Big Man Read online

  The heat in Max’s face deepened, and she chuckled. It was oddly low. Sedate. Not the high giggle of other girls.

  “Relax. I’m kidding. Max, wasn’t it?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Don’t let me stop you. Carry on with your warm-up.”

  How humiliating, to lumber off at a staggering jog again, especially when he turned to jog back and saw Cian practically doing the splits on the floor. Her shorts rose right up. Max could see the slightest curve of her inner thigh.

  Oh God, he was going to die. He didn’t have the energy for a sex drive and a sparring class.

  Thankfully, the exhaustion soon overwhelmed him, and he glowered at the mats as he huffed and puffed his way through the laps, the godawful burpees, and the mountain climbers that threatened to throw his tank top over his head and flash his breasts at poor Cian. To his relief, she ignored him, carrying out her own warm-up without a word—until he dropped to the mats after the final lap, and she clicked her tongue.

  “Uh-uh. Up. Lewis said I’m to show you the basic moves.”

  “He’s—he’s not joining us?”

  “He’s running late with one of his clients. He’ll be here soon, and there’ll be hell to pay if you don’t know what a body kick is by then.”

  If Max had thought Sunday’s jabs and crosses had been bad, kicks were even worse. No amount of fat in the world disguised the explosion of pain at shins colliding. The strain of his inner thighs—and the terror of flashing his junk by lifting his shin high enough to swipe at her ribs—threatened to take Max to the floor with every practice.

  But worst of all was the push kick. Burying his foot against her flat stomach, feeling the rock-hard abs beneath the sole and the soft swell of breasts just above his toes…

  The next one, he aimed too low and nearly kicked her in the crotch.

  “Watch it!”

  “S-sorry. Sorry. Just—just—”

  “Need a breather?”

  Maybe it was the exhaustion, but the filter that stopped Max from being flat out murdered by his tormentors failed, and his mouth blurted out what his brain had been thinking all along.

  “No. You’re just distracting.”

  Cian blinked and backed up. The guard stayed up. The constant movement on her feet didn’t cease.

  But the attack itself—the lesson—paused.

  “I’m distracting?”

  Max grimaced. “Sorry, sorry, no, you’re—”

  “How am I distracting?”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Uh-uh, that sounded like something unfiltered for once.”

  “I—what?”

  “Come off it, Max. You’ve been holding your tongue since you arrived yesterday. Spit it out.”

  “Um—”

  “How am I distracting?”

  “It’s nothing—”

  “You find me scary?”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “You busy wondering how me bouncing around is going to make you feel better about yourself?”

  It was true, but the flash of arrogance was oddly calming, and Max frowned.

  “You’re not that—”

  “You busy wanting to hit on me rather than hit me?”

  The blow was sudden. Pain exploded up his shin, and Max was felled. Like a great oak tree chopped down, he crashed to the mats in a flailing mess of sweat, fat, and embarrassment.

  And Cian stopped moving.

  Squatted down on her heels.

  Grinning.

  The smile was devastating. The gleam of blue under that shorn crop of wet-sand hair was horribly beautiful. The hands hanging loose between her spread knees were taunting. And the way she bent forward meant Max could see a bra strap again.

  He wanted, very much, to die.

  “You into girls, Max?”

  “I’m not perving on you! I swear!”

  “You into girls?”

  Max cringed. “I—yes.”

  “You into boys?”

  The question jarred.

  “I—what?”

  “Are. You. Into. Boys.”

  “N-no.”

  “Then you can stop perving—”

  “I’m not!”

  “—because I’m not a girl.”

  What?

  Max blinked.

  There was sweat sitting on his skin. There was a stench rising from his tank top. There was music thudding through the wall from the class in the next room.

  And Cian was squatting on her—his—her?—heels, saying—

  “You—”

  “I’m a boy. Cian is a boy’s name.”

  “You—but—”

  Cian’s voice became very soft. Almost…threatening.

  “If you ever call me anything but a boy, or he, or him, or call those facts into question, I’ll hit you.”

  Scratch that. Threatening. Outright threatening.

