Slow Burn (MM) (6 page)

His mind was made up. Tonight, after he finished here, Zack would go to the party his friend kept talking about. He’d go and he’d meet a guy and at least date someone with a snowball’s chance of a future. Hardened, cynical, smoking-hot cops were not in his life plan. Not if he wanted to maintain any sanity or chance of emotional health.

Brody pumped away on the machine in the background, and Zack focused on his notes and file work. Soon they’d be finished. He’d shake hands with Brody, and that would be it. No more awkward moments of silence, no more avoiding looking at the man for fear of getting caught. Zack could get on with everyday, normal work. Get on with life, not thinking about the next time Brody came to see him. No more cracking jokes just to see Brody smirk. No more busting out with a laugh on the rare occasions Brody made a funny. No more Moose, no more Rocky. Back to real life. And it was about damn time.

“All done, Doc. What’s next?”

Zack looked up at Brody’s set gaze. No more seeing him twice a week. No more seeing him again. Ever.

Damn.

“That’s it, man,” Zack said. “You’re done. Just icing down and then you’re free to go.”

“Really?” Brody looked at his watch like someone had just told him it was time to go skydiving. “Time flies when you can finally walk on two feet again.”

Yes, it did.

Zack set Brody up with the ice, and, just like every other session for the last two weeks even though he swore he wouldn’t, he checked on him with the last ten minutes remaining.

“Feeling pretty good?” Zack asked.

“Damn sight better than a month and a half ago, that’s for sure.” Brody turned to look at him, arm thrown up like always, same patch of skin showing just above his shorts.

“Good.” Zack nodded. “I hate to say I told you so, but—”

Brody laughed. A full-bodied, openmouthed smile that caught Zack so off guard he almost fell from his leaning spot against the wall.

“No, you
don’t
!” Brody shook his head as their eyes locked. “You fucking love getting to say I told you so. Go ahead, then”—he waved Zack on—“get it out of your system.”

Zack straightened himself, still reeling from Brody’s laughter. “Uh… I told you so?” He tried again. “I told you so. I
so
told you so.”

“Don’t get carried away.” Brody turned his gaze to the ceiling.

Zack didn’t want to grin, but he felt himself smiling from ear to ear. He’d taken the toughest patient he’d ever met and gotten him back in working shape. Not only that, he’d made the man laugh. Damn. He was going to miss this. The hotness, yeah, but also…this. Underneath all that hard, sharp exterior was a likable guy. He’d never tell Brody that, but still. Their banter. Their interaction. The chemistry. It couldn’t
all
be in his head. They…meshed.

Shit. If he had any sense of self-preservation, it was past time to get away from the man.

“So look,” Brody said, pushing to sit up, keeping the ice in place with one hand. “Remember when I pissed you off?”

Zack couldn’t resist. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Ha-ha. Okay. Remember when I pissed you off enough for you to go Billy Bad Ass on me and you were all ‘This is
my
house, these are my rules’?”

Zack quirked his lips and shook his head. “Pretty sure that’s not what I said. Same point, but I’d never say
These are my rules
.”

“Whatever. Point is, you said you could do more than get me up to code. You said you could get me beyond code. What did you mean by that?”

Zack’s stomach plummeted. Crap, crap,
crap
. He’d meant, given a little more time, he could have Brody in the best shape of his life. But that was just talk. That was before he’d realized he should never hang around Brody like they could be buddies. They could
never
be buddies.

“Hello? Was that just angry ranting or what?” Brody raised both eyebrows, his typical impatience rearing up.

Zack knew there would be no getting out of this conversation. “No, I meant, if you really wanted to get back to where you were before, or beyond, it’ll take more than a few weeks of PT. It’ll take daily focus with…y’know…”

Brody raised both eyebrows and waited. Obviously he didn’t know.

“A trainer,” Zack blurted. “You can work with a trainer and get into the kind of condition that’d rival any athlete. You have the genetics. Join a gym or—”

“I don’t do gyms. Detective hours don’t work with a gym. I have weights at home.”

Zack just bet he did. “Cool; then that’s a start.”

“So just go back to lifting weights like I did before, and I’ll kick our physical testing standards in the balls?” He didn’t sound convinced.

