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I catch myself in the mirror behind the fountain, my hair’s a mess, makeup’s gone, and I’m sweating already. Thankfully, my tired eyes are hidden under the bill of the cap.
No, it’ll be awkward. This isn’t how I imagined seeing him again.
I walk to one of the Pelotons and climb on. Starting a Lanebreak workout, I mute the music and just follow the designated pacing and resistance while I absently read the headlines floating across the bottom of the TV screen above. Through my earbuds I hear barbells clanging and feet pounding the treadmills, and I almost settle into a pace until he passes behind me with a friend.
“Come on, cardio,” his buddy says.
His friend jumps on the treadmill next to me, Lucas taking the one on his other side. I pedal hard, glancing at them both in the mirror on the wall in front of us. His friend glances over at me, short, dark hair, black shorts, and a gray sleeveless T-shirt with the sides cut out, showing off his tanned muscular arms and pecs.
He turns back to Lucas. “I fucking hate working out at night,” he says. “What do you do with the endorphins when you leave?”
I keep facing forward, and it must be a rhetorical question, because Lucas doesn’t reply.
“I need my wife,” his friend with a smirk says as he jogs. “Thank God, I married a woman with as much energy as me.”
“Girl,” Lucas corrects him. “You married a girl ten years younger than you.”
“I had to cast a wider net to find my soulmate.”
I keep my smile to myself. They think my earbuds are on and I can’t hear.
And if he’s the same age as Lucas, his wife is older than me. That’s not a girl.
His friend is right, though. I hate working out at night. It takes longer to calm down when I go home and try to sleep. I still have so much energy.
Lucas taps his earbud. “Lucas Morrow.”
My stomach swims up to my heart, hearing him say his name. There’s no mistake. It’s him.
His friend continues to run next to me, Lucas listening to the other end of his call.
“I won’t be away long,” he tells whoever he’s talking to. “Retrofitted? No. That boat’s fifty years old. He’s not paying for that.”
Business call.
“He can have his dock outside his office building as long as the city sanctions it,” Lucas says. “Blame the timeline on them.”
His voice is deeper, and I try to see his eyes in the mirror, but they’re cast down.
He nods. “Bye.”
And he ends the call.
He jogs, taking a drink from his water bottle. His brow is pinched, and I don’t like that he still has that look on his face. One he didn’t have when he was in college, but developed a little while before he left eight years ago. It’s still there. Like he’s always on guard, ready to fight back.
“You should stay longer,” his friend says.
“Come to Dubai more.”
“They look at me funny when they search my luggage.”
His friend grins over at him in the mirror, Lucas looks up, and I dart my eyes down.
“Stop traveling with handcuffs,” Lucas says in a low voice.
My mouth falls open a little.
But then his friend asks, “And use rope instead?”