  “So don’t fuck with me, Max. You calling me a girl hurts. So don’t make me hurt you back, because this? This is nothing.”

  The door banged. Lewis hollered a greeting and a demand for them to stop sitting around.

  Cian flashed a huge smile and stood up.

  “We’re not sitting around!” she—he—protested, turning on Lewis with a bounce and a cheery demeanour that chilled Max to the bone. “I kind of went a bit too hard with a shin strike, and Max fell over, that’s all!”

  Max didn’t even hear Lewis’s reply.

  He just stared at Cian, the threat ringing in his ears.

  He. He, he, he, he.

  And yet, when Cian turned back and raised her—his fists, and started bouncing, ready…

  Max’s eyes still dragged down to the shift of muscles in lean thighs, and he stared.

  That’s a boy, he told himself.

  But apparently his brain didn’t damn well care.

  Chapter Six

  MUM PLANTED THE plate in front of Max and her hand on his forehead.

  “You’re not warm,” she said and squinted at him. “Are you sure you’re okay, sweetie?”

  “He’s fine, Lucy,” Aunt Donna mumbled from the depths of her magazine. Women’s Fitness. Go figure. “Probably had a tough session. Right, Max?”

  “Well, I think you’re pushing too hard,” Mum sniped. “What if he gets hurt?”

  “He won’t get hurt; he’s not going to be competing.”

  “Does Cian compete?” Max blurted out.

  Donna lowered her magazine. “Eh?”

  “Cian.”

  “Who’s—”

  “The—” Girl. Boy. “My sparring partner.”

  “Oh. Dunno. Don’t know anything about her.”

  Her.

  “What about Lewis?”

  “Oh, he practically runs the place,” Aunt Donna said, going back to her magazine. “His brother actually owns it, but he’s usually on deployment.”

  Max looked up from his plate. “He’s in the navy?”

  “Mm.”

  “So…does Lewis compete?”

  “He used to. Not anymore. He’s older than he looks. He’s got a few competitors in there—Lisa Mullins, his missus, she’s a former British champion. He trained her.”

  “And now they’re married?”

  Aunt Donna snorted. “Lisa can handle him. And Lewis is a sucker for a strong woman.”

  “Donna!” Mum scolded.

  “What? It’s true!”

  “We don’t need that sort of gossip at the table,” Mum said.

  “If you want gossip, I know that Lewis—”

  Mum gave her a withering look, and Aunt Donna subsided with a cackle.

  Max, though, was still turning over Cian’s sweetly spoken threat in his head.

  “So if you know all about Lewis, why don’t you know anything about Cian?”

  Donna shrugged. “Why would I? Not Lewis’s kid. And Lewis has four brothers. I’m not keeping track of that shit. Why, you taken a fancy?”

  Max opened his mouth to tell her about the thre
at and then closed it. He…ought not to. Telling stories about a boy so girly he could be mistaken for a proper girl in his shorts and tank top probably wasn’t a good idea. Aunt Donna would tell. And then Cian would find out and just outright murder Max.

  “Ah. You have.”

  “I’ve not!” he protested.

  “Uh-huh.” Aunt Donna’s smile was practically sinister. “Of course, I should have remembered. You carried a torch for that Lauren Baker when we tried to get you to go to swimming club. Blonde and blue-eyed. Like Cian.”

  Max coloured and said Cian was nothing like Lauren. But it was a lie, and he knew his face was giving it away.

  “Donna, don’t tease,” Mum scolded as she patted Max’s arm on the table. “I think it’s lovely. Is she your age? Are you going to ask her out?”

  Mum’s automatic assumption that Cian was a girl made the hairs on the back of Max’s neck stand up. If Cian was a boy, then—then he fancied a boy.

  “Um, no. I mean, yeah, sh—my age. My age. But I’m not going to, um. Ask.”

  “Why not?” Mum’s face twisted and Max’s gut twinged. “It can’t hurt to ask, sweetie. I’m sure she’d like you.”

  A vicious wave of fuck you rose up in Max’s chest.

  “Oh, right, yeah, she’d love to go out with a fat lump like me,” he ground out, pushing back from the table. “I’m not hungry.”

