Burnout (The Holland Brothers Book 1)

“Do you actually practice on that thing or do you just like using it as a seat?” I ask as I walk into the gym and find Avery sitting on the beam. More often than not that seems to be where she’s waiting for me.

Without replying, she pushes herself up to a standing position, does some sort of fancy turn, and then does a cartwheel and backflip off the end closest to where I’m standing.

Her head is held high as she stands upright on her toes, then glances at me.

“Better?” she asks, dropping down onto flat feet.

“I don’t know. I might need to see it again.” Or a dozen more times. She’s hot as fuck showing off. Especially when it’s for my benefit.

“I’ve already practiced today. It’s your turn.” She bumps her small body against mine before walking off toward the trampoline run.

All week she’s had me doing flips and twists into the pit. It’s kind of fun. Not that I’d admit that to her. It’s also exhausting. I can’t remember ever being this sore. Again, not that I’d admit that to her.

We fall into stretches without her saying anything. I have the whole routine memorized at this point. She leans forward, basically folding her body in half with her legs wide. I’m doing a less flexible version where my fingers don’t even reach my toes.

Laughing, she scoots closer and lines her feet up with mine.

“Give me your hands.” She leans forward, stretching out her arms toward me.

It’s embarrassing how far she has to lean until I can reach her fingertips. We join hands and she sits back an inch.

“Ouch,” I say as my muscles protest the extra stretch.

She just grins and pulls a little harder.

“You’re tiny, but terrifying,” I tell her.

“Thank you.” She smiles sweetly.

“So really, do you practice at night or do you just like to hang out here?”

She takes a moment to answer. “I hurt my knee earlier this year at a competition. I hyperextended it and messed up my ACL. Over the summer, I had surgery and completed rehab, but I haven’t been able to practice much. Coming here is routine, I guess. I do what I can on the mats. That was the most skills I’ve done on beam in a month.”

If that was her rusty, then I’d kill to see her on top of her game. “Looked pretty good to me for not having done it in a while.”

“Pretty good?” She scoffs and smiles.

“Sorry about your knee.”

“Thanks.”

We switch up the stretch and I pull her toward me. Her flexibility is impressive and sends a dozen dirty thoughts racing through my mind.

“Knox?” she asks.

I clear my throat. “Sorry, what?”

“I asked about your shoulder.”

“It’s fine.” I landed a little rough on a trick two days ago and my right shoulder has been bugging me. Nothing I can’t handle. I wouldn’t have even mentioned it to her, but yesterday it was all I could do to hold a handstand for a few seconds.

She studies me for a moment like she’s trying to determine if I’m bluffing.

“Really.” I break away from our stretch and go up into a handstand, then push off the floor to pop myself back to my feet.

When I come down, she’s watching me still from the floor with an amused expression. “Okay. I was going to take you at your word, but if you want to show off for me, then by all means. I love a good show.”

She leans back, arms propping her up, and stares at me with those bright blue eyes. I like having her eyes on me.

“If you want a show, then you should watch me race.”

She cocks her head to one side. “Is that an invitation?”

I find myself nodding. “Yeah. Any time.”

She holds out her hands and I reach down and help her to her feet. I pull a little too hard. She’s so small. And she trips forward into my chest. She’s laughing and so am I.

“Smooth,” she says, sarcasm mixed in with her laughter. We linger there a beat, her cheek resting against my bare chest and me holding on to her.

Avery steps back and drops her gaze, breaking the moment. “Why don’t we work on your backflip a little more. It was looking good yesterday.”

I follow her lead, silently doing each thing she does, but a fuck of a lot less gracefully. She has me flipping and twisting. From the floor, from a large block mat, to the trampoline.

“Okay. You’re good on that. Let’s try a double,” she says.

I eye her skeptically. She rolls her eyes as she gets into position on the trampoline and then demonstrates. I’m so distracted staring at her toned legs and the way her leotard hugs her curves that I miss whatever she was trying to show me. She’s undeniably gorgeous. That much was obvious the first time I saw her, but there’s something else about her that has started to make our workout sessions blue ball hell.

She pulls herself out of the pit and waits for me. I give it my best go, but I overshoot it and almost do a triple. Her smile is wide when I come up.

With a sheepish grin, I try again. Usually while I work out, she’ll eventually leave me to do something else. Beam or stretching, floor work. She never goes far, but she doesn’t hover. But tonight, she stays with me. Sometimes she joins in to show me something, but mostly she’s just watching.

“How long have you been doing gymnastics?” I ask.

“I started when I was three,” she says. “And I’ve been competing since I was six. Could have been earlier, but my parents thought I was too young to be devoting all my time to one thing. Plus, it’s expensive, so I guess I can’t really blame them.”

“Motocross too.” I rest my hands on my hips as I catch my breath between flips. “Archer and I used to mow grass and do whatever odd jobs we could for people to buy parts and pay for entry fees.”

“Archer?”

“My brother.”

“I thought you said his name was Flynn.”

“Different brother.”

She cocks one brow. “How many do you have?”

“Four.”

“Four?” Her eyes widen.

I nod. People always have that reaction.

“And you’re the oldest?”

“Second oldest. I’m twenty-three, Hendrick is twenty-six, Archer and Brogan are almost twenty-two, and Flynn is seventeen.”

I can see her working it out, trying to make sense of the dynamics. I don’t expand. I doubt she wants to hear about how our mom died and then Dad took off after Hendrick was in college.

“What about you?” I ask, bridging the silence. “Any siblings?”