With good reason. The physical therapist in Zack was raging at him to do the right thing here. If a patient needed help, it was his duty to help. His fitness-buff side was appalled that he might not speak up and help Brody out, even as the rest of him knew he needed to get far, far away.

“No,” Zack admitted. “Not really.”
Damn, damn, damn
. “You need a trainer to do it safely and properly yet push you to the next level.”
Don’t ask me, don’t ask me, do not ask me.

“You’re the only physical therapist I know. How much?”

“Huh?” He blinked at Brody. How had he gotten here? After today, he was supposed to be safe. And on top of all that, he was
so
full of shit. He couldn’t claim he wasn’t jumping at the chance to train with Brody, stay in his life a little while longer even if it meant torture for another month or two.

“How much to be my personal trainer?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never done professional training outside of here,” Zack hedged. “I don’t even know that I can. I’ll have to check, but it’s probably against company policy.”

“Then don’t tell anyone.” Brody shrugged like that was a no-brainer. “Bend the rules; don’t break them. Whatever the cost, I want you as my trainer. You know what you’re doing, just do it for another month or two.”

Zack knew what it felt like to get asked out by a man. He’d been asked out plenty. Unfortunately, that wasn’t what this was. This was a cop wanting to get back on his job ASAP, and he saw Zack as the only way to get there.

“I’ve got maybe another month to six weeks before I test for full active duty.” Brody kept going. “I need to knock my captain into the next county with my PT.
You
can make that happen. You have to get me ready. I don’t care about the cost. Deal?”

He was insane for even considering this. Certifiable. No one should want to work with Brody based on mood swings alone, never mind it being the gay physical therapist working with the guy who was hotter than any porn-star cop in any adult movie. Was he a sadist?

“Okay. Deal.” Zack took Brody’s offered hand. Warm and solid. Self-assured and oozing intense sex appeal, just like the rest of him.

Zack could hear Beethoven playing his Funeral March even as they shook on it.

* * * *

Brody watched Zack hop in place next to a dark green 4Runner as he pulled into the parking spot next to him. Zack’s hands were stuffed in a gray hoodie, a baseball cap covering most of his face.

Early as usual. The guy had a thing about showing up long before being “on time.”

He looked up as Brody opened the car door, big smile on his face. How could anyone buzz around like a bumblebee on crack at this hour? Brody felt every muscle as he pulled out of bed this morning.

Sure, Zack delivered on every damn promise, and Brody was up and running again—well, slowly running—but early mornings still caused his knee to ache like a bitch. He accepted the ache with a wave of gratitude. He was off crutches. He’d be back on active soon.

Zack would never know what it meant that he was helping Brody even further, getting him more than just capable of duty. The job was everything, and the prospect of going back to Homicide, back to his calling, stronger than ever, it made him want to wrap his arms around Zack—mostly with gratitude, maybe also a heavy dose of something else.

But he wouldn’t.

Brody rubbed over the Velcro as he walked over. Zack opened his driver-side door, took off his cap, and threw it onto the seat. Ridiculous. He didn’t even have abysmal hat hair. It was still damp, the silk curling perfectly at the ends.

“You find it okay?” he asked.

Brody folded his arms and leaned against his Charger as he watched Zack tug at his hoodie. “I’ve been here before.”

“Oh yeah? Good.”

Zack pulled the thin sweatshirt over his head, and Brody cursed to himself as the shirt rode up and his gaze fell to the dip at Zack’s hip.

Yes, that golden skin was
everywhere
. Only a hint of paler skin peeked out from the low waist of his shorts.
Fuck
. He didn’t need to know any of this, but he sure as shit didn’t look away.

He’d managed to keep his lust tempered for the last month with only one or two more shower moments that featured Zack in the starring role. This was pushing it, but he’d suffer through not only to get back on the job but get back to being the
best
on the job.

“At least you’ll know the trail if you know the area, right? Don’t have to worry about losing you if you fall behind.” Zack stretched his long legs as he led the way to the bike path.

Brody cut his eyes over. “Yeah. I shot a guy just up there last year, so I know the area pretty well.”

“Holy shit! For real?” Zack’s reaction was priceless. His eyes bugged out from beneath a floppy fall of his hair, and his mouth dropped open. The comical expression distracted Brody’s brain just enough to keep him from plunging into another crappy episode of self-punishment.

