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bookstore with her head held high, her control tightened and her heart i ntact. Never to see the man again.
    Or…
    She placed her hand in his, letting him lead her out of the building.
    It was her body betraying her. Her hand had been in his before she knew what happened. Stupid hormones. Just because she hadn’t had sex with a man in so long it was almost embarrassing, did not give her body the right to just act on its own accord.
    Taryn walked out following Mike. She grinned in spite of herself as she got an up-close view of his ass in the worn jeans.
     
    ~~~
     
    “Hey, Mike. Started early I see?”
    Breathing hard and sweating, Mike dropped his wrapped fists and turned toward the front of his two-stall detached garage. His good friend let his gym bag fall off his shoulder to the concrete floor with a thud. Rolling his neck side to side, he nodded, “Jack.”
    “You been at it long, or you want to keep going?”
    “You know me, I’ll keep going.” Mike suspected Jack wasn’t oblivious. Everyone probably thought he worked out to keep the physique that turned a fair share of heads in his direction. The truth wasn’t anywhere close to the assumptions.
    The grueling workouts were how he survived.
    He’d pushed himself through physical therapy, harder than the doctors recommended. The statement ‘pace yourself’ , had been repeated so many times Mike quit hearing it. Working himself to exhaustion was the only way he had half a chance of sleeping at night. The harder he worked, the better chance he had at making it through the night without waking drenched in sweat from the nightmares that gripped his soul.
    Unwra pping the tape from his wrists Mike glanced up at the punching bag hanging from the beam in front of him, then to the closest thing he had to a confidant behind it.
    Growing up in a loving family with friends galore in high school might be a comfort to most. He was still close to his parents. They only lived ten minutes from him as the crow flies. Since moving back from the city, he rekindled many of his old friendships with those who hadn’t moved away from their small town. He had people. People who cared. People who might understand.
    Mike couldn’t take the chance that they wouldn’t. Instead he buried his demons and kept the personal hell he experienced to himself.
    Jack and Mike were in the same class back in high school. Mike had worked out, played football in the fall, baseball in the spring, and always had been built—Jack hadn’t. Not an outcast, but not a joiner either , Jack preferred the quiet of the library and straight A’s to muscles. Their differences could have kept them miles apart, but the two had always been best friends.
    Going to separate colleges hadn’t changed that. Meeting up at the academy and both graduating with the same goal concreted their long-time friendship. They both wanted to help those around them. Jack stayed in their small town, on the force that rarely saw much more than speeders and unruly teenagers. Mike went to the city and lived with the fear his life was on the line with every shift, until the day he looked into his mother’s eyes as he was going into surgery. He promised her he’d move back home, back to a safer environment. That day, there had been a very real chance he wasn’t going to make it off the operating table. The doctor had been blunt. When he walked out of the hospital, four days later, he made good on the promise to his mother.
    The only drawback was the ample time to think. In the city, he wouldn’t have had the peace and quiet. The noise, the long and busy shifts, and the focus they demanded, would have been enough to help him forget—at least for the duration of his workday.
    Not here.  Not in his safe, small hometown of Renlend.
    The punching bag was the only way to silence the thoughts in his head—a way to get his mind off of the what-ifs.
    Jack positioned himself on the weight bench, the appropriate weights already