After Hours
He was there again that night, like something the dusk called up from the bay and let loose upon the gritty, crumbling city.
Calamitous villain or savior, it was hard to tell.
The man was built like some kind of modern-day Viking, what with the dark beard and those icy blue eyes.
He was also one of those sculpted, muscled, huge men her ex-husband had liked to sneer at and call CrossFit junkies like that was something to be embarrassed about when he had liked to prance around in a lot of cycling apparel while doing very little actual cycling.
Though Joseph had known better than to sneer about anything where any of those much larger men could hear him, of course.
Romily had seen the man before. Her latter-day Viking. She had made a point of it, in fact.
Her little hideaway-from-the-whole-world boat was docked in a small, weathered marina near Brooklyn Basin in Oakland, and there were only a handful of places in the area that weren’t entirely overcome by the relentless press of the streets.
Personally, Romily liked not getting shot at when she needed a few things from the self-consciously precious little market nearby.
It existed solely to cater to the fancy new high rises in the Brooklyn Basin development, all boasting some of the most beautiful views imaginable of San Francisco across the water at astronomically high prices.
She even liked the absurdly uppity prices at the market—the fact of them, the optimism they suggested about the clientele, not actually paying them—and that the little boutique grocery had about seventy-five varieties of Boba, every alternative milk imaginable, and yet shockingly few actual necessities.
She liked the strangeness of this new life of hers more and more—or so she told herself daily, like a mantra— so far away from what her small and claustrophobic life in Walnut Creek had become.
Walnut Creek, which never had been as close to San Francisco as the people who lived there liked to pretend, and where Joseph had made certain that any friends she might have had lost touch with her completely.
He’d made certain of it but she also hadn’t fought it, because surrendering to her ever-increasing isolation was easier than explaining why she was the way she had to be to survive him.
The market was one of the surprising rewards she’d found for making an entire new life for herself, unconnected to anyone or anything she’d known before, in a place no one who’d ever met her would think to look for her.
Another was him . The man.
Her bearded, mouthwateringly well-cut Viking who was usually in what she’d originally thought was a garage, thanks to its roll-up metal door covered with the expected spray-painted tags.
It sat between a bizarre sort of down-market seafood restaurant that did a surprising amount of business, given the often questionable neighborhood there on the Embarcadero, and a seedy though not wholly terrifying dive bar.
The bar came alive only late at night and often left its patrons worse for wear as well as targets for petty thieves as they stumbled off along the waterfront path that stretched all the way to Jack London Square.
And it turned out it wasn’t a garage. Romily had found that out one very early morning when she couldn’t sleep and so was out walking. An activity that was not as relaxing as she’d hoped, given what lurked in the shadows beneath the palm trees here, but it was a lot better than her nightmares.
She’d heard the noise before she’d understood what she was hearing, odd metallic crashes and a kind of growling through the morning fog, making her wonder if she’d been about to encounter another monster she would have to run from.
Or, more worryingly, if maybe it was time she ran toward the monster instead, because there was something almost exhilarating in the thought of choosing it?—
But there were no monsters. Not the kind that chased her, anyway.
It was a gym.
One of those gyms with black floors and horrible, shouty music, filled with terrifying equipment like bags hanging from chains like some kind of fitness abattoir—without a single soothing elliptical machine or smoothie counter to be seen.
What it had was him .
Sometimes other big, scary men were there too.
They all looked like they were trying to make themselves into his clones, but never quite got there.
There were a lot of bearded, tattooed, grim-eyed men in that dark little place, all crashing weights and grunting noises, but only he seemed to disturb the air when he moved.
And that was hard to do in this part of Oakland, where disturbance was just regular, daily background noise.
Those disturbances were why Romily didn’t love leaving her boat. Well. One reason, anyway. If she could, she’d stay hidden away in the marina night and day, but even someone who wanted to stay anonymous and forever unfound had to go out sometimes.
So every day, Romily made herself leave the marina and walk around, because that was what people were supposed to do, and she was trying her best to do that. To people like she really was a person and not just the ruined, bombed-out shell of a person her ex had made her .
And not only when the nightmares had her waking up choking again.
After that first morning, in the fog, she’d made it a point to learn the hours of the gym—and they weren’t posted anywhere she could see. Apparently you had to have a beard and a certain grimness to you to work it out.
Or you had to live nearby, like Romily.
By now she had managed to see him at almost all times of day.
There was usually a t-shirt situation but on really good days, he was shirtless.
Curling things. Slamming things. Sometimes running with all his sleek muscles on display, not to mention the kind of tattoos that had always fascinated her, all over his skin like spells and incantations.
Sometimes at night she would lie in her berth and trace the patterns she saw inked into his skin all over her own body.
