Muscle Beach wasn't much: just a raw strip of sand scarred by decades of salt and sweat. Rusted pull-up bars flaking blood-red in the dying sun, dip stations groaning like old bones, a bench press rack loaded with concrete plates spray-painted in ghost-white numbers, and a deadlift platform that was nothing more than a warped wooden pallet hammered together by some long-dead bro who'd prayed it would hold.
But it was enough.
The crowd had exploded to four hundred, maybe five. Phones glowed like a swarm of fireflies, live-streaming every rep, every bead of sweat, every muscle straining under soaked tank tops and bikinis.
The sun kissed the horizon, bleeding the sky orange, purple, crimson, painting every pumped vein, every stretched thong in vivid color. Shadows stretched long and dramatic across the sand, reaching like fingers toward the iron.
Dex vaulted onto the dip station, arms spread like a ringmaster in a circus of raw power.