  “Max!”

  “I’m not hungry!” he shouted and stormed from the kitchen.

  Only once he’d creaked his way up the stairs and slammed the door to his room so hard the ships rocked on the ceiling like sailing through a typhoon, did the flash of self-pity and anger ease.

  He dropped onto the bed. It groaned under his bulk.

  He’d said she. He’d slipped up. And if he did it in front of Cian, Cian would hurt him. And it would hurt; Max was sure of that.

  Shit.

  “He,” Max mumbled to himself. “He, he, he.”

  He turned onto his back and opened the snack drawer.

  “He,” he told the biscuit tin. “She’s a he. He.”

  If he had to go through four months of hell with a girly-looking boy, at least he could try to make it as painless as possible.

  “FATSO FARRIER. WHAT you doing here, lard-arse?”

  The drawling voice made Max’s blood run cold, and he instinctively hunched his shoulders, as though he could magically disappear. The bus shelter was suddenly a trap. And he knew—from bitter experience—that the passers-by on the street would do nothing to help.

  “Oi, you deaf? The crumbs clogged your ears?”

  “Hi, Jazz,” he mumbled into his chest as shadows filled the entrance to the glass shelter. When he glanced fractionally upwards, there were three sets of boots.

  Including some tan Timberlands.

  “Answer my question. What you doing here?”

  “Waiting for a bus.”

  “No shit, Fatso. You taking the piss?”

  “No, Jazz.”

  “You calling me thick?”

  “No.”

  “’Cause it kinda sounds like you are. Like you think I can’t work out that you’re in a bus stop waiting for a bus.”

  “Didn’t mean it like that, Jazz,” Max mumbled, trying to shrink into his shirt. He was still in his uniform. The sticky cling of the collar was getting stickier and clingier by the second, and it was nothing to do with the heat.

  “So let’s try again. What you doing here?”

  Max’s brain worked frantically. He couldn’t say he was going to the gym. He couldn’t. They’d—they’d—

  “See a friend,” he mumbled.

  “A friend? Yeah right. Like a lard-arse like you has friends. What friend?”

  “Just—just a friend.”

  “What’s their name?”

  “Cian,” Max blurted out.

  “Cian?” Jazz sounded scornful. “Is that a boy or a girl?”

  “A—a—” He. “A boy.”

  “A boy. So you was lying.”

  “I’m not lying!”

  “You said you didn’t have a boyfriend,” Jazz said. “Or maybe you don’t remember that, after Tom played football with your head. Do you remember him saying that, Aidan?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What about you, Tom?”

  The grunt sent a chill down Max’s spine, and he glanced up the road, looking hopefully for the bus.

  “Wouldn’t bother, Fatso. You’re not getting no bus.”

  “W-what d—”

  “You got Tom suspended. Might still be expelled. And Tom’s old man wasn’t happy about that, was he, Tom?”

  Another grunt.

  “See, Tom was just having a bit of fun, and then you had to go and make it personal. It was a stupid accident. He didn’t mean to kick you that hard.”

  Max’s fingers started to shake on the books. He was going to be sick. He was going to—

  “He means it now.”

  “No-no-no, Jazz—”

  “Excuse me.”

  A hand grabbed his collar. Max’s guts dissolved.

  “I won’t say anything! I’ll tell them it was an accident. I’ll—”

  “Should’ve said that first, Farrier.”

  “Excuse me.”

  The hand pulled. Max dropped his books as he was heaved forward off the bench. A foot caught around his own so he staggered, fumbling, unable to shield his face—

  “Jesus! You lot fucking deaf? Move!”

  The shrill annoyance of the girl slashed through it. The hand was ripped away, and Max stumbled back against the glass. It shuddered alarmingly—and then someone said his name brightly and sat down on the bench beside him.

  Cian.

  Cian, in baggy combats and a grey tank top. The white straps of a sports bra were visible again, her—no, no, his breasts not so much as curving the soft cotton concealing them.

  Wait.

  How did a boy that skinny have—

  “Do you mind? We’re talking here,” Jazz said.

