Chapter 12
Marcus
The incubus stared me down like he was trying to intimidate his younger sister’s boyfriend. “You look familiar.”
That was because he’d been there at Delirium the night I met Gigi. But I decided to play dumb. “Most minotaurs look similar,” I said. “It’s the horns.”
Gigi introduced me to Prax, the incubus in question. He was Penny’s mate, and Penny was Gigi’s friend from college. So was Lily. The three witches had been housemates, and had formed their tiny little coven way back when, almost as a joke. They’d ended up as lifelong friends.
Penny had dark eyes and dark hair, with two blue streaks that framed her face. And while that particular detail wasn’t familiar, her face was.
Now it was my turn to say, “You look familiar. And I don’t mean because we met at Delirium.”
Penny sighed. “It’s because I’m Senator Davis’s daughter.”
Oh! Now I remembered! There was this fiasco a while ago about some senator’s daughter being left at the altar. Shortly after images of the groom partying in Vegas with several women in his arms turned up, the jilted bride was seen at The Curio Collectors’ Dinner ask me how I knew. Mirrors weren’t cheap, either. These had already taken longer than expected to get here.
I decided to paint the office instead. I’d had the contractor install a sizeable one-way mirror so Declan and I could have some privacy and still see what was going on in the gym. The rest of the gym would need to wait until the mirrors were in for the first coat of paint and the bullseye mural I planned on painting on it.
I’d just finished the second coat when I decided to check my email. I found about a dozen images, the top picks from yesterday’s impromptu photo shoot, waiting for me in my inbox. They looked good and would all work to advertise the business. The next step was to choose one lucky winner for the prize.
There was also a message from the photographer, who was an existing member of our gym, thanking me for offering him a year’s basic membership for lugging his equipment over at a moment's notice. Ah, so that was how Declan had convinced him to do it. We’d been lucky it was a weekday and there were no events or weddings to shoot.
I quickly drafted a social media post, putting all the top picks up so our followers could vote on the winner. Then I wrote an email thanking everyone who showed up, telling them to check our latest post and remember to send the link out to friends and family so they could vote. Like most things in life, the winner wouldn’t be the one with the best photos, but the one with the most friends.
On a whim, I decided to flip through some of the pictures the gym had been tagged in. We’d had a big bash before leaving the old location. Seeing the connections and friendships people made at the gym was the best part of owning the business. They weren’t kidding when they said that men tended to be much lonelier than women.
Many of our members have told me that before they found my gym, they didn’t have any friends, only coworkers who they couldn’t really speak to. I was glad to be able to give them a second home, a place where they knew they could come by if they needed to complain about their asshole bosses. The relief was in having someone to talk to, disguised as the serotonin of a cathartic workout.
Not every gym was like this. Some of them were too competitive and not focused on individual development.
After seeing all the pictures from goodbye bash, I decided to search for posts automatically tagged with our location but not tagged with our profile. I didn’t have to scroll far before I froze. Because there it was. Someone had posted a video of their workout, and I was right there in the background, with a Bullseye Fitness T-shirt on, my face on full display.
Fuck.
I went to check out her profile. I recognized gymbunny4eva as a lady who came to the gym for a few months but had a problem about our strict policy of getting permission from everyone in your video before posting it. There were plenty of videos with my and everyone else’s faces on her account. She even posted a video of one of the larger ladies we had in here, and not in a supportive way, either. Not the vibe at our gym.
But that hadn’t been the final reason we’d kicked her out. No wonder she hadn’t tagged the gym.
Ugh! I quickly sent Declan a message asking if he’d seen the posts. He hadn’t, but he remembered gymbunny4eva.
Declan: I remember her. Andrea, was it? She was that wannabe fitness-guru influencer chick.
Me: Yup. She tried to use our gym to train her own clients.
Declan: I’ll see if I can get her to take them down.
Me: Damage is already done, but yeah, try.
That was the final reason why she was banned. Our insurance only covered fitness instructors and personal trainers we had on contract, so not only had Andrea been taking advantage of the gym to run her side hustle, but she was also a major liability.
I’d possibly solved the mystery of how my mother had found me, but I wasn’t any closer to a solution to my problem short of dropping this identity and going into hiding again. And that was something I wasn’t willing to do, not when I’d worked this hard to build my life from scratch.
I ordered in for lunch since I hadn’t had time to meal prep over the last few days. Hell, I hadn’t even had time to get groceries. And that reminded me of Gigi’s kitchen: it had all the basics: flour, sugar, salt, oil, and plenty of pantry staples like canned veggies and spices, but lacked fresh ingredients. She’d been busy too.
As another business owner, I knew how that was. There were only twenty-four hours in a day, and sometimes I had to choose life or the business, not both. And if time wasn’t the issue, then energy was. When I first started the gym, I was eating like crap for a while too.
Unlike some shifters who had a natural tendency to stay lean, minotaurs tended to put on both muscle and fat if we weren’t careful. Not to mention I was also half-human, and that hadn’t helped. Since I was a gym owner and personal trainer, it was more noticeable, especially since I posted on social media without my face. The entire gaze was on my body.
That was the fitness industry’s dirty little secret: those shredded bodies weren’t always healthy. Even without the use of hormones and other cheats, the bulking and cutting cycle wasn’t healthy. The dieting to get leaner, the counting of micro and macronutrients, the one time the fitness nutritionist I hired told one of our clients the carbs she could eat in one day amounted to a grand total of six blueberries. Six! Who the fuck eats six blueberries?
Needless to say, that nutritionist didn’t stay with us long. But still, I made a promise to myself to start eating better and start meal prepping. I didn’t have magic that used up all my calories like Gigi did.
She’d worried me so much yesterday. I’d known that it was bad for magic users to overextend themselves, but I’d never seen it in person. Holy fuck, it was scary. It was like watching her waste away in front of my eyes. By the time I finally convinced her to stop, she could barely stand. Her cheeks had been sunken in, and she looked so pale I’d wondered if she needed a blood transfusion just to survive.
The only thing that had stopped me from calling an ambulance was the fact that she’d started to recover the second she started eating and resting. That change had been shocking too. She’d made it through an entire sheet cake, her dinner, and some of mine last night. Magic was powerful stuff.
As I waited for my food to arrive, I opened my grocery delivery app and got to work, ordering more than usual so I could make extra when I meal-prepped.
Despite all that had happened this week, I couldn’t help but feel happy. I’d woken up this morning with the perfect woman in my arms. The one that had gotten away.
I shook my head. I was getting ahead of myself. I couldn’t do serious relationships. Not when the dragon still searched for me. Gigi and I were neighbors with benefits, nothing more.
The food arrived, and I turned on the glamor spell momentarily to grab it, chuckling again at the magic words. I’d elected not to use it earlier so I could give Gigi’s magic some rest, but I’d bundled up real good and I was sure no one had seen my face.
I was carefully sketching out the logo on the back wall of the main area after deciding that free-handing might not be such a good idea for such a large logo with so many circles, when Declan unlocked the door.
“You look good,” he noted. “Judging by the look on your face, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that yesterday was a success in more ways than one.”
“You could say that.” We’d technically won in the end. “Great thinking on the photo shoot,” I said, deciding to move the emphasis off Gigi and me. I wasn’t really sure what was happening between us yet.
“Some of the guys had been talking about doing one anyway. I’m just glad so many of them were willing to come down on a moment’s notice on a weekday. We were lucky it was after work. I promised the ones who couldn’t make it we’ll do it again on a weekend since this one was unplanned.”
“Does that mean we actually have to plan another one?”
“Yup!”