Ripped

RIPPED I thought my life was perfect, and then I walked in on my boyfriend sleeping with my best friend. The only person I can turn to now is Donnie, the silver-fox spin instructor who lets me crash at his place. Donnie’s a lot older and he’s still grieving his late husband. My dreams of being a filmmaker have disintegrated along with my relationship. The worst of life has brought us together. Do we dare create something beautiful out of it? Ripped is an age gap, nerd/jock, hurt/comfort MM romance between roommates who cuddle while watching classic movies. Expect steamy shower rooms, teary confessions, disapproving family, and brand new beginnings. It is the first book in the Mars Fitness series and can be read as a standalone. RIPPED MARS FITNESS BOOK 1 LINDEN BELL Copyright © 2023 by Linden Bell All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Cover Design: Cate Ashwood Content Warning: grief and loss of a spouse, description of fatal car accident, description of homophobic family, cheating secondary characters. Happily ever after guaranteed. Created with Vellum CONTENTS RIPPED Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 EPILOGUE THANK YOU ABOUT LINDEN BELL CHAPTER ONE CONNOR Of the eight million people in the city of New York, I am the last person who should be in this room right now. Everyone is ripped, pumped, stacked, jacked, or however else you want to describe those guys whose muscles have muscles. Me—I’m a little chonky and I’d rather sit on the couch watching movies than work out any night of the week. And yet, here I am, sweating my balls off in the back corner of a room filled with bikes, voluntarily getting shouted at by the hottest silver fox spin instructor in the city. What am I doing here again? I ask myself that about twenty minutes into every spin class. It’s partly because I’ve already paid for a year’s membership to Mars Fitness, partly because exercise is supposedly good for me, and—okay, fine, partly because of sexy spin instructor Donnie. “You can do it! Almost there!” His voice comes through the sound system, his soft British accent barely noticeable above the driving, frenetic music. Something fast-paced with a deep bass that booms through the walls, the floor, and me. The thump-thump-thump competes with the whoosh-whoosh-whoosh of my pulse until I’m one giant vibrating mass, hanging on to my bike for dear life. “Five more! Four more! Three! Two! One!” We all let out a collective groan of relief as the song finally ends and Donnie switches to something slower to cool us down. I drag a towel over my face with one hand and turn the resistance on the bike down to zero with the other. My feet spin uselessly in the pedals, my legs are jelly and I want to lie down on the floor and never get up again. “Great job, guys!” Donnie’s gaze sweeps across the room, pausing for a micro-second at every single person like he’s congratulating us all individually. When he gets to me, I can’t help but smile back, feeling like I’ve gotten a gold star. This is part of why I torture myself too: that slightly delirious euphoria at the end of every class. I’m weightless, floating, and everything is bright and shiny and happy. Donnie leads us through the cool down and the all-important stretches, reminding us to “hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!” The moment the song ends, half a dozen guys hop off their bikes, as if they’ve merely taken a leisurely ride through the park, and swarm Donnie. It happens every time. The gym bros are all ga-ga over Donnie, and hey, I don’t blame them. He’s hot. He’s friendly. His accent is ear-candy. If I thought I had even a fraction of a chance with him, I’d probably be up there elbowing my way through. But I don’t, and besides, I’ve got a boyfriend waiting at home for me. A boyfriend who should’ve been at the class with me, who was the whole reason why I had a year’s membership to one of the more expensive gyms in town in the first place. Miles heard about Mars from some co-worker of his, about how it catered to gay men, how it was “the place to be.” It was only after I let him strong-arm me into joining that I learned about the locker room—and the showers and the sauna and the steam room. There’s a reason why Mars has branded condoms and single-serve packets of lube. They sit in giant fish bowls in every corner of the locker room. “Every good workout ends with a blowjob” might as well be the gym’s tagline. I strip out of my sopping wet clothes and dump them into my gym bag. There’s already a steady soundtrack of muffled moans bouncing off the tiled walls when I get to the showers. I snag the last one and snap the privacy curtain closed. Even then, my dick plumps at the sound of guys getting off all around me. I give it a couple soapy tugs, then leave it alone. I don’t need a hard-on while walking home and I’d rather come in Miles’s ass than all over the floors of a public shower room. After I change into my street clothes, I take a minute to scroll through the food delivery app for my favorite Mexican place. On the agenda tonight is