Stick Your Landing (All In #3)

10. Finley

10

Finley

My hands push off the vault, using the foam-covered steel to propel my body into a double twisting Yurchenko. I land in the soft pit of foam on my back after nailing the form.

Veronica peers over the edge above me. She’s the reason I’m still not landing this skill on the mat. “Much better,” she says with more enthusiasm than I’ve heard all day.

Every preceding vault resulted in critique, from a weak block to crossed legs to an off-center landing. Veronica knows her shit, and I want to trust her to improve my gymnastics, but a skill I’ve done thousands of times doesn’t get my blood pumping.

“Does that mean I can graduate to the mat?”

“Tomorrow.”

Finally!

She offers a hand to help me out of the pit. Veronica wipes the chalk I transferred to her hands onto her sweatpants. “Will your boy be joining you tomorrow?”

I glare at her. “He’s not my boy.”

She flicks her wrist at me. “Boy, guy, man, whatever.”

“Aren’t you supposed to warn me off guys in case they mess with my training?”

She knows I’m joking because she’d never try to tell me how to run my life. Veronica’s coaching style matches my needs exactly. She pushes me hard in the gym, challenging me for perfection and sparking my competitive streak without stressing me. She competed in college, so she understands how to build a training program that won’t overwork me but will prepare me for collegiate competition.

She also doesn’t want me to focus only on gymnastics. I need balance.

“He brightens up the gym,” Veronica says with a grin. She knocks my shoulder as we walk to the floor for end-of-session stretches. “Especially when he’s watching you.”

“Stop it.” I slide into a split, right leg in front, arms reaching toward my foot. I moan softly at the glorious stretch in my quad and calves.

“I promised I’d never lie to you, Fi.”

I know the look she means because I’ve noticed it from Zach before. When I took off my dress and jumped into the pool the night we met. When I stripped down to my leotard in this gym. He finds me attractive; that’s all it is.

“Is that right?” I shift to face the opposite leg. “Then can you explain why you’re making me vault into a pit for days when you know I’ve landed that vault hundreds of times?”

Veronica places her hands on her hips. “I need to make sure you’re ready.”

The words grate. I’m tired of every single person in my life coddling me.

Veronica’s tone softens. “I told you we might move slower than you’re used to, but I want you to be one hundred percent prepared for any element you do. I don’t want you to get hurt and lose your chance to make UPC’s team.”

“I won’t have a shot if I’m still doing moves I mastered years ago,” I grumble.

Veronica’s eyes narrow. “You don’t want to go back to where you were years ago. I need you to trust me.”

“I do,” I say. “I’m just nervous. I want to make the UPC team so badly.”

“I know, Finley. We’ve got this. It will work out.” She walks off the floor toward the staircase and office upstairs. “And bring Briggsy next time. You’re more fun when he’s around.”

The smoke alarm is blaring when I arrive home. Gemma would never burn anything, and Matt doesn’t get back from his road trip until tomorrow, which means the man Veronica claims I’m more fun around is responsible for the chaos.

Zach stands in the center of the kitchen, flapping a towel beneath the alarm. Something that must’ve been food sits atop the stove, burnt to a pile of crisps.

“Oh shit, you’re home!” His arm moves faster.

He’s already opened the sliding door to the deck. I rush to the wall of windows and hoist them open. By the time I reach the last one, the alarm has shut off.

“Never a dull moment with you, huh, Briggs?”

“I wanted to make dinner. I misread the box. Or I got distracted? I don’t know.”

His cheeks flame red, but there’s no touch of a smile on his face to belie his embarrassment. His chest heaves, which is alarming, given the fitness level required to play professional hockey. I snatch the towel from his hands once I’m close enough. My hands don’t reach for him though. I don’t know if that’s what he needs.

I place the towel on the oven handle and flash him a teasing smile over my shoulder. “What was this supposed to be?”

“It was a bunch of different appetizers.” His chest is calming with each passing moment. “I didn’t know what you liked.”

“You brought frozen food into Gemma Harris’s house?”

Matt and Gemma bought this house because of the kitchen. It has multiple ovens, some fancy-ass refrigerator that cost like $20K, and enough counter space for multiple cooks to work at the same time. She’d never make processed food, not when she could whip up a fancy schmancy meal in less than thirty minutes.

Zach smirks. “She’s not home.”

“We can do better than this.” My fingers run along the cool granite countertop, moving at the same slow pace as the smile stretching across my face. I am more fun when Zach Briggs is around. “And it’s on the list.”

Learn to cook a recipe with more than five ingredients .

Zach smiles again, and my chest seizes at the sight. It’s been about a week since he reentered my life, but I’m already used to having him around. He’ll leave behind a huge hole when he moves out.

At two months into the semester at UPC, I wouldn't expect to have great friends, especially not while living forty minutes from campus. I’m also carrying secrets that automatically put distance between me and anyone I meet. I’m not able to share large parts of myself. I can’t talk about gymnastics without disclosing my bipolar disorder. I can’t explain why I live with family rather than on campus without sharing it either. It’s the lens through which I experience the world.

