The Dating Playbook

by Farrah Rochon

  “Don’t throw away my chips.” He rounded the kitchen island and plucked the bag from her hands. “They’re organic and they’re baked.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She tried to snatch the bag back, but he held it out of her reach. “You need to limit your complex carbs. If you’re craving a crunchy snack, go for those made from lentils or white beans instead.”

  “I don’t like lentils,” he said as he retrieved a chip.

  Taylor plopped her hands on her hips. “Are you seriously going to eat those in front of me? Okay, you need to decide if you’re going to take this seriously. If not, I can leave. I won’t have you saying in two months that I didn’t do my job because you can’t say no to a potato chip.”

  He dropped the chip back into the bag and held it out to her. Taylor snatched it from his hands.

  “You see, this is why I wanted to hire you,” Jamar said. “Another trainer wouldn’t have had the balls to tell me off the way you just did.” He dusted his fingers, as if wiping away crumbs. “I’m done with potatoes. Bring on the lentil chips.”

  “You have to earn lentil chips.”

  His brow arched, amusement shimmering in his dark brown eyes. “Is that how it is?”

  “You wanted a drill sergeant,” she said.

  Taylor wiped the grin off her face before he misconstrued it as flirting. Except this totally felt like flirting. Shit.

  “Wait, you do meal prep, don’t you? How much to add that to what you’re already providing?”

  “You want me to cook for you too?”

  He shrugged. “If you think it will help get me into shape.”

  She thought for a moment, then said, “I can prep your meals, as long as you pay for the cost of groceries.” She crumpled the bag in her hand, crushing the remaining chips into inedible crumbs. She handed it back to him. “We’ll start working on your diet tomorrow. Go change into your workout clothes. It’s time for you to show me what you’ve got.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Jamar tugged a pair of running shorts on over his tighter compression shorts and grabbed a tank made of wicking material from the neat stack the cleaning service had placed in his dresser. Pulling the tank over his head, he made his way to the walk-in closet that housed more than four hundred pairs of tennis shoes, each in custom-built units that lined the walls.

  He was willing to be sensible with every other aspect of his life, but when it came to his Jordans, Vans, and old-school Chucks, sensibility went out the window.

  He slid a pair of white-and-gray New Balance from their cubby and brought them to the bench in the center of the walk-in closet. He loosened the laces on one shoe, then dropped it to the floor.

  Jamar hung his head, braced his hands on his thighs, and sucked in a deep breath.

  What was he doing, thinking he could pull off something like this? Did he really think a new diet and changing up his workout routine would make a difference? Some of the best doctors in the world had evaluated his knee, and all but one had determined that he would never run onto a football field as a professional ever again. What made him think he could defy the odds?

  “Because you always defy the fucking odds,” Jamar said, sitting up straight.

  He’d been defying the odds since birth, when he’d spent six weeks in an incubator before his parents could even take him home from the hospital. He’d defied the odds when he’d made the varsity team at Katy High. When he’d earned his football scholarship to UT.

  He wasn’t the kind of natural athlete his best friend Silas had been. None of this shit had ever come easy for him. If his teammates ran five miles, he ran seven. If they spent two hours in the weight room, he stayed for an extra thirty minutes.

  He put in the work and made shit happen. And he would do it again.

  He stuffed his feet into his tennis shoes and jumped up from the bench.

  “No more excuses,” he said, reinstituting the old saying Coach Cunningham used to drill into his high school team.

  Jamar went downstairs and walked into his home gym. He stopped short.

  Damn.

  Taylor had changed into the outfit she wore in her YouTube videos: baggy army-green pants and a camouflage print fitness bra with the words TAYLOR’D CONDITIONING in orange lettering across her not too big but not too small breasts. Her abs sported a six-pack, but it wasn’t cut like his. It was soft, delicate. Delicate looked so fucking good on her.

  She looked up from her phone and spotted him. “Oh, you’re back. Good. Ready to get started?”

  “Just a sec,” Jamar said. He walked over to the cubby where he kept athletic tape and a compression sleeve for his knee. His knee felt fine, but he needed a moment to recalibrate his brain after the initial shock of seeing Taylor in her workout clothes. Not preparing himself for that was a rookie move.

  He slipped on the compression sleeve and returned to the custom-made, high-impact foam mat he’d had installed in the middle of the six-hundred-square-foot gym. Taylor stood in the center, her hands on her hips and her legs braced apart.

  She was going to kick his ass.

  He was ready for it.

  Jamar clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “So, what’s first?”

  “You’re in much better shape than most of my clients. That means I’m going to work you harder, so I hope you’re prepared.”

  “Gimme what you got,” he taunted.

  Her brow quirked. Jamar knew he was playing with fire, but at the moment getting burned didn’t seem all that bad.

  “First, I’m going to test your endurance.” She motioned to the treadmill.

  He stepped up on the platform and reached for the display panel, but she stopped him.

  “No. I control this. You run.”

