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staring at the end where I’m supposed to dismount. I charge forward, launching myself into a front full. My body is in a layout position and I rotate three hundred and sixty-five degrees, coming to land with a small thud on the mat below.
    “Perfect landing. But that’s not your dismount.”
    The deep voice startles me, the reality that I’m not alone anymore severely pissing me off. “This is a private session.”
    A very amused Spencer stands at the double glass entry doors, a crooked grin on his sleepy face. In just running shorts and sneakers, with sweat dripping down his carved-from-stone abs, a little bit of my anger melts away. Male gymnasts have hot bodies, but Spencer Russell is a step above. He looks like one of the actors Marvel would cast in their superhero movies.
    “Well, when you’re on the grounds of a training camp with a number of very open gyms, especially at five thirty in the morning, it’s not so private. Plus, you had every light in the damn place on. Of course someone was going to wander in.”
    I hop down, removing my hair tie and pretending to fix my ponytail to give my hands something to do. This guy made me nervous, and no one ever made me nervous.
    “And you’re just, what? Getting home from a late night of partying?”
    Spencer crashes his hands to his heart. “You wound me, Nat. I couldn’t sleep, so I went out for a run. Us broken people can still keep in shape too.”
    He moves closer, the pure manly musk of him reaching my nose and making my ovaries quiver. “I didn’t mean … I’m sorry. I just like my quiet time in the morning. Sometimes I come down here to work, to just practice and remember why I fell in love with gymnastics in the first place.”
    My admission is deeply honest, and I’m a little shocked I just confessed that to him.
    “I get it.” Spence places his large hands on his hips, and the black running shorts slip a little farther down. I can see the victory trail that disappears below his waistline and my mouth might be watering. “With all of the people, the noise, the screaming coaches, the pressure … it’s overwhelming. It’s smart to do this. Although, I think … if you’re really in this for the real reasons, you never lose sight of that love.”
    My heart aches for him. I know why he has that faraway look in his eyes. “You miss it.”
    Spence shrugs, heaving his body down onto a chalky, dusty blue mat. Then his eyes, the color of newly blooming leaves, meet mine. “Every day. This sport is my life, and I’ll never walk away from it. The fact that I can’t do it anymore, that fucking sucks. It does. But it doesn’t mean that love stops existing. I gave it everything I had, and gymnastics gave me nineteen beautiful, kickass years. I’m lucky. Some people never find what truly makes them happy. I got to live my dream for as long as the world let me, and I gotta be thankful for that.”
    His outlook makes something in my chest warm. “The doctors … they really don’t think they could fix your—”
    “So, why are you playing around with new dismounts?” Spence cuts me off, clearly not wanting to discuss his injury.
    But it doesn’t mean I want to hash out my brain’s fucked up state. “Eh, just playing around.”
    I walk closer to where he’s sitting and grab my water bottle, conveniently located next to his left shin. Before I know what’s happening, Spence is standing, crowding my space and forcing me to either man up or back down.
    “We could play around together.” His smile is goofy but his eyes are all molten heat.
    An ember that had been simmering low in my core erupts into full flames. It would be so easy for me to peel down his shorts, for him to rip me out of my leotard. No one is up; Filipek’s is quiet. It would feel so good, so fucking good. I want to grab him by the neck and run my free hand over the buzzed hair on his scalp while he sucks and bites my neck.
    But … it would just be another distraction. I’m all