  “Darren—”

  He lifted his hand to silence me. “No, no. I’d love to get to know the infamous Maya who I’ve heard so much about.”

  “Maya never misses a happy hour,” Eli chimed in, lifting his shoulders to his ears.

  She glared at him and he recoiled slightly, giving her a frozen smile. “That’s not true.”

  “Judgment free zone, hon,” Darren said. “Let’s hit the bar down the street around seven. What do you think?”

  She stared hard at him. Between Eli’s comment and Darren’s impossible grin, I wasn’t sure how she’d be able to shoot him down. I almost felt bad for her.

  “Fine.” She grabbed the second water from my hand, turned, and hooked arms with Eli.

  He smiled back at us as she pulled him out the door. Through the glass, I could see her mouth moving at a rapid rate the second the doors closed. She was pissed.

  I suppressed a smile.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  MAYA. “Do you want to explain to me what the hell that was all about?” I started as soon as we cleared the exit from the gym.

  Eli sighed dramatically. “Here we go.”

  “You completely sabotaged me in there!” I had to keep myself from screaming at him as we made our way back to the apartment.

  “You ran into your ex. It’s not world news, okay? Get a grip.”

  Rage pulsed through me. “And you basically pushed me into a private work out with him, and somehow I’m supposed to be totally fine with getting drinks with him and his brother tonight?”

  “So what, Maya? You’ve been moping around all week since you found out Cameron was in New York. You obviously still have feelings for him. Why don’t you give it a chance?”

  “Give what a chance? What we had is over. I’m attracted to him, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to go running into another relationship with him. And who knows if that’s even something he wants?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Right.”

  “Right…what? What does that mean?”

  He turned toward me. “Outside of my own personal experiences, I’ve never actually felt chemistry between two other people. Until today. The freaking air crackled when you two saw each other. Whatever is going on between you is so obviously more than you’re making it out to be. I just gave you a little shove in the right direction.” He swept his hair away from his eyes. “Maybe you’ll thank me one day.”

  I stopped in front of the apartment, too irritated to take the next steps up to the entrance of the brownstone we shared with a handful of other tenants. “This is not a game for me. You’re supposed to be on my side, Eli.” My tone was low, my voice thick with emotion. This situation with Cameron was taking me on an emotional roller coaster, and somehow Eli was driving the ride.

  “You’re not even on your side. Do you know how difficult it is to live with you and your self defeating attitude sometimes?”

  “Well no one’s forcing you to stay here. It’s not like I’ll miss the rent that you never pay me,” I snapped.

  His jaw dropped. The silence that fell between us was almost painful.

  “Wow.”

&n
bsp; I was about to speak, somehow soften what I’d just said, when he beat me to it.

  “I’m going to grab some groceries for dinner and try to forget you just said that. I’ll see you back here later.”

  “Eli…” My shoulders slumped as he walked past me.

  I cursed and made my way upstairs and out of the cold.

  Despite feeling energized by my workout, I sulked most of the day. Eli and I barely spoke, though he made his movements around our small apartment known. I tried to ignore him every time he slammed a door a little too hard, made a clatter putting the dishes away, or sighed a little too loudly. If I was self-defeating, he was classically passive aggressive.

  I tossed aside a book that wasn’t grabbing me and looked out the window. The streets were empty, the trees that lined them now barren. The dead of winter had come early this year, with the kind of cold that borders on painful the second you step outside, the kind of cold that made me wonder why I came here, of all places, after school. Though I had no way of knowing, I wanted to believe I was close enough for my mother to find me if she needed to.

  I opened my laptop and a new tab in my browser. I typed Lynne Jacobs into the search bar and scanned the results. I checked all the usual places where I thought I might find her—police reports, regional news, and finally the obituaries. I had no way of knowing where she could be, if she were even alive.

  No less than six months after things ended terribly with Cameron, I’d lost touch with my mom. We rarely saw each other after I’d left for college, but we always kept in touch somehow. Then the phone number I’d had for her was disconnected. At the time, I panicked, angry and scared that I’d never bothered getting contact info from her newest boyfriend, or even the address where she’d stayed last. She moved around so often, I’d stopped keeping track, figuring she’d always circle back and find me wherever she landed. I closed my eyes, seeing her face. I’d never forgive myself.

  “Find anything?” Eli’s voice was soft when he settled beside me, glancing over my shoulder to the screen.

  I shook my head.

  “Truce?” he said.

  I shut the laptop and shifted closer, pulling him into a tight hug. True enough, I’d taken on the brunt of our shared expenses, but my friendship with Eli had been my lifeline in so many ways—ways I could never put a price on. I’d lashed out at him in a moment of weakness, and he didn’t deserve it.

  Having Cameron in my life again was sending me into an emotional tailspin that I had no control over. I could almost visualize the past and future colliding. I simply wasn’t the person I used to be, sentimental and lovesick and profoundly in love with this man. I’d given up on love after a few unsuccessful rebounds. Nothing held a candle to the love I’d shared with Cameron, and in the end, I decided to stop wasting my time. I didn’t date, and I didn’t fall in love.

  Yet I couldn’t shake the sinking feeling that bringing Cameron back into my life could challenge me on both fronts.

  CAMERON. The minutes ticked by as I waited for her to meet us at the bar. Every time we met seemed like a gamble, a chance that could be easily missed. And I didn’t want to miss any more chances. The attraction to her was fierce enough, but the void I’d lived with for so long wanted to be filled, more than ever now that I’d seen her again. Self-preservation told me to run hard in the opposite direction, but deep down, I knew I wanted her back somehow.