  She started him off with a comfortable jog, the slight incline and 4.5 mph pace nothing he couldn’t handle. After ten minutes she increased the speed to 6.5 mph and raised the incline by two degrees, then incrementally raised both every five minutes. By the time he crossed the half-hour mark, sweat was pouring down his face and pooling at the base of his spine. The muscles in his thighs were on fire.

  “How do you feel?” Taylor asked.

  He tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come. Instead, he nodded. He knew his body. He could push through this.

  “Give me ten more minutes at this pace,” she said.

  Shit. No way would he make another ten minutes. Jamar flashed five fingers.

  “Okay, I’ll take five,” she said with a shrug. “It’s only the first day.”

  As he continued pounding along the rubber belt, absorbing every twinge and throb that pulsed throughout his body, something changed. Instead of concentrating on the pain, Jamar used it as fuel, knowing that each step brought him closer to his goal. He closed his eyes and imagined himself back in the training facility in Lake Forest, Illinois, with its orange and navy blue walls. He heard the roar of the crowd at Soldier Field, felt their energy thrumming in his blood.

  When Taylor reached for the display after five minutes had passed, he blocked her hand. He shook his head and returned his focus to that sweet spot he’d found.

  It felt like home.

  He ran for another ten minutes, until his legs threatened to give out on him. Sucking in shallow breaths, he decreased the speed on the treadmill to 2.5 mph. Every fiber in his body hummed like a tuning fork.

  Taylor crossed her arms over her chest. “Well. That was impressive.”

  “That felt good,” he huffed out. “That felt so fucking good. Excuse my language,” he quickly added.

  She waved off his apology. “I like fuck. Sometimes it’s the only word that fits.” She tipped her chin toward his knee. “How does it feel?”

  Jamar bent his knee, testing the joint. “Better than ever.”

  He waited for a twinge or some kind of pinch, but he only felt the satisfying ache that came with rigorous exercise. A sense of calm washed over him even as excitement exploded in his head.

  He could do t
his. He could get back in playing form. He refused to renege on the promise he’d made to his best friend.

  “How about we take five minutes for you to come down from that runner’s high, then move on to the next test?” Taylor asked. “I’d planned to work solely on cardiorespiratory endurance today, but this caught my eye,” she said, turning to the machine with the inverted seat. “This is for both leg presses and squats, right?” She ran her hand along the brown leather backrest. “Now that I’ve seen all the fun toys we have to play with, I’m going to have to rethink my game plan.”

  After Jamar had caught his breath and gotten some water, Taylor gave the backrest of the machine a firm pat. “Hop on. Let’s see if those quads are as strong as they look.”

  “Strongest quads you’ve ever come across,” Jamar said as he slid into position.

  She looked down at him, amusement shimmering in her eyes. “You sure are sure of yourself,” she said. “Don’t take it personally when I do my best to break you. I do it with all my clients. It builds character.” She winked. “Give me twenty reps.”

  They repeated the sequence she’d put him through on the treadmill, increasing the intensity of the exercise every couple of minutes. This time, Jamar wasn’t going to force himself to go any further than she pushed him.

  “Shit,” he said as he pumped his legs. “You don’t give a person an inch, do you?”

  “Do you think the players on the other teams will give you an inch? You’re not paying me to go easy on you. Now move!”

  Damn, that was hot. Why hadn’t he anticipated how much of a turn-on it would be to have her barking orders at him?

  He pressed pause on his hot drill sergeant fantasy and redirected his mental energy to contracting and extending his quadriceps. Taylor began to count down his reps, starting from ten. He grimaced with every push but made it through the end of her count.

  Jamar damn near collapsed. He closed his eyes and concentrated on his breathing.

  “I admire the hard work you’re willing to put in, but aren’t you afraid of doing even more damage to your knee, or even worse, to this?” She tapped her head. “I saw that movie with Will Smith. I know about the permanent damage multiple concussions have had on football players.”

  “You sound like my mom,” Jamar said. “She’s read every article on CTE there is.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  He shook his head, a wry grin pulling up one side of his mouth as he thought about the numerous lectures on chronic traumatic encephalopathy he’d endured while sitting at his mother’s kitchen table. She always ended them by saying that she supported his choice to play football because she loved him, but she didn’t like it.

  “No, I don’t,” he answered. “And I understand the risks that come with playing. I plan to take every precaution to protect myself.”

  “But why?” She gestured to the state-of-the-art equipment surrounding them. “I know it’s not my place to point this out, but it doesn’t look like you’re struggling to make ends meet here.”

  No, he didn’t need the money, but an extra three million in his bank account would go a long way in helping Silas’s family. Jamar didn’t have the energy to discuss the complicated rationale behind his push to get back into the League. He didn’t know Taylor well enough to gauge how she would react to the admission that he was putting his body through all this pain because of a promise he’d made to his dead best friend. Because of the guilt he’d been drowning in for the past seven years over the role he played in his best friend’s death.

  But Silas wasn’t the only driving force behind this. He had other reasons—less noble causes—that spurred him on. And that Taylor would understand.

