#gmcu

Daniel winces. “Language, Maxy.” 

Max stands up, strands of blonde hair wild and manic as they fall out of her braid. “I would’ve had that!” 

Here they go again. 

“No, you didn’t.” 

Max blows a stray piece of hair off her forehead. “I did, and I would’ve caught it if you hadn’t moved the stupid mat in the way!” 

Daniel rolls his eyes and hops down from the spotter’s block. “The only thing you had was a mouthful of solid wood.” 

Sometimes, Max is a lot less like a seventeen-year-old girl and a lot more like a fourteen-year-old boy. She opens her mouth to make the joke Daniel knows she’s going to make, and Daniel holds up his hand. “Nope, don’t wanna hear it. Go condition and then cool down.” 

Max crosses her arms. “Come on, let me try it one more time!” 

If Daniel lets Max get back up on the bars and throw another Geinger when she’s been practicing for five hours, she’s going to tear her rotator cuff—or worse. And Daniel knows worse. Intimately. 

He tells her as much, and Max shakes her head and starts chalking up. “I’m doing it again with or without you, so if you don’t want to spot, then that’s fine by me.”

“Max—”

Max is already jumping to the high bar. He needs to stop indulging her, but he also doesn’t want her to break her neck, so he climbs back up on the spotter’s block. 

“Keep your hips up, core tight, up, up—” 

She nails it because of course she fucking does. 

He climbs down as she dismounts, and she launches herself at him like she does after every perfect ten at a meet. 

“See!” She says breathlessly as she steps back, his hands falling away from her lower back. “I told you I could do it!” 

“I didn’t doubt it for a second,” Daniel says. He shakes his head and nods towards the floor. “Now come on, go condition and cool down.” 

She practically skips off to join the rest of the optionals. Max has outpaced the level eights and nines her age—she needs more at her level, beyond what he can give her at his shitty little gym in the middle of nowhere. 

He returns to his office, which is more of a storage room for mats and chalk with a desk shoved in than an office, and works on meet registration until he gets distracted by approving the new team leo designs. 

“I think navy makes my ass look better,” Max says from behind him, and Daniel definitely doesn’t shriek as he slams the laptop shut. 

“Christ, you scared the shit out of me,” Daniel exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Also, like, you know you can’t say that shit. You took the same safe sport seminar I did.” 

“Yeah but that’s for coaches who are creepy pervs,” Max says, perching herself on Daniel’s desk. She hasn’t changed out of her sweaty practice leo. “You’re normal.” 

Daniel wishes he were normal. 

“Listen, I sent some of your clips over to my old coach. He’s good friends with Christian Horner.” 

Max stares at him. “Like. Coach of the national team Christian Horner?” 

“Yeah, him.” Daniel leans back in his office chair that’s falling apart like everything at this gym. It’s nothing like Horner’s, or the NTC facilities. “He’s invited you to their fall invitational to practice with the team. You’re probably too old for the national team, but there will be D1 schools there, you can get your name out there for scholarships—what’s wrong?” 

Max doesn’t look happy. He thought she’d be thrilled. 

“You know my dad doesn’t give me the money for these kinds of things,” Max says. She looks away—trying to hide her disappointment. “He won’t take the time away from taking Victor karting.” 

Daniel—Daniel knows. Max practices for free, the only girl at the gym he can afford to let do that. The rest of the optionals gossip about her, he knows. But Max isn’t like the rest of the optionals—she could make it to one of the big university teams, could—could maybe even go beyond that. 

“I know,” Daniel says. “But they do require your coach to be present, so if you’re okay with road tripping with me—” 

“Shut up,” Max says, her mouth falling open. “Daniel, we—?” 

He can’t hide his grin any longer. He smiles, all teeth, and Max screeches in excitement, leaping away from the desk. She does a little happy dance and pulls him so he’s standing and doesn’t wait until he’s fully out of the chair before launching into his arms and nearly knocking him flat on his ass. “Thank you thank you thank you!” She says, breathless in his ear. “I won’t let you down, I promise.”