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“Got any plans for today?” I asked.
“Other than plotting ways to make Nancy’s life more difficult?” he asked. “Not really.”
“Rook…” I said, sighing.
“I’m not actually going to do it,” he conceded. “Just fantasy life ruining,” he admitted. “Makes it possible to deal with her when she’s raking her hands through my underwear, and upturning all my drawers like I’m hiding contraband. I didn’t even go to prison for drugs,” he added with a tight set to his jaw.
I understood his hatred for the woman.
Not because she had a job to do and was doing it. Everyone who got out of jail early had to deal with parole. It was mandatory in California unless you maxed out your sentence.
But the fact that she relished it, that she seemed to take joy in making each of her parolee’s lives more difficult, that she always assumed that they were all still criminals, despite having done their time.
Other than that, Nancy was also being especially cruel to Rook, who she wouldn’t allow to go see his poor mother who’d been institutionalized while he was away. Despite the fact that he’d even managed to get her doctors at the mental hospital to write a letter to Nancy, telling her that Rook’s mom might actually show some improvement if she got to see her son again.
It was killing Rook. Who’d gone to prison for beating the shit out of a conman who’d swindled his mom, and seemingly stolen what was left of the poor woman’s sanity in the process.
He was about a year into this fucking fight. And it felt like there was no end in sight.
“Thanks, man,” he said, looking up at his apartment over Nyx’s karate studio, still dark, no woman waiting in the shadows to catch him still drunk and not in his place when he was supposed to be.
“Anytime,” I said, waiting to make sure he got in and turned the lights on before swinging a K-turn and making my way toward the gym.
I’d been… mostly honest with Rook about why I went to the gym early. It was almost always empty at this hour.
But that wasn’t why I cared, in and of itself. He was right; it was never busy enough to really be a bother.
What it was, though, was a damn security risk for the woman they had manning the place.
I didn’t care that there were cameras, that you couldn’t get in without putting your card into the reader outside.
That was an illusion of safety, not safety itself.
Ever since I’d come in because a party was still raging at five-something in the morning, and I wanted to get away from it, and found said woman getting backed into a corner by some meathead who couldn’t see, or didn’t care, about all the signs of discomfort she was displaying, yeah, I decided that early mornings were now my workout time.
I was pissed enough about the arrangement to seek out Gav, the owner, and have words about it. He’d insisted that she wasn’t alone, that there was always the cleaning guy around.
The cleaning guy. Who was usually in the back smoking, or playing games on his phone, and not actually paying attention.
But hewasthere. And the girl claimed she was okay with the arrangement. So there was nothing I could do about it but be there just in case.
I walked up past the floor-to-ceiling windows, a small bit of condensation pooling around the bottom of the glass, the place so lit up that it practically worked as a streetlight outside.
You could see right in, all the equipment lined up, mostly unused, short of one of the prison guards who was getting a workout in before he headed to the prison.
I was scanning my membership card when I saw the front desk clerk moving behind the desk with a big basket full of freshly laundered white towels. Hand towels I knew she would stand there and neatly roll until the neighboring basket was full again, this time with easily grabbed hand towels to wipe sweat with, then get tossed in to get cleaned all over again.
I like it,she’d claimed once when I’d remarked about how futile it must have felt to be doing that folding over and over during her shift,it’s meditative.
There wasn’t a gym uniform, per se. But you were expected to look sporty, and to wear something from the gym’s own merch line. Of which there were a lot of options.
This morning, she had on a pair of sneakers that looked expensive, but were knockoffs of the ones that would actually give her feet some support. This was why when she didn’t think anyone was watching, she would sit and roll her ankles and move her feet around, trying to ease the ache. Her black leggings were tight, hugging every curve, and paired with a light pink hoodie because she always said the gym was too cold.
Her blonde hair was pulled up into two high ponytails toward the back of her head with a couple of strands hanging down to frame her face.
And, fuck, that face.
I got why Gav wanted her to be the face of the company. All soft, feminine features, big doelike brown eyes with lots of lashes around them, and a cute little cupid’s bow mouth.
