Payson groaned when she heard her cell phone alarm go off. Why is it so easy for me to get out of bed for training, but for the three days I've been in LA,I can barely get out of bed hours after I normally get up. Oh, wait, I know why, because this sucks.

She looked around the room, her suit case was packed and she was mostly ready to go after her final commitment of the three day torture trip. Photo shoots, interviews, two commercials, and constant phoniness from the people she was working with, it was all enough to make her long for home and even the petty drama that came with training at the Rock.

"Tomorrow, I'll be home tomorrow. Tomorrow morning I'll wake up and go straight to the Rock. Sasha'll be there eating his Shredded Wheat and everything will go back to normal," she said out loud. The thought of going home was enough motivation to force her out of the king sized hotel bed.

On her way to the shower, she noticed she had a text from Emily. It said: Come home soon, save me from the crankiest coach in the world!

Payson snorted and texted her back quickly: B home tmrw. Can't wait. Txt u b4 I leave.

She smiled at the thought of a cranky Sasha marching around the Rock barking out orders at the gymnasts. Maybe he misses me. Ha. More likely he's been in a state of near constant frustration and he's taking it out on the people around him. Payson sighed. She was frustrated too.

Their latest kiss, you couldn't even call it a kiss, but Payson cringed at the idea of calling it a make-out session, so she'd settled on the word, encounter. Just thinking about their last encounter made her heart race. Their attraction was like a force of nature and it seemed that there were moments when they both were incapable of controlling it. She sighed, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror and then yanking her hair out of the ratty ponytail. She looked down at her new pajamas, courtesy of her endorsement deal with Victoria's Secret. He'd probably like this little number better than the flannel set with the sheep on them. Not that Sasha would be seeing her in her pajamas any time soon. It was something they'd talked about, before she left.

They were in the trainer's room long after everyone had left for the night, using the convenient excuse of staying late to work on a new, more creative uneven bars mount. After examining the footage of the World Championships, they'd realized that Payson's margin of victory should have been much smaller and she wasn't going to let Genghi Cho gain any ground in the year before the next World Championships. No one would question Payson's work ethic. They had worked on her mount for the bars, for about an hour, but when they found themselves in the trainer's room looking for a wrap for Payson's hand to cover a blister, things had quickly spiraled out of control.

"Hop up there, I'll wrap your hand for you," he said, fighting with the plastic container that held the bandage wrapping. It finally came free and he grinned at her in triumph.

Laughingly, she held out her hand for him. He expertly wrapped her hand, tightly enough where it wouldn't come loose, but remaining flexible so she could train with it.

"Thank you," she said, flexing her hand to make sure she had the range of motion she needed.

"No problem." He reached around her, to grab the empty container, but he never quite got there. They immediately realized just how close their bodies were, the proximity practically raising the temperature of the room. Someone leaned forward, or perhaps they both did.

Each time their attraction boiled over, they seemed to find a new way to kiss each other. That night in the trainer's room, their mouths met in wet, hot, slow kisses, their tongues sensually dancing together. The only sounds were that of their lips parting and coming together again repeatedly. For the first time, Payson felt like they were building towards something. His hands ran down her, grazing the sides of her breasts lightly and finally grasping at her thighs. She took the cue and wrapped her legs around him, pulling him in closer. "Payson," he groaned and renewed his deliberate assault of her mouth. She didn't know how it happened, but she found herself lying back on the table. Her hands were roaming freely now, creeping under the back of his shirt, raking her nails lightly along his back, his held firmly at her hips, slowly rotating their lower bodies together. Payson could feel the evidence of his arousal pressing against her. They both pulled back for a moment and simply stared at each other, breathing heavily.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it was over. "We have to stop," Sasha murmured. She felt herself deflate a bit and closed her eyes. He brushed his lips against her forehead and helped her off the table.

She put a hand to her chest, willing her heart rate to slow. "We can't keep doing this," she said, still breathless. "We said we'd wait. That we'd put this aside until the Olympics."

He stood in front of her, hands on his hips, rolling his tongue between his teeth in thought. "You're right. We're breaking all the rules here, even the ones we made. This, it would be a major distraction for you, worrying about getting caught or if we argued. No, there's a reason there is a no dating rule in this gym and I suppose it applies to me as well."

She laughed, but grew serious as she spoke, "Only if you're dating one of your gymnasts, which breaks a lot of other rules too. You don't have to…"

He cut her off. "But I do have to," he said, obviously holding something back, not willing to say whatever he was thinking. She let it go.

"Okay, so then, these – whatever they are, when we kiss. Tonight's the end of it."

"For now," he said. "Until you have that Gold medal around your neck."

Payson looked at herself in the mirror and sighed. And that's where they had left it, again. They both knew it wasn't a realistic solution. They always managed to find their way back to each other. She heard a knock at her door. Assuming it was MJ, she threw her door open to let her agent in.

"Whoa, hey there, Keeler," Austin Tucker said, as he stared openly at her. "Love the pjs."

