Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
NOW
“No.” My eyes flicked from the treadmill back to Henry. “Not in a million years. No.”
Not even the way his face lit up, the way his laugh rang through the empty gym, would get me onto that thing. My anti-workout stance was so firm, this was the first time I’d ever been inside of a gym, and not just in front of it to pick Henry up.
“Oh, come on,” he pleaded, getting onto the next machine over. He started it with a single tap, and with a muted roar it put him into a leisurely walk.
Turning to look at me, he walked backwards. “You’re already wearing workout clothes. You might as well get one in.” His eyes traced my frame so quickly, anyone else might have missed his gaze dropping. But I wasn’t anyone. “It would be an outfit wasted.”
My eyes twitched into a glare. “No.”
“Paula,” he teased. My stomach dropped at the way my name sounded off his lips. “You want to write about me, you gotta get a feel for what it’s like to be me. Right?”
“I didn’t want to write about you.” And despite myself, my gaze drifted to the treadmill next to his wearily. “I was forced—blackmailed actually.”
It’s this or nothing.
I could hear the grin in his next words. “Oh, really?” He turned to the front of the treadmill again and quickened his pace.
Goddamn it.
Maeve had been right. I was clearly possessed, because a hesitant moment later, I was standing on that forsaken thing, and it started moving beneath me.
“Yes. Really.” My eyes sliced to Henry, narrowed in annoyance. “You owe me answers to five deeply personal questions for this, Pressley.”
At the very least, that way I could get something out of it.
“One.”
“Hah!” Outrageous . “Three.”
“Two,” he proposed.
“Three.” To press my point, my finger hovered over the red End Workout button on the screen. While he dropped the negotiations with a slow nod, judging by the smile on his lips, I’m not quite sure I wasn’t still the one who’d lost.
He held his hand out across the empty space between our treadmills, and I shook it. Ignoring the way one innocent touch scorched through my veins. Shot up my spine.
“By the way,” I drawled when I dropped his hand. “For a business student, you are incredibly bad at negotiating.”
“For a journalist—” He began in the same tone, laced with irony and sarcasm.
“Don’t even think about finishing that sentence.” My threat hid behind a wide grin I had no control over. It kind of defeated the purpose, but Henry still listened.
“I wouldn’t dare lie to you,” he said earnestly, then laughed the comment off and powered up his treadmill. His walk quickly turned into a light jog, and another minute later, he was running beside me at an impressive mile pace of five minutes.
All while I enjoyed my leisurely walk. That’s all he was getting.
Every time my eyes involuntarily drifted in his direction, he was a little sweatier, a little more flushed. After mile two, I tried to ignore how his shirt had come off. Then, when the treadmill came to a stop and he theatrically collapsed on top of it, I tried even harder to ignore him.
His chest rose and fell rapidly, feet planted firmly on the ground, eyes on the ceiling, arm resting on his forehead. Breathing heavy with a smile on his face, sweat clinging to his muscled chest and abs, his arms. Curling the hairs at his nape.
None of the words in my head were in the Bible.
As perfectly practiced in the past fifteen minutes, I diverted my eyes quickly. “Yeah,” I nodded, ordering my own treadmill to a halt before sitting on the edge of it. “I feel the same.”
Henry panted a laugh before his head turned in my direction. “Walks can be very demanding,” he agreed thoughtfully, the sentiment buried beneath more heavy breathing and an ironic undertone.
But I wasn’t here for a workout or to ogle my ex-boyfriend after his, and I set to stir our conversation back to what I was here to do. Signaling to my phone and the record button, I continued once I pressed it. “This is what you usually do? Fifteen minutes of… a light jog?” I couldn’t help the sarcasm, and it earned me another deep rumble of a laugh.
“Yeah,” he said, loudly inhaling, exhaling.
Please stop panting , I chanted in my head. It’s really distracting .
“A light jog,” he said pointedly, ironically. “Followed by forty-five minutes to an hour of weight training, then another half an hour of cooldown in the off season. Well—” He cut himself off, unsure. His eyes flicked to me before he thought about it, then said, “For about a year now, anyway. I changed it up around that time, put more of my focus on running.”
“How come?”
“Oh.” Henry waved the question off, diverting his gaze again. “It helps me relax.”
