But the more I watched her, the more I learned.
Each snub she felt was fictitious, each sneer a vivid falsity concocted only by her own self-esteem issues.
These kids still idolized and watched her, but her cold, uninterested vibe held them at bay and forced wide-eyed wonderment to hide within side-eyed glances.
I'd have to figure out a way to shift her view and unveil theirs.
After the way yesterday had gone, I knew that I would need to plan for it to be a time-consuming endeavor. There was no hope of convincing her in a single day—especially not this early on in the game.
The right time would eventually come.
“Good,” I called as she landed her layout at the end of her series on beam.
She flashed one quick, cocky—thrilled—smile in my direction.
We’d already practiced the other three events, and I’d been relentlessly critical. I’d been surprised to find her teeth still intact when she opened her mouth, her agitated grinding had been so relentless.
But this—this was something different.
She handled beam more confidently than any other event, it seemed, ignoring the danger of fours (four inches wide and four feet tall) with the ease of a tightrope walker. I didn’t have all that much experience in this apparatus, but every female gymnast I’d ever encountered—including my mom—talked about it like it was the bane of their existence. And I had enough practical knowledge to know what looked good and didn’t.
But Callie wasn’t like the others.
She seemed at home there, the soft thump of her landings resonating with precision. There were no sloppy stumbles, no unsure missteps.
When she was on beam, she just was.
A few artistic steps led into a full turn, her leg raised and extended well past the end of its execution, and finished with the flourish of an impossibly flexible arabesque. Her eyes zeroed in on the end of the beam in front of me, and the toe of her extended leg tapped the back end of the beam intentionally on its descent. It was a safety measure, a pretty way of ensuring proper positioning on a limited-length beam before her dismount. But, as I’d learned today, she did it with practiced regularity, and she did it beautifully.
I could hardly take my eyes off of her.
She had talent in dance and artistic movement in a way that not all gymnasts did. Fluid motion came naturally, and transitions from one skill into another bled as seamlessly as a singular thought being strung together.
My breath caught as she executed her round off, her hands leaving the beam several moments before being replaced by her feet. Precision was key on the round off before a difficult dismount. One mistake or misplaced foot could set a chain of unstoppable disaster in motion.
Once you started a dismount off of the Beam, you really couldn’t stop.
A loud thwack rent the air as her feet planted themselves on the mat, knocking my held breath out of my overinflated lungs.
Screams and cheers echoed in the background from the younger team girls on floor from some other noteworthy performance as she turned to approach me, but I ignored them.
Callie’s eyes were smug and challenging at once, and I couldn’t look away as the light reflected to make the normally hard chocolate look melted.
“Well?”
She obviously thought I was only there to be critical.
“You were incredible,” I admitted immediately, painting her face with surprise and bewilderment. “If you were like that on everything, I wouldn’t need to be here.”
She rolled her eyes, their warmth cooling a little with resentment. “You just had to bring it back to the negative side, huh?”
Uncrossing my arms from my chest and reaching out, I grabbed her shoulder gently and shook amiably back and forth. “No. That was absolutely not meant to be a dig. You’re incredible to watch on beam. Comfortable and sure and completely settled inside of your skin.”
Just her eyes smiled as I rounded the conversational corner to my point.
“You don’t look that way anywhere else,” I stated matter-of-factly. “And watching it just now…I couldn’t take my eyes off of you.”
She shrugged sheepishly at the compliment, unsure how to handle it. A flush stole across her features and her hands fidgeted in front of her.
“It’s always been that way. I’m just comfortable here.” One corner of her dusty pink lips tipped up in thought. “Happy, I guess.”
My eyes narrowed, and my curiosity piqued.
“And you’re not happy on Bars, Vault, and Floor?”
Her spine straightened as her admission cleared the fog, and her face slammed closed once more.
“That’s not what I said.”
I wanted to delve into the reasoning behind everything she’d said and the sensitive way with which she reacted.
But raucous sounds from behind me interrupted and curtailed my thoughts.
“1, 2, 3, GO GYMSTARS!” we heard screamed from the floor. The group made a clean break but dispersed unevenly from there, some heading for the locker room and others the front or the bathroom up front.
For me, it was a cue of opportunity. What opportunity, I wasn’t sure. I kept telling myself I just wanted to get to know her better so I could be a better coach, but each statement held less and less professional conviction and, instead, built an abundance of uninvited personal investment.
Knowing didn’t seem to stop me though.
“You want to hang out tonight while I tumble?”
Her head whipped back to me, the long glossy tail of her hair cutting through the air like an expertly wielded sword.
“What?”
“I just asked if you want to—”
She shook her head rapidly. “I know what, I guess. I meant why. Why are you asking me to stay?”
I didn’t have a good answer. I knew I shouldn’t and at the same time I couldn’t stop myself. Instead, I shrugged. “Because I can’t think of a good enough reason not to.”
The line was getting slicker by the minute, the feel of it slipping out from underneath my dangerously treading feet oddly enjoyable. As a guy who lived most of his life on the opposite side of that line, I couldn’t even begin to understand what was happening.
All I knew was that I liked it.
She searched the gym with her eyes and landed on the locker room. Back they came to me once more, and then back to the locker room.
This time their movement was slower, but it was infinitely more confident.
An unhurried smile crept onto her normally taut lips as she teased, “Are you any good?”
I couldn’t stop my cheeks from lifting as I replied, weaving my head back and forth between my shoulders as I did. “A couple people are better.”
“Just a couple?” she pushed as if she knew.
I narrowed my eyes, trying to see the proof that she’d looked into me written somewhere legible and obvious, but settled for a brisk nod when the search came up predictably empty.
Straight white teeth cut a soft line into the line of her bottom lip. They weren’t plump or overfilled. They were just normal. And plenty damn pretty.
“Then I guess I’ll stay.”
“Yeah?”
“Yep. I’m gonna need you to prove your skill to me.”
White hot lust shot down my spine and into my balls at the double entendre in her words. I knew she hadn’t meant it. She didn’t even realize the blunder herself.
But my dick had been noticing lots. The innuendo and her body and the way a touch to her shoulder fired my nerves better than the well-placed touch of an experienced woman.
“I…Ah…Um…Yes…Okay,” I stuttered. In actuality, I was impressed. As much as I’d struggled, my brain had done the talking despite the death grip my dick had on my voice box.
Shaking my head and my thoughts, I tried to talk myself off the ledge of self-sabotage and back to the land of reality.