No Rep (Madd CrossFit 1)

“Oh?” I asked.

She nodded. “I heard that you used to work at the hospital.”

The woman beside her flushed at the words, and it was then that I realized how I knew her. She’d been a nurse at the hospital when I’d worked there. Only, she’d been on a different floor.

“I did,” I confirmed.

“I also heard that you almost killed someone,” she pushed.

I narrowed my eyes. “I did.”

Maria looked taken aback at the honesty in my words. “A nurse loaded a syringe, then had to leave in an emergency. I administered that syringe with medication to the patient when I should have checked his chart. I didn’t. That’s on me.”

The woman standing next to Maria hissed in a breath that sounded like she was surprised.

As if she hadn’t quite known all the details.

Technically, I should’ve never administered that medication. Though it was something that happened quite a bit. A nurse would have something go wrong with another patient. And since the other patient was more critical, they’d give the other patient over to another nurse so it wouldn’t be too ‘hard’ on them with that added patient.

Everyone did it.

Everyone would continue to do it.

But I should’ve used my own brain and made sure.

Yet I didn’t.

And I would forever live with that.

“All of you need to gather around and grab a PVC pipe!” Taos called, saving me from talking any more to Maria, the woman that I knew for some reason hated me.

I didn’t know why.

I mean, other than the obvious of catching me looking at her ex.

Whatever the reason for her automatic hatred of me, I chose to let that flow past me, too.

I didn’t have the time, or the inclination, to deal with drama.

I didn’t do drama.

Drama was for high school.

I was an adult now.

“What we’re going to do is called pass-throughs,” Taos said when I arrived with my PVC pipe.

He then showed us how he straightened his arms and then passed the pipe over his head to the back, stretching and warming up shoulder muscles as he did, without bending his elbows.

I followed his movements, making sure to do exactly like he did, and realized rather quickly that this hurt a whole lot worse than it looked like it should.

Five minutes later, I was working on what was called a ‘snatch.’

It was when you got the bar from around shin level, straight up over your head.

And I was absolute shit at it.

When I was my fittest, I never did any barbell work.

I always did machine weights, which didn’t have any technical movements.

It also didn’t help that Maria picked up on it like a fish to water.

I wanted to shove my new CrossFit shoes into her vagina.

Except I didn’t want to ruin my brand-new shoes.

My luck, she probably had acid instead of regular vagina fluids.

I’d probably have to amputate…

“No, like this,” Taos corrected.

He then came right up beside me, bent down as if he was about to pick the bar up, and then dropped his butt.

I frowned and followed suit, finding a completely different lifting platform when I did it like he showed me.

“Now, up. Knock your hat off with the bar,” he ordered.

I didn’t point out that I wasn’t wearing a hat.

Instead, I did what he suggested, feeling the bar move to where it needed to, bumping against my hips, before the bar sailed over my head.

I squeaked in surprise when I did it exactly how it was meant to be done.

“Great,” he smiled.

I felt my heart skip a beat.

His eyes lingered on my face for a few seconds, kind of like a long time ago they’d done when he’d been inspecting my face, trying to see if there was any damage other than the obvious bruising and swelling.

He’d looked at me with such intensity then as he held me in his arms that it was life changing.

Even now, with him inspecting my face, I could tell that he felt like he knew me.

It was somehow bothering him enough that I knew he would eventually figure it out.

The question was whether I would get the courage to tell him the story.

I hadn’t had the courage to tell anyone since that day.

That day being the worst of my life. That day staying on a constant loop in my dreams. Or nightmares.

“Coach Taos,” came Maria’s sweet, sappy, disingenuous voice. “Would you mind critiquing my form?”

“Your form is perfect, Maria. I taught you how to do it already,” Taos disagreed, rolling his eyes at me.

My lips twitched and I couldn’t help the laughter that bubbled up my throat.

He really didn’t like her.

Duly noted.

“Keep the weight there, and work on form,” he ordered as he started toward another person.

I smiled as I watched his ass in his thin knit shorts move away from me.

That was when I realized that not once had I looked at the front of those shorts.