Private L.A. Read Online Free Page A

Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday mornings, even before the ex-SEALs and LAPD SWAT team cops who usually showed up for this early class.
    Six months
, she thought, then admitted that she still feared Crossfit. But she absolutely loved the fact that she could now do twenty dead-hang pull-ups, deadlift two hundred and twenty-five pounds. And her abs were ripped. There was no other way to describe them.
    The coach opened the door to the box from inside. A blue Toyota Camry rolled up to the curb and a guy Justine had never seen before climbed out stiffly.
    She crossed through a small lobby, past a changing room, and out into the box itself. She glanced at the whiteboard on the wall before starting her warm-up. When she saw the workout of the day written there, her stomach fluttered with anxiety.
    “ ‘Grace: thirty clean and jerks for time’?” a man’s voice groaned behind her. “That’s crazy. I can’t move from the box jumps yesterday.”
    Justine looked over her shoulder and saw the new guy, midthirties, curly brown hair, trimmed beard and really, really nice hazel eyes.
    “Soreness is a way of life here,” Justine said.
    He smiled at her. A really nice smile. “Paul,” he said, holding out his hand. “It’s my fifth class.”
    She smiled back, shook his hand, and said, “Justine. A little over six months.”
    “Does it get better?”
    “Nope,” she said. “Not one bit.”

Chapter 7
    IT ONLY GETS WORSE , Justine thought, fighting the queasy feeling building in her stomach as people all around her grunted, moaned, and dropped bars loaded with rubberized weights that boomed and bounced off the rubber floor.
    Justine was twenty clean and jerks into the workout, with the prescribed ninety-five pounds on her bar. The big timing clock on the wall was running. Four minutes had passed since she’d started. Impossibly, one of the ex-SEALs had called, “Time,” at one minute forty seconds before collapsing to the floor.
    A big part of Justine wanted to lie down there with him and beg for mercy. But a better part of her got angry. She was not giving up. This was a fight to the finish. And she was finishing.
    Ten more, little sister
, Justine thought before leaning over to grab the bar with both hands. She gripped it, squeezed her core tight, and rose slowly, keeping the weight snug to her legs until the bar crossed her knees. Then she exploded upward, shrugging her shoulders, raising her elbows, creating a moment of inertia when the bar felt weightless. Quick as she could, she dropped beneath the weight, caught it in a racked position, and then exploded again, driving the bar overhead, where she balanced it a second before letting the weight crash to the floor with all sorts of satisfying fury.
    Sweat gushed off Justine’s forehead. Almost every muscle in her body burned, but she was grinning. She liked the grunting, the weights crashing, the feeling like you were in a race against time. It was primal, physical in a way she’d never known before.
    Nine more, little sister.
    “You, lady, are an animal,” Paul gasped minutes later as Justine struggled to get off the floor and to her feet. She’d finished “Grace” in personal record time.
    “Thanks,” she panted. “I think.”
    “No, seriously,” Paul said. “You just kicked my ass with a heavier weight.”
    Justine smiled. “Welcome to Crossfit, where strong is the new thin.”
    Paul laughed. “I guess I need to learn to check my ego at the door.”
    “That’s what they say.”
    Still smiling, she turned away and headed toward the locker room and the showers, thinking how funny it was that she was able to go from Justine the warrior goddess to Justine a little boy crazy in a matter of moments. But he was nice, and self-deprecating.
And did you notice? No wedding ring?
    “Justine?”
    She startled, looked into the lobby. The giddiness faded, replaced by a vague sense of loss. Jack was standing there, looking like he hadn’t slept.
    “Jack?”