Noah and Linc shot each other looks, which Cade ignored. He lay back and wiggled into position. “So why did Mama D ask you to babysit?”
“She said you needed guy time.” Linc growled. “Whatever that means.”
It meant the older woman saw way more than Cade had wanted her to earlier. After she’d left his office, he’d started for the studio to try and find Rosalyn when he’d been ambushed by two Magnolia Days craft vendors and a food truck owner with myriad questions. By the time he’d calmed the rift between the two vendors, who unnecessarily thought the other was competition, and assured the mobile restaurant owner he’d be able to set up as the first truck in the lot, he’d received a text from Linc.
Linc
Meet me at the gym.
Cade
After work?
Linc
Now.
Cade
I’m in the middle of something.
Linc
Fine. But don’t complain next time I call you out for skipping leg day.
Cade
Be there in ten.
It probably was for the best that his mission to find Rosalyn had been thwarted. He still had no idea what he’d say when he saw her, or if his feeling of betrayal would rush back and cloud his senses as it had last week. At least here in the gym, he could work out any leftover emotion without making anything worse.
For either of them.
Cade grabbed the metal bar, arched his back, and pushed.
Nothing happened.
He cleared his throat, adjusted his grip, and tried again. Nope. “Maybe take off thirty pounds.”
Linc grumbled some version oftold you so. Weights clanked as the guys pulled two plates from the bar. Cade waited, staring at the ceiling. “Did she say why she thought I needed guy time?” Best to figure out what the guys knew before he said too much. Hopefully Delia had left Rosalyn out of it.
“Probably because you’re stressed to the max and won’t admit it.” Noah’s voice floated from behind his shoulder. Cade really hoped Linc was spotting him and not Noah.
It’d probably takebothof them to spot Linc.
“She said you were going through something.” Linc sighed, as if the statement alone was too big a burden. “Whatever it was, I figured the gym would knock it out of you.” His voice turned into a coach’s bark. “Now push.”
Cade pressed again. Nothing. He shifted his feet on the ground and repositioned his grip.
Linc’s face appeared upside down in Cade’s field of vision. “You gonna lift that bar or buy it dinner first?”
Cade tried again. The bar didn’t move. “How muchisthis?”
“It started at three-fifteen. Now it’s two-eighty-five.”
As Elisa said,good gravy. He was working out with an Avenger. Cade eased into a sitting position and faced his friends, sweat already dripping down his temple. “How much are you both going to make fun of me if I put it at one-fifty?”
“A decent amount, I’d wager.” Noah began removing weights from the side nearest him. “Not that I could bench almost three hundred either. Difference is, IknowI can’t.”
