The Fighter and His Tiger (Unexpected Love #1)

22. Sunday Week Seven (pt1.)

22. Sunday Week Seven (pt1.)

"Stop glaring at me, tigru," Eli said as he walked in front of me.

"No. I don't want to," I childishly responded to his back, lugging my gym bag along with me.

"It's Sunday, we train on Sunday's."

My eyes couldn't help but roll as he strode into the gym, "I know that, but I wanted to be sleeping off my hangover, like every other teenager does on a Sunday."

Eli halted at my response, turning to face me, "Rei, you're the one who blackmailed me into these lessons."

"Urgh, yeah, I know, sorry. But do you think we could have a more relaxed session, not go so hardcore?"

He smirked at me, "okay."

— — — — —

What. An. Asshole.

That was most definitely not a chilled out session, I was dying.

"You did that on purpose," I stated but Eli didn't care what I had to say as his eyes tracked the movement of my lips as they wrapped around the straw of my chocolate milkshake. I cleared my throat to get his attention and his eyes flickered up to meet my own before he smirked and shrugged his shoulders at me.

Starving after our training session, I had made Eli drive us to a diner on the way home where we had stopped for lunch. We had just finished eating and I was about to make another attempt at getting to know him.

"So what if I did?"

"Why though?"

Eli leaned forward, placing his elbows on the table, he grabbed my drink from my hands before taking a sip. He then responded, "because you asked me to," before releasing my drink and leaning back in his chair across from me.

"What do you wanna do, Eli?" My mouth asked the question before my mind could comprehend why I wanted to know.

His perfectly scarred eyebrow raised, "really?"

Almost like an automatic response, my eyes rolled, "yes, really. Pick a job you want to do after high school, any job you want."

He sat up straighter in his chair and peered over at me curiously, "okay. A car mechanic."

"Really?"

"Yes, really," he mocked.

"Why?"

Eli didn't say anything for a moment and I knew that he was calculating whether he wanted to talk to me or not; whether he wanted to let me in or not. A sigh escaped his lips and his long legs bashed against mine under the table as he stretched them out. They nestled between my own and I felt their warmth emanating through my boots.

"Because it's what I used to do with my grandad. We used to fix up old cars together."

"If you like cars so much, why do you drive the bike all the time?"

"I like bikes too, tigru, cars are just what I used to do with him. It used to annoy my grandma because she always used to say that she felt left out."

"You two were really close, weren't you?"

He made no response to my comment so I asked another question instead, "do you still speak to your grandma?"

Those cobalt eyes flickered up to meet my own murky brown ones and I watched as the shutter fell over them. He tilted his head in the direction of my drink, "are you done?"

Curious, I wrapped my lips around the straw again, met his stare head-on and sucked. His eyes flared and he reached forward to grab the glass out from under me, "yeah, you're done."