  Jamar locked the leg press into place and climbed off the machine, then went over to the cubby where he’d left his phone. He opened the browser and clicked on his bookmarks, searching through the collection of Reddit posts and message board threads he’d saved over the past year. He found one of the harshest, posted just after his injury.

  He handed her the phone, showing one of the reasons he was willing to work so hard. “This is why I’m busting my ass to get back into the NFL.”

  He watched her as she read over the posts, her lips moving as her eyes looked at the screen.

  “Ugh, why did you read the comments?” she lamented. “You never, ever, ever read the comments.”

  “Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way, and not early enough.” He shrugged. “I’ve gotten used to it over this past year, but it hasn’t been easy, and I still go back and read over them whenever I feel myself getting too comfortable.” He pointed to the phone. “Those people? They’re the reason I’m pushing myself so hard to play ball again, because they think I can’t do it. Revenge can be a hell of an incentive, and I can’t think of sweeter revenge than signing a new contract.”

  She looked down at the phone and then back up at him again. A slight smile drew up one corner of her lips. “Well, if that’s the case, get your ass back on that machine. We’ve got work to do.”

  Jamar did as he was told, moving from the leg extension to the leg curl machine. His quads felt as if they were in hell, but he knew the result of that burn would be worth it.

  Taylor counted him down through his last five reps. “And rest,” she said. “I know you said you want to go for at least five hours a day, but I think we need to gradually build you up to that.”

  Jamar didn’t argue the point. He would need to rest his legs for ten minutes before he could take a single step.

  “Tomorrow we focus on your upper body. I’ll be here at nine.”

  “I need to push our session back to late afternoon if possible tomorrow. The running backs coach at the University of Texas asked me to join them at practice in the morning.”

  “Hmm.” Her brow arched. “That actually sounds pretty cool. Can I come too? It’d be the perfect opportunity to see other football players at work—specifically those who play at your position. I could create a workout that’s even better tailored to exactly what you need.”

  “What if someone puts two and two together?” Jamar asked. His gut twisted with unease just at the thought of it.

  Taylor’s hands went to her hips. “Do you really think a bunch of college kids will see us together and automatically assume I’m your fitness instructor? They’ll more likely think we’re hooking up, which would hurt my reputation more than it would hurt yours.”

  Jamar’s head reared back. “How’s that?” He didn’t mean to sound so offended, but shit, he was. He didn’t consider himself the bottom of the barrel when it came to hookup choices.

  “Because when you get back into the NFL in a few months, you will then have to make good on the other part of our deal,” Taylor said. “I don’t want people to think you only chose me as your trainer because we were messing around on the side. So yeah, I’m the one with the most to lose here.”

  She was probably right about what people would think, which was fucked up.

  Still, this whole thing made him uneasy. He didn’t want to take the slightest chance of someone drawing the correct conclusion about his relationship to Taylor. But, then again, she had a point about tailoring his workouts.

  After a minute, he nodded. “Okay, fine. We’ll say that you’re a friend who’s interested in football or something.”

  “Not sure I can pull off that lie, but we’ll see. Where should I meet you?”

  “Why don’t I just pick you up? We can drive over together,” he offered.

  “I’ll text you my address.” She winked, smiling the smile of someone who’d just gotten her way. She picked up her duffel and hauled the strap over her shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jamar stood on the sideline with his arms crossed over his chest as he observed the running backs conducting their drills. The crunch of shoulder pads crashing into each other played like Mozart in his ears, the rank smell of sweat like perfume to his nose. He’d missed this so much more
than he’d been willing to admit.

  The Longhorns’ running back coach, Mark Green, had been instrumental in preparing Jamar for the NFL, so when he’d asked if Jamar could attend today’s practice and give his running backs a pep talk after their hard loss on Saturday against a huge conference rival, it wasn’t a question as to whether he would be here.

  He knew what these guys were going through. He also knew that if they didn’t put the mistakes from Saturday out of their heads, it could mess up their entire season.

  “Do you see those bands over there?” he asked Taylor, pointing to the wide receivers working out on the far side of the field house. Three guys had harnesses wrapped around their feet, the ends of the thick leather bands secured into the wall. “Those are for helping to build speed. I have some, but haven’t had them installed in the gym at home.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet running against that resistance builds up core muscles too.” She bumped him with her elbow. “You need to get those babies installed. I can come up with all kinds of ways to torture you with something like that.” She looked over at him, a note of apology in her pained expression. “I totally didn’t intend for that to sound like some kind of kinky S and M come-on.”

  Shockingly, his mind hadn’t gone there. But now that she’d brought it up, he would have to work extra hard to expunge those thoughts from his head. He added them to the dozens of other inappropriate thoughts about his new fitness instructor that had invaded his brain over these past couple of days.

  Jamar shut his eyes and tilted his head from side to side, working out the tension in his neck. This was frustrating as hell. Yet, he only had to consider her words from yesterday to understand why Taylor could never be anything other than his trainer. If word got out that they were hooking up, no one would take his endorsement of her business seriously. The last thing he wanted was to stifle her success.

  Coach Green walked over to them, his hand outstretched. “Thanks for coming, Diesel.”