Lord Have Mercy (The Southern Gentleman #2)(60)

I swallowed hard.

“Remember that the doctor told you no sudden movements,” I whispered, still panicking.

“Yes, ma’am,” Flint said, barely audible.

Then I heard his bedside table open, then close.

Moments later, I heard the shuffle of his boots.

There was no denying the sound of those. They weren’t quiet in the least. Especially on his hardwood floors.

“You’re not going to sneak up on anybody,” I muttered to myself.

Then there were the click-clicks of Dooley’s nails clicking right along with the clop-clop of the boots.

I sat up and put on pants, followed shortly by switching on the light.

My eyes went to the clock and I realized that it was hours away from when I had to get up to go open the gym.

The gym that was slowly sucking the life out of my soul.

I loved the gym.

But what I didn’t love was getting there an hour and a half early, getting smoothies ready to go, as well as meal prep orders that Flint and Carmichael had started doing about the time that he’d gotten hurt during his accident.

Yesterday, when I’d practically forced Flint to go to the gym, I’d realized how much he missed it.

Me, though?

Yeah, I didn’t miss it at all.

Not even a little bit.

Hell, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to work out there anymore.

The more time I spent there, the more time I realized that I wasn’t fond of the weight-lifting aspect of CrossFit.

I was interested in the running and body weight exercises, though.

Which made me think about finding a different gym that catered more specifically to my likes and dislikes with CrossFit.

I almost considered bringing a class idea up with Flint but hadn’t had the time nor the inclination to do it just yet.

That’d be just one more class that I’d have to find some help to oversee, and I just wasn’t into self-torture.

The clop-clop returned, and I looked up to find Flint standing in the doorway, staring at me.

“Hey,” I smiled.

Or tried to.

He caught the move.

“What’s wrong?”

I tried to clear the worry from my face. “I’m worried. Did you find anything?”

He shook his head. “No, nothing. It must’ve been something outside that you heard. Probably the neighbors.”

I nodded. “That makes sense. Your neighbors are noisy.”

And they were. They didn’t even try to be quiet when they were locking their cars in the middle of the night.

Where I would’ve manually locked the cars so the horn didn’t sound, they straight up locked it from their key fobs—ten times—just to listen to the honk.

“That’s one neighbor,” he laughed.

I watched him shuffle back to the bed, smiling at Dooley who waited until Flint was all the way seated to go back to the bed that was on the floor for him.

Once dog and man were settled back in bed, I reached for the light.

But before I could get myself back under the blankets and once again cocooned in my spot, Flint reached for me and dragged me to his side.

I kicked the covers so that they were over both of us, then curled one leg up and situated it to lay over his lower thighs. When I was comfortable, I threw my arm around his upper body and snuggled in even deeper.

“Now that you’re comfortable,” he rumbled. “Tell me what was really on your mind when I came back into the room.”

I thought about that for a long moment, then decided to hell with it.

If he wanted to know, I wasn’t going to keep it from him.

That wasn’t the way a relationship worked.

“I don’t like doing gym stuff,” I admitted.

“You don’t like working out, or you don’t like doing owner duties?” he asked carefully.

“Both,” I admitted. “I loved the first six-week session that I went to. It was tough as hell, but there wasn’t a bunch of heavy weight-lifting, which I’m not all that in to. But that’s not what has me concerned right now.”

“What does?” he rumbled beneath me.

“All this gym stuff is slowly making me want to blow my head off,” I told him bluntly. “I’m tired of whining people that can’t make their gym monthly payments wanting a discount. I’m even more tired of getting up and getting all the meal prep orders ready to distribute. Then getting called when the food isn’t to their liking seeing as I wasn’t the one who made it.” I paused. “I also don’t like getting up as early as I am…”

He squeezed me tighter. “I put you in a spot that you couldn’t get out of.”

I shook my head. “No. I thought I could handle it, and I can’t. I don’t like doing it. I’m inherently lazy by nature, and you having to get up and participate in all this is definitely not something that I find appealing any longer.”

He pulled me impossibly closer, and I melted into his body even more.

My hand ran up and down his side, and I wondered how hard he had to work to maintain his abs even when he wasn’t able to work out the lower half of his body.

“I don’t think that I told you how much you mean to me lately,” he said into the dark.

I closed my eyes and smiled.