Which was about the most absurd statement for someone like me, who wound down with a good movie or a bubble bath. Not a five-minute-mile paced run.
“Plus,” he added. “Around that time, other… forms of cardio fell out of my routine. So I had to substitute.”
“Other forms of—??” I caught myself just in time.
Other forms of cardio. For about a year now.
When he looked back at me—still sprawled across his treadmill and shirtless, by the way—I knew we were talking about the same thing.
Other forms of cardio.
“Surely—” I cut myself off again. Surely you’re still participating in other forms of cardio, I wanted to say. But that wasn’t where this conversation should go. Even if I really wanted it to.
So, instead of asking how often, how many, and which girls he’d slept with since we’d broken up—and if he would be so kind as to share both first and last names, as well as social-media handles—I said, “That makes sense.” And moved on.
Like any self-respecting journalist would.
Henry talked me through his workout split, set and reps as he went along with his exercises, then explained why he opted for exactly those. Just watching him felt exhausting, but he got through the entire thing and still had a smile on his face.
It was past nine by the time we walked out into the parking lot.
Like Maeve had said, it was warm enough for leggings and the oversized T-shirt I’d changed into after my very demanding workout.
“I’m usually a little quicker,” Henry said, eyes drifting away from his watch.
“Oh.” My fault, obviously . “Sorry. Did I mess up your schedule?” I didn’t think even a natural disaster would make him divert from his holy agenda of the day, but maybe…
Henry gasped, clutching his chest. “I’m offended. Really ,” he stressed. “You should know me better than to suspect something so criminal.” Clearly overplaying his part, I guessed he really wouldn’t divert from his schedule for anything.
He’d planned for the extra time. Of course he had.
“What’s next?” I asked, watching Henry open the passenger door. He waited for me to climb in, and I thought out loud when I guessed, “A protein-heavy breakfast?”
Maybe his schedule was still buried somewhere deep in the back of my mind, because after he shut my door and jogged to the other side of the car to open his, he sported a wide smile.
“So you do know me,” he drawled as he slid behind the wheel.
He was clearly pleased by the fact, but in the few seconds between getting in and starting the car, his mood sobered. “If you don’t want to come to my place, though.” With a glance at me, he turned the key in the ignition and got the car rolling in a silence I wasn’t sure was deliberate. “If you’re uncomfortable, or, I don’t know, it’s too weird or personal for you. I’d completely understand. I can pick you up after.”
And it seemed for the first time since our… collaboration had started, Henry fully grasped the position I was in. Really, this was the first time he’d kind of acknowledged that we’d broken up at all. Sure, teasing comment here and there, but never an Are you okay? or I’m sorry .
Probably because he wasn’t. Which was fair enough.
“Is it for you?” I asked. My gaze stuck to the passing buildings. “Weird, I mean. Or too personal. Both?”
Henry laughed as softly as my tone had been. “Never.”
I could feel his attention flicker to me, but I didn’t meet his gaze. Kept my eyes glued to the window, scared of what he might see if I looked at him now. The raw emotion, the vulnerability.
“I just want you to be comfortable. I never considered what this might—” He hesitated. “After everything. You know? Sorry about that.”
I scoffed, finally turning toward him when that weird, hollow feeling in my chest transformed into something else. I couldn’t quite grasp what it was until I spoke.
“For what? Breaking up with me?” Ah , that feeling had turned into disdain. I could hear it in my tone.
Henry’s brows rose in mild surprise. He knew better than to look at me this time.
“That, too,” he said. “Obviously that.” His voice gained conviction. “But I just meant… I should’ve considered how you might feel, having to spend so much time with me. And I didn’t until now.” He shrugged, a breath escaping his lips, like he’d been working up the courage to say that.
I considered him for a moment, took in his disheveled hair, his tense expression, and decided he was being sincere.
“Well.” I exhaled, shaking myself out of any petty feelings lingering. Professionalism . “It’s not your fault we’re stuck doing this profile together, is it?”
Henry shot me a glance, surprised by the hint of a smile on my lips. I was, too. But he returned it with a single nod.
“So,” he said. “Your place or mine?”
The words obliterated the rest of the lingering tension in the car, and I rolled my eyes with an amused huff.
“I’m all in if you are, Henry Pressley.”
He mirrored the sentiment when he said, “I was thinking protein pancakes?”
“Definitely all in, then.”