  Cian glanced up at him. Eyed him. Raked those sharp blue eyes from head to toe and back again.

  Then leaned back on the bench and crossed he—his feet at the ankles.

  “Yeah, well, now I’m talking here,” he said.

  “Fine by me,” Aidan interrupted, grinning. “Wanna talk to someone more interesting than Fatso Farrier here?”

  Cian barely glanced at him. “No, thanks.”

  Jazz seemed to catch on, though, and grinned.

  “What’s a pretty girl like you want with a fat lump like him?” he asked. “You local? I know a great place we can talk.”

  “No, thanks,” Cian repeated. “I’m a lesbian.”

  Max blinked in confusion.

  “You what?”

  Cian shrugged, giving Jazz the obvious once-over again. “Well, I am now,” she—he—she?—said slowly and then glanced up the road. “Oh, hey, Max, here’s our bus. C’mon. Oh, Jamie sent me this great video, look, it’s Lewis getting his arse handed to him at this charity fight a few years ago—”

  Cian’s chatter—rambling, constant, and seemingly effortless—rolled right over all four boys, and Max found himself being towed to the curb with iron-tight fingers around his fat wrist. His books had somehow ended up under Cian’s arm.

  And then the doors closed behind them, and there was a seat under his arse, and Max remembered how to breathe.

  “Thanks. I think,” he mumbled.

  “You think?” Cian asked. “You were about to get your teeth smashed in.”

  “No. Thanks. I mean—I’d rather you hadn’t seen it.”

  Because he was stupidly confused about whether Cian was a boy or a girl, but his brain apparently didn’t actually care because all it could think about was that wet-sand hair inches from his face, and there was a skinny knee belonging to a pretty—girl? guy?—pressing up behind his own.

  Max felt hot, sweaty, fat, and disgusting.

  And completely, inappropriately turne
d on.

  “I’m confused,” he admitted.

  “About what?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “The—you’re…”

  He glanced to the side. Cian was simply watching him, eyebrows raised.

  Waiting.

  Dangerous.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he mumbled, and Cian rolled his eyes.

  “I take it they’re the reason your Aunt Donna wants you training?”

  “She’s not my aunt,” Max blurted out.

  Cian cocked his head.

  “She’s my stepmum.”

  “Oh.”

  “My mum’s partner,” Max said and Cian made a noise of understanding. “She turned up when I was a kid, and I called her aunt for a bit because I didn’t really get it, and it…stuck.”

  “Do you like her?”

  “She’s okay.”

  Cian hummed. “I have a stepdad, but he’s just…Dad. I don’t remember a time before him being around.”

  “How did you know he was your stepdad, then?” Max asked in confusion, and Cian smirked.

  “You looking at me right now?”

  “Um—”

  “He’s Lewis’s brother?”

  The light bulb clicked.

  “Oh!”

  “Theeere you go,” Cian said.

  Max glanced around the bus nervously. Their only company was the driver and a kid at the back staring blankly out of the window and listening to headphones that were blasting a tinny boomph-boomph-boomph into the air.

  “Um, can I ask…?”

  Cian shrugged.

  “You said—you’re a boy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you told Jazz you’re a lesbian.”

  Cian snorted. “Right, yeah, because I’m going to waste honesty on that piece of shit. Or the time to explain.”

  The coarse tone was a surprise, and Max reeled back.

  “If it helps,” Cian said, pressing the bell as the bus joined the roundabout, “if I stripped naked, I would look like a girl. I have the plumbing. I have the letter F on my passport. But I’m not. And in ten years, twenty years, whenever, you would strip me naked and swear blind I’d never been anything but a boy.”

  It clicked.

  So Max had been—sort of—right.

  And sort of very wrong.

  Chapter Seven

  THE GYM WAS blessedly cool.

  The training session was not.

  Cian seemed to completely forget or ignore their conversation on the bus, and Lewis had them doing body kick after push kick after body kick, until Max’s crotch was so sore he was semi-convinced he could solve this being-attracted-to-Cian thing just by cutting off his junk, and it would be painless.