Sometimes she would slide her hands between her legs and let her imagination go wild?—
Tonight, though, he surprised her.
Shocked her, even.
Because tonight she saw him when she hadn’t expected it. When she wasn’t looking for him, for a change.
He was walking out on the commons—the public park behind the old Port of Oakland building that offered dreamy views over the estuary and further on toward San Francisco.
He was just there, like he wasn’t a gorgeous, terrifying warrior of a man, out in the falling dusk.
As if he was normal instead of extraordinary, out here in public surrounded by regular people, and Romily didn’t know what to do with herself.
She barely knew who she was. She almost swallowed her own tongue. She was certainly holding her breath.
She froze, right in the middle of a stream of people, which was a good way to get trampled.
But she couldn’t move.
It was a small miracle that there was a knot of skateboarders between them. Not that he would recognize her. Why would he? But she was sure he’d notice someone frozen solid and gaping at him.
It was a kind of miracle to see him like this. Just… out.
No crashing weights or music ripe with full-throated bellows and dark, hot baselines designed to disturb.
Just a powerfully built man prowling his way down a walkway.
He was mesmerizing.
He wasn’t wearing the things he usually did in the gym.
He was in jeans that made a grand feast out of the powerful muscles of his quads and ass.
He wore a black Henley that only emphasized his outrageously cut arms. He wore a dark knitted beanie like every other bearded dude in the East Bay, but he was nothing like any of them .
Something about him made her bones hum and her body ache.
Like a good fever, if that was a thing.
Long after he’d walked off, back to whatever life he must lead and she should probably wonder about that at some point, Romily stayed frozen still. She didn’t move even when the skateboarders looped all around her like she was a new obstacle for them to conquer.
She didn’t move for so long that when she did, she felt stiff and something like sore.
In her chest, where the heart she’d written off as defective suddenly decided to start beating again, too hard and too jagged.
Hours later, instead of walking straight to the marina entrance and hurrying down the dock to the safety of her boat, she looped around on the walkway instead.
She told herself she was simply enjoying a nightly walk—not something she normally indulged in this far from dawn, not least because it could get a bit nutty out here in the dark— but that wasn’t entirely true.
Romily was deliberately taking another pass near the gym.
Just in case, she told herself.
Just in case what? she asked herself a bit scornfully. He’s standing around outside a gym on a Friday night? Just to see if he can cause a commotion?
Not likely.
When she headed toward his gym, she saw that the garage door was closed. Not a surprise.
That there was a light on inside, though, was. She could see it through the cracks in the small, barred windows in the rolling garage door. Just a hint of light, peeking out into the dark.
Romily wasn’t usually out this late, or for so long, but a lot of other people were because it was a Friday. And the weather was beautiful. There had been fleets of kayaks in the estuary all day. The restaurant was packed and loud. There were even people waiting in line to get into the dive bar.
She had gone out tonight as a test. There had been music in the park, so she’d gone over to listen.
Once she’d unstuck herself that was. She’d watched people dance.
Sing. Roller blade through the evening. She’d made herself sit there in a crowd, like normal people did, even in this part of beleaguered Oakland.
But all the while she’d daydreamed about him.
Now she wanted nothing but to get to her boat and hide away again, so she could lie in her cozy berth and go over every detail of his pecs straining beneath that Henley, then make up some delicious scenarios to go with it, but that light taunted her.
Romily made her way past the crowd outside the bar, then did something she’d never done before.
She didn’t overthink it. She had a crazy little idea and she went with it.
Instead of walking her usual path past the front of the gym and on to the marina’s gated entrance, she slipped into the alley between it and the bar.
She felt breathless. Audacious.
Like the girl she’d almost been before Joseph had gotten his hooks in her.
Thinking about Joseph was galvanizing, because he would hate this. All of this. That she was in this part of Oakland. That she lived on a boat of questionable seaworthiness. That she was having whole thoughts and a life without his permission and direction.
Not to mention that she noticed other men at all, much less one who looked like a Viking god.
He would make her pay for all of that. She knew that all too well. She’d lived it for longer than she liked to think about?—
But Joseph wasn’t here.
So Romily walked faster and with more determination into the dark, until the shadows swallowed her up.
And when she got farther still, she saw that there were stairs that led up to a higher floor above the gym. But beneath it was another door, with an actual name on it: LONDON’S . With a list of hours and a phone number etched beneath.
Like it was a real gym after all, not just a home away from home for Vikings lost in time.
But Romily didn’t care about any of that, not at the moment, because she could see through the glass.
He was there. Right there, in what looked like some kind of front desk area, though she could barely concentrate on the details.
Because he wasn’t doing paperwork.
He had a blonde woman bent over that desk and he was fucking her.
Hard.