  The problem was I had no idea if that was something she might want too. I could have been reading all the signals wrong, but surely she couldn’t deny that outside of the breakup and its aftermath, we had something worth salvaging. Not just the sex, though that had been remarkable, but simply being together had always been great. I’d never been so at ease, so fundamentally happy with another person. We were comfortable with silence, comfortable with ourselves. Not like now. She was a beautiful mystery to me now, and I was putting myself out there in a way that had every alarm going off, and not in a good way. With every word, I was waiting for her to say no again—no to friendship, to seeing me ever again, or to something more that I still wasn’t sure if I wanted.

  I strummed my fingers on the bar, twisting around to scan the room in anticipation of her arrival.

  “Relax, man. You’re stressing me out.”

  “She’s my ex. If anyone’s stressing out here, it’s me.”

  Darren broke his concentration on the televisions above the bar. “You think you’ll hook up?”

  I shot him an annoyed look. “Are you fucking serious?”

  Darren went wide-eyed. “Uh, yeah?”

  “You really need to try out an actual relationship sometime. I can barely hold a conversation with you.”

  He laughed. “A couple weeks living with Liv and you sound exactly like her now.”

  I sighed and leaned back into the bar stool. He might have been right, but he was also being an idiot, as usual.

  “Maya isn’t some random girl you pick up and take home.”

  “What kind of girl is she then?”

  “She’s someone I have history with. I was ready to marry her. Obviously that complicates things.”

  “Why? You haven’t seen her in years. She’s smoking hot, and if she’s into you, why not? You really need to loosen up, man. How long has it been since you’ve been laid?”

  I took another sip of my beer, refusing to get sucked into another inane conversation.

  “That long, eh? How about this? I’ll give you one week to get Maya into bed, and if you can’t bite the bullet, then you’re letting me hook you up with some people I know. This celibacy thing isn’t working for you.”

  “I’m not celibate, and if you’re talking about hiring a professional, you can fuck off right now.”

  He laughed loudly. “You worried you can’t seal the deal in a week?”

  A subtle charge went through me at the challenge. Maya wasn’t a conquest, at least not a purely sexual one, but Darren had a way of capitalizing on our non-stop competitive natures. “I’m not worried about that, no.”

  “You probably want to romance her and shit though. See if she’ll go steady with you first?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Maybe I’ll give you a week and then I’ll give it a go,” he prodded.

  I fisted my hand in my lap, anger simmering through me. “Maybe you should mind your own fucking business. I’ll sleep with her when I’m good and goddamn ready. You even think about touching her and I’ll kill you. Understand?”

  A glint of mischief passed over Darren’s eyes. His gaze shifted past me and his smile widened. “Hey, Maya.”

  I swiveled in the chair to find her standing by my side, her light brown eyes glimmering under dark lashes. I had no idea how much she’d heard, but if she’d heard any of it, I couldn’t imagine what she’d be thinking now.

  “Hey.” She stood frozen in place. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “No.” I pulled out the stool for her to join us. “I was about to haul Darren into the street and beat the hell out of him, so you arrived just in time. Saved by the bell, I guess.”

  “Or by the lovely ex, in this case,” Darren quipped, his eyes lighting on Maya.

  I was kicking myself in the ass for letting Darren coordinate this meeting. Now I’d have to contend with him being an asshole all night. As if all of this wasn’t difficult enough.

  The comment earned a small smile from Maya, and she lifted herself onto the stool. She ordered a drink. I took advantage of her distraction to look her over. She looked good, dressed casually, but nice. A dark blue sweater dress, the hem of which rested mid-thigh, showing just enough of her sheer stocking-sheathed leg to make me want to see more.

  “You look great, Maya.” Darren’s voice mimicked my thoughts.

  “Thanks.” Maya flashed him, and then me, a smile.

  Everything seemed to go out of focus except her when she looked up at me then. That moment of levity was swiftly interrupted.

  “Cam, how come you never told me M
aya was drop-dead gorgeous?” Darren said.

  I released a breath that hissed between my teeth, resisting the urge to rip him off his seat and set him straight right now. “Darren, you want to go harass someone else for a while so we can catch up?”

  He grabbed his beer and slid off the stool. “Sure thing, bro. You can take it from here.” He slapped me on the back and winked at Maya before making his way toward two women positioned at the far end of the bar.

  I seriously pitied them.

  “What was that about?” Maya took a slow sip of her freshly poured martini.

  “Darren was just being ignorant, as usual. Don’t mind him.”

  “For complimenting me?”

  “No, of course not.”

  I wasn’t about to give her the full history on what an irritating ass he could be, or the fact that his only goal was to expedite his little brother getting laid.

  “You did well this morning,” I said, hoping to change the subject.

  “Thanks. Working out isn’t really my thing.”

  “You should come in more. I could get you into a pretty good routine.”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I work a long day, and frankly I just need to unwind with a drink after.”

  “Exercise works just as well as a nightcap, trust me. ”

  She laughed a little. “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “Try me.”

  Her eyebrow went up at the challenge.

  “Give me a week. I’ll show you how to use your body to work off stress, blow off some steam, and I guarantee you’ll sleep like a baby and have more energy the next day.”

  A slow flush worked up her cheeks, and I realized that my trainer spiel sounded a little different in the context of speaking with someone I’d once slept with. Despite Darren’s taunts, I wouldn’t mind using her body to blow off some steam either. I sat back in the stool, forcing my thoughts in a different direction. God knew, after overhearing the tail end of my conversation with Darren, she probably already thought I was only out to fuck her. I silently wished for an easier way to go about this. There probably was and I was too out of practice to figure it out.