Free Hazel St. James - Fighting For You (Redemption#1)[ by Hazel St James

final sets on the shoulder press, he felt the strain all the way up into his neck and he grimaced when he finished; he rubbed at the tight muscles, but it didn’t help. Peyton didn’t hesitate in massaging his neck after he tried rolling it a few times to ease the pain, and it just made him growl in frustration.
    Her soft hands felt like heaven as they loosened the knots that had formed as he did his reps. Tristan had forgotten how much trap movement was involved in the exercise, and his neck was tense as hell. It helped immensely when she worked his sore muscles, but wasn’t so much of a help down south, where a new muscle was aching.
    “Great job, sweets,” she complimented him after they finished. “Won’t take much for you to get your body from hot to smokin’ hot. I’ll shower quickly and meet you out front.”
    They both headed into their different locker rooms to get showered and changed. Tristan had been proud of all the hard work that he’d previously put into his body and the muscle mass that he’d built up. He knew what he lacked in height, he made up for in bulk; cut muscles down his arms and chest, including a solid core that led to a strong v-pack set. But he also knew that he had lost a good portion of that fitness, and was getting soft around the middle again.
    To hear Peyton compliment his body was a sure confidence boost and had him seriously preparing himself to get back into the land of the living. He could take things slowly, see how each day progressed and try to go easy on himself. It sure beat the fuck out of sleeping all day in bed and eating greasy takeout on the floor. Maybe this wasn’t exactly what he wanted right now, but it was what he needed . It had been a seriously long fucking time since he felt this good about anything .
    None of his newfound enthusiasm meant that he was overly excited that Chris had hired someone to take care of him, but that was another matter altogether. It was damn conniving to bait and switch Peyton like that so that she felt obligated to care for him, but it was damn brilliant. Fucked up, but brilliant. Tristan was planning to talk with Chris about it the first chance he got; he’d been so sure that Chris was an asshat, but he got the impression from Peyton that he was anything but.
    Tristan also decided quickly that Peyton was a serious pain in the ass to shop with. Tristan was more than capable of picking out food, but she would many times just smile and put back what he’d picked out and replace it with something similar. Most of the time it was a simple substitution for cost reasons; since Tristan didn’t pay much attention to that shit anyway, he didn’t make a fuss. But there were a few times she frowned at something he put in the cart, and then later he would find that at some point, she had removed it and replaced it with something completely different. Like the bag of chips she grimaced at, and in its place was a bag of lightly salted pretzels.
    She was a sneaky little thing, but tried to not let on to what she was doing; she just wasn’t in your face about anything and was fine with whatever you suggested. He noticed that she didn’t take exception to everything he chose, just the things that he never said a whole lot about. For instance, he put Ben and Jerry’s ice cream in the cart after exclaiming that was his favorite kind. She smiled and shrugged, never even gave it a second glance; and it was still in the cart when they got to the checkout.
    Peyton had already taken Tristan to the bank and the pharmacy, so he quickly paid for the huge cartload and they headed back to his apartment. The drive back wouldn’t take very long, but Tristan wanted to find out more about Peyton; see if she was comfortable enough now to open up a bit about herself.
    “Did you grow up here in Colorado, or are you a transplant?”
    Peyton was humming along to a song on the radio and casually answered as she bobbed her head to the beat of the song, “Born and