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I give the girl a tight smile as Jared slaps down his credit card. “Set her up.”
I should fight it, and I have every intention of being quite the handful for my brothers eventually, reminiscent of all the movie heroines I love, but I’m just too tired. It takes twenty minutes to fill out my information and sign some papers. I bypass the tour, schedule a fitness test, and grab a towel, heading through the lobby.
Jax works on his phone at a small round table near the doors. Jared sits with him, elbows on his knees as he peels a complimentary orange.
“You’re just gonna sit there?” I ask. “The whole time?”
Like he doesn’t trust me to get home on my own?
He just looks at me but says nothing, and I remove my jacket and head into the gym. I wish Madoc was here. He can get protective, but he’s the brother who’s a lot more reasonable.
Or like, reasonable at all, for that matter. He would get them to leave.
Sticking my earbuds back in, I restart my music, leaving my towel and jacket on a bench. I step on to the three-lane track, wait for another jogger to pass by, and quickly follow. An arrow on the wall dictates the direction we’re running, accompanied by a sign letting runners know that eleven-and-a-half laps equals one mile. I dig in my heels, loving the slight cushion of the ground, easier than pavement, and I pass under a digital timer above our heads that keeps minutes and seconds if we want to pace ourselves.
I just want to go, though. There are mirrors on theoutside wall, sporadically interrupted with windows, the inside walls occasionally giving way for people to leave the track and head into the workout areas. Two-dozen weightlifting machines sit in the oval floor at the center of the track, and I look around, seeing a few women, but a lot of men. One huge guy with a long silver beard lifts a massive dumbbell over his head with one arm as he sits on a bench and watches himself in the mirror. Another props up his phone to film himself doing squats.
I float my eyes over the room, seeing a man in black track pants with a white hoodie doing pullups. Long, lean, broad… Blond.
A wall cuts off my view, and I blink, my heart suddenly pulsing a mile a minute.
I try to swallow, but I can’t. The wall breaks again, and I jerk my head, looking back into the workout area. He keeps going, pulling his chin up over the bar, and I stare at the side of his face and the back of his head…but it’s too far away to be sure. His hair is recently cut, but wet with sweat, and I see he has earbuds in like me.
I lose sight of him again. I can’t get a look at his face. Another wall, and I enter the other side of the gym, a new workout area. I try not to, but I find my legs moving a little faster to circle around again.
It’s been eight years. If he were back in town, Madoc and Fallon would’ve made a big deal about it. I would’ve heard.
The Yankees cap feels tight. I keep going, my braid bouncing over my chest, but when I come up on his weight room again, he’s gone. Runners pass me, and I scan the room twice out of the corner of myeye.
Then…
There he is.
My stomach flips. He lays on a bench, holding a bar over his body before bringing it down and pumping it back up, again and again. His long legs are bent, his shoes on the ground, and even though he’s wearing a lot more clothes than the other men here, I can’t stop staring at everything but his face. Built chest under the hoodie. Narrow waist. Toned shoulders and strong arms. The muscle on the top of his thigh that bulges just a little under the black pants.
The wall separates us again, and when there’s a break, I glance quickly, seeing him replace the bar and sit up. He rises, grabs his towel, and looks up, meeting my eyes.
My heart plummets into my stomach.
Lucas.
I look away, disappearing behind another wall and entering the other side of the gym.
Oh my God.
I can’t breathe. I stop, tapping my earbud to pause the music as I step through the entrance to another workout area. I stagger a little over to the water fountains on the wall and bend over, pressing the button. I drink, wetting my parched throat.
How can he be here? How can he be here for even an hour without me hearing something?
But he’s just working out like he’s been here for days.
I stand upright, wiping off my mouth. Did he recognize me?
I should say ‘hi,’ I guess. I kind of grew up with him, even if I was way younger. He was Madoc’s ‘little brother’ in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. Lucas’s dad had died when he was young, and Madoc became his older male influence, so Lucas was around our family a lot.
He went to college, became an architect with Fallon, and moved out of the country eight years ago, building skyscrapers in Dubai.
I was thirteen when he left.