“Yep. I have a little brother. Tommy. He’s thirteen.”

“Does he do gymnastics too?”

“No. He never did. He’s into music though. He plays like four different instruments. He’s pretty cool as far as little brothers go.” The way she talks about him, I can tell they’re close.

“What about your parents?” she asks in a softer tone. “I’m assuming they aren’t around if you’re Flynn’s guardian.”

“No, they’re not around.” I don’t say more even though I can see her face is still full of questions. I try another double backflip, once again not getting the speed quite right, and I land halfway through the third turn, eating foam.

She must be feeling sorry for me because she asks, “Should we take a break and come back to it?”

“No way.”

She cracks a smile like she knew I wasn’t going to give up that easily.

Twenty-five minutes later, I’m starting to get the feel of it. Avery offers me her water bottle as I rest.

“Thanks.” I take a long swig and hand it back.

“Okay. Final attempt for today. You’ve got this. Core tight, chest high, control the rotations. Don’t overthink it.”

“Don’t overthink?” I snort a laugh. “You gave me a dozen things to remember and then you want me to not overthink.”

“Yeah, it’s just that easy.” She bats her lashes at me. I want to lean in and kiss her. Doubt that’s on her workout plan.

I get into position and mentally run through everything she’s said. My core is engaged, I’m standing tall, and when I push off, I focus on my body and the turns instead of tucking and rotating as fast as possible like I did on the others. I’m sure it’s going to end badly. But by some miracle, I finally manage to get around twice and land feetfirst in the pit.

She’s standing on the side, smiling at me as I make my way back to the edge to get out.

“Congrats. See? You just needed me to tell you not to overthink it.” She holds out a hand to help me out. I take it but instead of pulling myself up, I pull her down.

Avery squeals in surprise as she comes down next to me in the pit. Her shrieks turn to laughter as she surfaces.

“You big bully.” She shoves at my shoulder. Not hard, but I still retaliate by tossing a foam square at her. We’re in an all-out war soon, laughing and tossing foam at each other.

“Okay. Okay.” She holds one in front of her face. “Truce.”

She peeks out to see if I’m going to agree.

“Fine.” I hold up my hands in surrender, but as soon as she drops hers, I fire.

I can see her winding up to attack again, so I move toward her and wrap my arms around her to keep her from hurling more foam squares at my head.

“Let me go,” she says, half-heartedly, squirming to get her arms free.

“Put the foam square down first.”

“No!” She wriggles harder. The silky thin material of her leotard slides against my body. Between her outfit and me in only shorts, it’s hard not to notice how perfectly she fits against me.

I’ve been spending so much time training at the track and then here that I haven’t been doing much else. Notably missing from the calendar is sex. And I’m all too aware of it as her ass burrows into my crotch. It only takes a second for her to realize what she’s grinding against. With a sharp inhale, she freezes.

“Truce.” The word comes out breathy. She tosses the square to prove she’s serious.

I let go of her and she practically leaps away. Embarrassment tinges her features, but then she reaches over for another foam square and tosses it directly at my face before climbing out.

I grin and follow behind her, then head to the door to get my stuff.

“Do you have study group tonight?” I ask as she slips on shorts over her leotard. I don’t know much about what she does outside of gymnastics, but I’m suddenly curious. Does she go out a lot? Party?

“No, but I do need to catch up on some homework,” she says casually. “What about you?”

“No studying for me.” I wink at her. “Well, what about tomorrow?”

She considers me. “Why are you suddenly so curious about my schedule? Are you planning to sneak up on me and fire foam at my head when I least expect it?”

“Tempting.” I laugh. “No, I was wondering if you wanted to hang out sometime.”

“We hang out every night.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Like a date?” she asks carefully.

“No. Not a date. A hang.”

“What’s the difference?”

God, she’s frustrating. “If you don’t want to, it’s no big deal.”

“I didn’t say that.”

But we both know she might as well have implied it.

“Tomorrow night I’m busy,” she says.

I’m not sure if she is expecting me to go down the days of the week, praying she has one empty for me, but I don’t. I nod and let it drop.

“I have to go to this sponsor event. It’s going to be awful. Quinn was supposed to be my plus one, but now her parents are coming into town to take her out to dinner.”

“Sponsor event, huh?” I think back to some of the ones I’ve had to attend. Dinners, drinks, mingling with rich people who don’t know shit but want to pretend that they do. “Sounds like a crappy way to spend an evening.”

“It’s going to suck, for sure, but I can’t get out of it.”

I bob my head in agreement.

“Unless…you want to come?” She laughs it off like she’s joking.

And maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t hesitate to take her up on it. “What time?”

“I was kidding. You don’t want to come. Trust me.”

“Sure I do. I’m great at schmoozing.”

She pauses pulling her hair out of its ponytail. “You’re serious?”

“No, actually I’m terrible at it, but I’m free.”

“I meant about coming.” Her gaze narrows on me. “What’s the catch?”

“There’s no catch.”

“What’s in it for you?”

That shakes a laugh free from my chest. “Nothing. I promise.”

I can tell she’s thinking really hard about my motive so I level with her. “I owe you.”

She opens her mouth to protest, but I beat her to it, quickly adding, “It’s the least I can do, and I already planned to be hanging out with you anyway.”

“I didn’t say yes to your non-date hang out.”

“I meant here, working out together.”

“Oh.” Her cheeks flush a pretty pink.

“Now you just won’t get to boss me around and toss foam blocks at my head.”

“Don’t be so sure about that,” she says.