She massaged her temples rapidly hoping for some relief from a quickly developing headache, "This morning just keeps getting better and better." She didn't even bother scrambling around for a bathrobe; she just walked away from him "What's up?" Austin was in Los Angeles for virtually the same reason Payson was, though they were endorsing different companies and products.

He stepped into her hotel room, shutting the door behind him. "MJ was down in the lobby. She said your car for the Sports Illustrated shoot leaves in ten minutes and to meet her down there ASAP."

"Crap," Payson said, grabbing her clothes from the chair she'd laid them on the night before and ran into the bathroom to change.

"She invited me to tag along," Austin called to her.

"MJ?" Payson asked, yanking her shirt over her head.

"Yeah," he said, flopping down onto her bed. "It's at the beach, so I'd like to go, if it's cool with you?"

Payson came flying out of the bathroom, zipping up her jeans and then throwing her hair up into a messy bun. She grabbed her purse and placed her sunglasses on to the top of her head. "Sure, why not. Let's go," she said, waving him out the door in front of her.

"You know, you've got the disheveled celebrity look down to a science and you've only been in LA three days. Good work, Keeler," he said as they got into the elevator.

"Shut up, Austin," she said, flipping her sunglasses down to cover her sleep deprived eyes.

Sasha knew he was being completely unreasonable. He knew his gymnasts thought he'd completely lost it and he knew he had to get himself back under control. Someone would put two and two together and realize that his bad mood had coincided with Payson's departure and had increased steadily since then.

"You know, you're scaring them," Summer said, walking out to where he was on the floor, observing Lauren's bars routine.

"Hmm," he acknowledged.

"I need you to sign this," she said, handing him a clip board with a few papers attached. "It's your expense report from Rotterdam." He flipped through the pages quickly and then signed and initialed where she had placed pastel colored sticky-notes. "Thanks," she said. "Look, Sasha, I know we decided to stop seeing one another, but that doesn't mean we can't be friends."

He looked at her, "Isn't that what we are?" he asked, confused. After their "break-up," if you could call it that, they'd been pleasant to one another, but not in a phony way.

Summer nodded quickly, "I just wanted to be sure that you didn't think I was – that I was pining or anything," she said.

"You're not pining, got it," he said, watching Lauren dismount the bars and salute. "Excellent job, Lauren." It seemed as if the chat he had with her last week had sunk in.

"I'm actually seeing someone," she said as she followed him to the low beam to watch Emily working on her tuck salto.

He looked at her, eyebrows raised, "That's great, Summer." He wanted to make sure she knew he meant it, "Really, I'm happy for you."

She nodded, "Good because he's picking me up for lunch in ten minutes and I didn't want it to be awkward."

Ah, so that's it, you didn't want a scene in front of your new boyfriend. "No awkwardness. Now, if you'll excuse me," he said, walking past her to correct the position of Emily's hands.

He watched as she took three steps and popped up into the tuck, landing with her hands in the correct position this time, "Excellent," he said. "Now, do it until you can't fall off." After watching the video over and over again, he and Payson had discovered that Emily had in fact earned her silver medal at the World Championships. It looked as if by that point the other judges had figured out that the cheating was going on and had starting compensating for the compromised judges decisions in their scoring. Despite the fact that Sasha had hoped Emily would be able to maintain her confidence level based upon a successful routine and not how the judges scored it, he was glad she had her swagger back and was working extremely hard.

He was about to walk away when he heard a buzzing noise. He looked down at Emily's gym bag, next to the mat. "Emily, a cell phone on the floor, really?" he asked in complete and total frustration.

"Payson said she'd text me before she took off from LAX," Emily said. "It was on vibrate and in my bag. I wasn't going to check it," she protested lightly before walking over to her bag to shut the phone off. "Oh my God," she said quietly as she checked the message quickly.

"What? Is she okay?" Sasha asked, trying to keep his voice under control. Her prolonged silence wasn't helping to calm his anxiety. "Emily?"

"She's fine," Emily said, "She's boarding the plane and will be home in a few hours."

"And your reaction? What was that about?" he asked, sure there was more to that story.

"Nothing," Emily said, shutting her phone down and putting it back in her bag. Sasha pursed his lips and let it go.

A few minutes later, he was up in the gym office, trying to ignore Summer preparing for her lunch date and his phone started to vibrate. He saw it was a message from MJ with a picture attached to it. "Not just the world's greatest gymnast," read the message. He clicked a button to reveal the picture attached to it. "Oh my God," he said. It was Payson, but she was completely, different. For one she was wearing nothing but a white bikini and she was soaking wet, sitting on the beach at the edge of the surf. That wasn't all though. It was the expression on her face as she looked at the camera; she exuded innocence and sex all at the same time. It was a deadly combination, one he had already fallen victim too. "Bloody hell," he said, rubbing his hand over his face and attempting to stifle the surge of lust that shot through him as he looked at the photo.

"What's up?" Summer asked, concern on her face at his reaction.

"Uh," he hesitated. You may as well tell her, Beloff. The picture is going to be out soon enough. "MJ sent me the final proof from Payson's photo shoot today."

"Oh!" she exclaimed, "Let me see," she said. He handed her the phone and waited for it. "Oh my God."