Zack’s facial expressions ran through a supermarket of emotions before Brody cracked in amusement and a grin slipped out.

“You’re lying?” Zack gaped. “Oh my God, you’re a dick for lying about that.”

Brody let out a huff of a laugh, and Zack shoved at his shoulder with a full smile.

“Who lies about shooting someone?”

“Cop humor.” Brody shrugged.

“Nice. Must be a real riot down at the station.” Zack pulled a face. “Fah-reeeaks!”

He had no argument there. All homicide detectives were a little different. They had to be in order to cope. There were inside jokes in their department they could never utter to the civilian world.

“All right, look it.” Zack stopped at the side of the path and pulled one leg up behind him to stretch it.

Brody refused to look and instead focused on his face, which wasn’t a huge help.

“We’re going to do a mile and see how it goes first. We’ll take it easy.” He stretched out the emphasis on easy, the word pulling at his full lips.

Brody was sick to death of taking it easy. He’d been taking it easy on crutches for months, but Zack knew what he was doing, so he wasn’t going to bitch. Much.

As they started at a slow jog, Zack gave a little chuckle, shaking his head.

“What?”

Zack looked over and gave Brody a full-force Zack-grin, brown eyes sparkling. “I can’t believe you joked about shooting someone, but there are two things I can’t believe more than that. One, that you cracked a joke. Two, after all this time, you haven’t learned
not
to give your trainer crap. Payback is hell on the legs, y’know?”

He shrugged and kept pace. There was a lot of shit he hadn’t learned not to do, regardless of how bad it turned out for him.

They didn’t say much during the jog, and when they reached the one-mile marker, Zack ran in place, knees high, as he did some kind of mobile patient assessment.

“How’re you doing? How’s the knee?”

Fucker wasn’t even winded. “Doing okay.” Brody refused to breathe any way but normally. “I could do more.”

“You sure?” Zack did more visual analysis and looked doubtful.

“Yeah, I’m fucking sure,” he snapped, and then bit it back when Zack’s gaze jerked to his. He wasn’t pissed at Zack, just old habit. He wasn’t the poor SOB on crutches anymore, and he couldn’t stand for anyone, especially Zack, to treat him like he was. He should maybe apologize, but he couldn’t bring himself to—

“Nah, you’re right.” Zack didn’t give him the chance, like he knew the twisted trail of his mind. “You should be well able to knock out a mile by now, or I’m a shitty PT. Let’s do another and see what’s what.”

They jogged another mile, at a quicker pace, but not so much as to be too noticeable. When Brody didn’t complain, they kept going. At the start of the third mile, Zack began with the chitchat.

Yeah, the guy liked to talk. Loved to talk, actually, but he knew Zack was also gauging his ability to hold a small convo while running. Any panting, gasping, or groaning in pain would end their run faster than a summertime downpour.

“So, seriously…” Zack started. “You come out to the park to jog before? Bike?”

He remembered all the times he’d been to this park on business when on patrol. People didn’t want to know about the seedy side of anything. Not really. But Zack asked, so…

“I did my rookie year with the county when I got out of the academy,” he told him. “Our car covered this area, and sometimes we’d get calls. No, I never shot anyone,” he added when Zack shot him a look. “The park is pretty safe. Some drunk and disorderly. A few run-of-the-mill pervs we’d have to haul in. All pretty standard.”

“Uhm… Sick.” Zack glanced behind a tree as they passed it. “Like…streakers? Peeping Toms? What?”

“You name it.” Brody shrugged. “Lots of indecent exposure. Guys driving around with no pants on. Stop and ask the female joggers for directions.”

“You’re lying!” Zack exclaimed.

Brody glanced at him as they ran on. “You don’t get out much, do you?”

Zack scowled. It was criminal in its sex appeal. “I get out. Just, y’know, not much pervy happens around the clinic.”

He’d be surprised. Unpleasantly shocked, more like. But that was part of Brody’s job too. He dealt with the ugly shit so good citizens like Zack didn’t have to.

“I bet not much happens in your neighborhood either.” Brody smirked. “Big gated thing, I bet. All white, all the time. Everyone drives a Beemer.”

“Screw you.” Zack veered toward him, making him run over in the wet grass. Zack grinned as he cussed. “I happen to live out on Folly, thanks s’much. Surfers and hippies and not a Beemer in sight.”