I hope I’ll eventually grow comfortable enough to share this part of myself with someone. For now, I’ll hang around with this guy who doesn’t push me to answer questions about what the hell I’m doing here and why I’m hiding gymnastics from my family.

“You think we have the stuff to cook something?” Zach asks.

He opens the fridge, peering inside like it’s a zoo filled with exotic animals. He examines a shallot, holding it to the light, as if it’ll reveal a treasure, before setting it aside. I’m not a master chef like Gemma, but my mom and I cooked dinner together multiple times a week after my diagnosis.

I sidle next to him. “Oh, I guarantee it. Gemma’s fridge is always stocked.”

We spend the next few minutes sifting through recipes on my phone, cross-checking them with what's on hand. It takes some time, but we settle on chicken parm and collect the ingredients.

Zach stands beside me at the counter, ready to mirror my movements. All is going swimmingly until a slip of his hand nearly takes off his thumb. He drops the knife and retreats to the other side of the counter.

“Here—read me the next step.”

Zach resists taking the phone. “That’s okay. I can watch.”

I laugh. “Don’t think you’re getting a free pass. You need to learn to follow recipes to cook.”

“Unless I’m one of those savants who can cook based on feeling.”

Zach scrambles to a rotating spice rack with no less than fifty different herbs and spices. When I first moved in, I pulled a few from the rack out of curiosity but hadn’t heard of half of them. I still don’t know when the hell to use tarragon.

Zach’s rifling through the rack, no doubt looking for something he recognizes. He’s less familiar with spices than me and stops when he finds garlic, triumphantly tossing it in the air.

“I won’t know until I try,” he argues.

I snatch the garlic before it lands back in his hands and place it on the rack. “Zach, we need an edible dinner. We can experiment another day, all right? Just read the recipe.”

His body goes stock still as we face each other, even more tense than when I got on my knees for him in that locker room. And he was nervous then.

“What’s wrong?” I ask the question I always hate fielding, but I don’t like the idea that I’m the reason Zach is losing his carefree demeanor.

He leans on the counter, his hands gripping the edge, knuckles chalk-white. “I don’t want to mess up our dinner. You saw me with frozen food. Maybe you should tackle this without me.”

I tilt my head. “If it sucks, we’ll order pizza. No big deal. You said you want to cook, so what’s the—”

“I have dyslexia.”

Something tugs strongly in my chest at the idea that Zach and I each have a secret condition that could change someone’s entire perception of us. He carries the same burden as me.

He’s braver than me though. Zach’s willing to share information that could change my opinion of him. I’d swallow my tongue before telling him my brain requires stabilizing medication. I could never take the gamble, risk changing the way he looks at me with a mixture of adoration and awe.

“I don’t know much about dyslexia,” I reply, leaning back against the counter across from him. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“My brain doesn’t process visual information like yours does. It takes longer for me to read because I have to take my time. I have strategies…” He shrugs. “They help, but mostly I feel frustrated and stupid.”

I want to close the distance between us, but I don’t want him to think I’m pitying him.

“You’re not,” I whisper.

When Zach doesn’t say anything, I ask, “Do you want to have the recipe read out loud?”

His eyebrows lift. “You still want to cook?”

What fucking asshole shamed him into thinking someone would walk away after he told them about his dyslexia? I want to maim them.

“We need dinner, don’t we?” I cross my right foot over my left, attempting casual despite my internal freakout at the possibility of screwing up this friendship by saying the wrong thing. “And it’s on the list, Zach.”

He shakes his head. “We don’t have to do the lists, Finley.”

I offer a little of myself to him. A small part, the only bit I can. “Veronica told me today I’m more fun when you’re around.”

His grin damn near blinds me. “You talked about me with Veronica?”

I roll my eyes. “She brought you up, Zachary.”

He pushes off the counter. “Right.”

I hold my phone out to him, a chicken parm recipe open on the screen, I want him to know his confession doesn’t faze me. I’d never judge him for it.

“You don’t want to read it for us?” he asks.

“Is that what you'd prefer?” I want him to make this decision.

He shakes his head, brown hair flopping onto his forehead. “No, I’d prefer you save your voice for reading those sexy romance novels you like so much.”

The knife slips off an onion straight into my finger. It stings, but there’s no blood. “You want me to keep reading them to you?”

“I want to know what happens with the fake dating.”

I glance sidelong at him. “You do not. You’re just waiting to get to the smut.”

“I won’t lie.” He skims his fingertips along my forearm as he walks past. My stomach tumbles. “I’m looking forward to hearing you read those scenes.”

“You’ll have to earn it, Briggs,” I deflect, anything to hide my desire to do more than read those scenes with him.

“I’m not afraid of hard work, Finley,” he says in a low rumble I’m not used to hearing from him, but dammit, I like it.

I like him more than I should. It’s all I can think about as we cook together. Each time his body bumps mine. Every time he smiles at me. The joy on his face when he sees the finished meal. That light of his illuminates my life in a way that would’ve annoyed me once.

Now I ache for him to keep shining it my way.