Kali parked her motorcycle out front and walked into the gym with a groan. She'd had to postpone her much needed workout session, because Director Douglas of the FBI had insisted she come into the office right away. She'd gotten an earful about Senator Renning, and it made her blood boil. She needed this workout session now more than ever. She opened one of the double glass doors and turned into the locker room without even looking into the exercise area.
Kali kicked off her boots in front of her locker and began to undress as she thought about what Director Douglas had said. 'He's an unfeeling diplomat, Angelus! He's unaware of the damage this damn law will cause.' She shook her head as she slipped on her black leggings with the violet strip up the sides and the matching tank top. 'He has to be wrong about Renning.' she thought to herself. 'The way he wrote the law proves that he only wanted to make humans aware that preternatural beings actually exist. He wasn't trying to give them a reason to rise up against the humans or give them a free pass to freedom from the law.'
Kali plugged her black headphones into her iPod and turned on her workout play list before sliding it into her violet flip belt. She slipped on her sneakers and put her clothes into the locker as she stretched her neck. She grabbed her white gym towel and placed it over her shoulder before casually walking out onto the floor. She looked at the machines and realized there was a muscular man on one of the treadmills near the wall, and it made her stop.
'Who works out this late?' she asked herself. 'No one has ever been here before when I come to work out.' She looked up at the clock and began rolling her shoulders to loosen them. Seven o'clock at night was much later than she'd planned to exercise, but she knew that everyone was usually cleared out of the gym by six thirty. She stretched out her legs while watching him carefully. She shook her head and began to jog around the track that ran around the outer edge of the room to the beat of Usher's 'Scream' as she did every day, but she kept her eyes on the man with the golden brown hair as she continued to wonder who he was.
Jeremy was so intent on his workout that he didn't notice that anyone else had come to the gym with him. His eyes were closed as he ran on the treadmill. After he had run on the treadmill for at least an hour, he shut it down and moved over to the free weights. Picking up a pair of fifty-pound weights, he began a steady work out that quickly caused the material of his tank top to darken with sweat. He grinned to himself as he moved from one lift to another. Working out always made him feel so much better.
Kali jogged at a faster pace with each lap until she was racing around the track. When she felt as if she was almost ready to collapse, she slowed her pace and jogged over to one of the bench press machines. She took off the lightweights that were on the bar and put seventy-five pound plates on each end before securing them into place. She lay down on the bench with her feet on the floor and began to bench the one hundred and fifty pounds with ease. In the middle of her fiftieth repetition, she noticed the man move from the treadmill to the free-weights and realized that she could see his face.
There was something familiar about him, but Kali couldn't put her finger on what it was. She put the barbell she was using back into the slots on top of the bench press and sat up, studying the man's profile. She sighed and shook her head when his name still refused to come to her mind, moving to add another twenty-five pound plate to each side of the barbell. She growled under her breath as she remembered why she always chose to exercise when there was no one else around. She could easily bench two hundred and fifty pounds, but she didn't enjoy doing it whenever anyone else was watching her. People, including the other agents at the bureau, thought she was crazy for lifting as much as she did. Most of them would begin making bets on how much she could actually lift or how many repetitions she could do. It was the main reason she forced herself to work out alone.
Kali lay back down and began her second set of repetitions, leaving her earphones in her ears. She didn't bother to count how many repetitions she was doing. Her mind was far too busy thinking of who the man in the corner using the free weights might be.
Jeremy finished several different kinds of exercises with the fifty-pound free weights before putting them back up and moving over to the water cooler that was standing against the nearby wall. He filled one of the paper cups with cold water, dumping it over his head before re-filling it so that he could get a drink. As he sipped on the water, he glanced around the gym and spotted the woman on the bench press. He smiled slightly to himself as he crushed the empty paper cup once he was finished with the water, watching her work out as he dropped the cup into the trashcan that was next to the cooler. He nodded his head, waving his fingers at her as he walked past her and noticed she was watching him as well. He moved over to a ladder that was bolted to both the ceiling and the floor. Climbing part way up, he hooked his legs over one of the rungs and tucked his feet into another to support his weight as he laid back and began doing upside-down sit ups.
Kali put the barbell back into the notches on top of the bench press before she sat up to watch the man even more closely. He'd smiled and waved at her, and it made her nervous to know that he was watching her. She hoped that hadn't ever met before, because she knew that would mean her mind was really slipping. If they had met before, she should remember who he was. She stood up and wiped the sweat off her face with her towel as she walked toward the cooler.
Normally, Kali would use one cup of water to wet her hair, but that seemed too provocative now. Instead, she filled the cup halfway and drank it before moving over to one of the floor mats to do her planking repetitions. She kept her focus on the plank positions instead of the stranger despite her mind continuing to process him and failing to figure out who he was.
Jeremy stopped after two hundred sit ups and climbed off the ladder. He did a few stretches before moving over to one of the floor mats, choosing one that was a few down from the one the woman was using and immediately beginning to go through a series of pushups. He started with normal ones, but he was soon doing knuckle ones and one-armed ones. After doing two hundred total, he stopped and moved into a sitting position so that he could do a few more stretches.
Kali finished her planks and moved into the downward facing dog yoga pose before she sat down into a sitting position with her legs in a v. She bent down with her hands over her head and put her shoulders to the floor. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye and she quickly sat up her eyes on the figure three mats down. She let out the breath she hadn't realized she was holding and then looked at the guy before taking out one of her headphones. She waved at him and took a deep breath seeing if he would make the first move to talk since he had waved first.
Jeremy noticed the woman and nodded his head, stretching more as he pushed himself to his feet. He walked slowly over toward her with a purposeful, and confident, stride. Without waiting for her invitation, he dropped down beside her and rubbed his towel over his hair. "You've got a good stretch on you," he commented in a complimentary tone. "I'm Jeremy. What's your name?"