Hissy Fit (Southern Gentleman 1)

His grin was slow but wide. “Because next year, you’ll be my wife, and I hope to have you knocked up before we’re home from our honeymoon.”

My brows rose. “You have to actually ask me for me to be your wife.”

Ezra’s eyes flicked back up to the screen. “Are you coming to my CrossFit class in the morning, or do you want me to let you sleep?”

I rolled my eyes.

Ezra and CrossFit.

Ezra had a new love affair with the class. And I’m not talking about ‘oh, CrossFit is awesome!’ I’m talking, ‘if I don’t do CrossFit, I might very well die.’

One of his students had urged him to go with him, and that was all it took. He was hooked. He’d started CrossFit at the beginning of the summer, and now, right before the start of the school year, he was planning how to continue doing it with his school schedule.

At first, I’d gone with him purely out of curiosity.

Now, I knew better than to think that CrossFit was for me. It wasn’t a joke, and honestly, I’d rather just stick to my occasional walk around the neighborhood.

After dropping a fifteen-pound wall ball on my face instead of catching it, and trailing blood all over the gym on the way to the bathroom like a murder victim, I’d come to the conclusion that things were just better when I didn’t participate in extreme sports.

But then he’d made me go a second time…and let’s just say that hadn’t been the best idea ever.

***

One month ago

“Come on,” Ezra urged. “Tomorrow is a partner WOD.”

I blinked. “What’s a WOD?”

“Workout of day,” he explained the acronym as if it was perfectly normal to shorten everything one was saying so that normal, non-CrossFitters, didn’t understand half of what was being said. “And I promise, I would not make you come to this if it was hard.”

I thought about my bloody nose this morning and cringed. “I’ll go if you don’t make me go to that same class time. Everybody in there has already messaged me on Facebook asking how my face is. I don’t think I could handle seeing them again so soon. At least if I go to a different class, they might think that you abuse me instead of me abusing myself.”

Ezra rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Seriously? You’d rather someone think that I beat you instead of them thinking that you’re a clumsy person?”

My laugh was my answer as I’d gone to bed that night, and now, staring at the workout on the whiteboard, I wondered what I’d gotten myself in to.

“Who is Diane?” I wondered aloud.

“Diane is the name of the workout,” Ezra murmured, his arms crossed over his chest as he listened to the coach explain what we’d be doing today.

“We’re going to do…” That’s about when I zoned out. The sheer amount of work he was wanting me to do was flabbergasting.

“You want me to do handstand push-ups?” I asked in surprise.

He looked at me like I was cute—the coach, not Ezra. Ezra looked at me like I was his.

“Yes,” the coach, who also happened to be the school resource officer, said. “Honestly, I’d like you to give the handstand push-ups at least a try. I don’t expect you to do them all. Heck, I don’t expect you to do any. But how will you know if you can even do one if you don’t at least try?”

That was true.

I wouldn’t know if I didn’t try.

But…I had a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to do it. I could barely bend over and shave my legs without getting out of breath. How did he expect me to do a handstand push-up?

“You’re adorable,” Flint laughed. “I swear, I can see every emotion cross over your face. I like you, girl.”

The coach was the biggest man I’d ever seen. He was a tanned-skinned hottie that had a buzzed head, a bright white smile, and eyes the color of warm chocolate. I swear he and Ezra had a love affair going when I wasn’t around.

Ezra talked about him constantly, and vice versa. Flint had been to a few practices, helping the kids with strength training, and we’d even gone out to eat with Flint and his flavor of the month.

Apparently, this gym was a family to them, and that family included hanging out with them outside of gym hours.

How Ezra was supposed to find time was beyond me. He had two-a-day practices coming up, baseball and football camps, and let’s not forget about the fact that he still had to eat at some point in there.

That was truly why I’d decided to go with him.

He didn’t like leaving me for his only free two hours a day that we didn’t spend either eating, taking a shower, or doing other things that didn’t include sleeping when we were in bed.