Chapter 6 Joanie
Joanie
The gym at the football club used to be my second home.
Now it was another planet. Racks of shiny silver free weights sat where there should have been cable machines.
The treadmills faced the wall instead of their natural home overlooking the training pitches.
It was disorientating, like when they alter the layout at Sainsbury’s and force you to spend an hour wandering the aisles searching for a tin of chopped tomatoes.
I lowered myself tentatively onto a bench in the strength-conditioning area and scrolled my playlist, hovering over workout songs.
None of them were right anymore. Everything was too upbeat and sparky.
This playlist was the music version of all the new posters that littered the walls, goading me.
The body achieves what the brain believes. No pain no gain. Strong begins now.
I’d been strong once. I’d never been the smartest in class or the prettiest or the most popular, but I was always the fastest. It only took a moment for the universe to show me I wasn’t invincible.
The posters don’t tell you that. Humans are fragile.
What doesn’t kill you is going to ruin your life for the foreseeable future. Pain begins now.
The radio drifted from where Derek sat at the concierge desk.
No one else trained this late. Getting back into a routine now the physios had signed me off to train alone was tough enough without having my teammates watching me.
Not that they weren’t supportive or sympathetic.
They were. It was just easier to be alone.
I didn’t have to walk the tightrope of trying not to meet people’s expectations about me.
Lying back to lift, I glimpsed myself in the silver glass that lined the wall.
The girl in the mirror looked like me, but mirror girl had those dark circles under her eyes and that sad, pinched expression.
Mirror girl was a ghost of someone who had lived in this gym before they put up the stupid posters and evicted the rowing machines to Studio Two.
I had a sudden urge to throw my phone with its stupid playlist against the wall. Maybe this was too soon, but if not now, when? I’d have to leave to do the commercial in a couple of days and that would mean less time at the gym. I had to stick to the physio program.
With a deep breath, I hoisted the heavy weight upward off the rack and onto my chest. Adrenaline buzzed through my veins.
I lifted and lowered once, twice, three times, until I found a rhythm.
The familiar scent of metal and sweat filled my nose, and with it came a bright, focused calm.
I completed two sets of reps and returned the barbell to the rack.
Chest heaving, I sat up and dusted my hands.
The physio’s words played in my head. A little more.
The most wretched three words ever spoken in this gym.
Every week they gave me a new program to follow.
Every week they demanded a little more. If I wanted to get back on that pitch this season, I had to stick to it, no matter that I hated it.
It wasn’t like I had a choice. Football was my life.
I’d been lost these past nine months without it.
I loaded an extra five kilograms and lay back down. The metal sang when I heaved the barbell upward and lowered it to my chest. Arms shaking, I struggled to push it back up. Too heavy. My spine arched off the bench. A sharp twinge in my knee made me cry out. The shock hurtled me back to the pitch.
Rain plastered my hair to my neck. I launched into the air for a scissor kick as if gravity was some made-up concept that didn’t concern me. The arrogance! I heard my knee pop before I even felt the pain.
I took deep breaths, fighting to ground myself.
I had to get this weight up before it crushed me.
A shot of fear made my body jerk. My arms screamed in protest as I put every scrap of might into pushing the bar up.
Tears pressed behind my eyes. I can’t. Sweat trickled down my forehead over my ears. I sucked in enough air to cry out.
“Derek!”
He’d have to be quick. Please. Someone. My eyes filled with panicked tears. How could he hear me over that radio? My whole body shook with the effort.
“Derek!”
A swiftly approaching figure appeared in the mirror, then a pair of hands cradled the bar, taking the strain. Relief washed over me like warm water. My eyes froze on the tall, athletic form of a man, and my brain could only form one thought: definitely not Derek. Kieran Earnshaw.
With Kieran lightening the load, I pushed up with everything I had and replaced the bar overhead on the rack. I lay still, sweating and panting, not daring the slightest flex of my leg in case it set something off. The radio punctuated my harsh gasps.
It was hard to calm down when I was all too aware of the way Kieran’s muscles rippled and his broad shoulders strained against his blue Calverdale T-shirt.
I hadn’t been this close to him since the PR meeting.
No doubt his fearsome silence was because in his head he was running through all the ways that I was an idiot for lifting without a spotter.
I finally caught my breath to speak. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
That voice. Despite myself, Kieran’s flinty, down-to-earth, northern accent made me tingle in places I had no business tingling in on a Thursday night at the gym. I expected him to walk away, but he positioned himself at the head of the bench and held his hands, poised to help.
He raised a dark brow. “More?”
Not a chance. The knee twinge had been small but enough to freak me out. I couldn’t go back to square one. Besides, Kieran Earnshaw probably earned more in an hour than I did in a year. Surely he had better things to do.
“Thanks, but you don’t have to spot for me. I’m done.”
Kieran’s expression was level. Not a hint of a smile.
His gaze traveled down my faded Nirvana T-shirt and cycling shorts to the hinged support brace I wore on my knee.
If he was expecting to share his workout space with some hot gym bunnies, then he’d be sorely disappointed.
Orthopedic aids didn’t exactly scream sexy.
There was nothing glamorous about my life.
He probably saw me the way everyone here saw me. The way Gerard had seen me. Mortimer Fox’s entitled, over-privileged daughter. The horrible memory of my last encounter with Gerard, when I’d heard him talking about me outside his office, flashed through my mind.
“How’s it going with Morty Fox’s daughter?”
The words held me frozen outside the door.
Gerard laughed, and it was a cold, flippant sound—nothing like I’d ever heard from him before. “She’s really into me.”
“She likes you? She needs a new prescription for her glasses. She must be as bonkers as her dad,” the other voice said.
Gerard laughed in that weird dismissive way again. “Way too clingy. She can’t keep her hands off me. She’s nothing like you’d expect. She’s very . . . quiet. But I like it when these vanilla types get wild.”
A grim humiliation made my throat close up.
He’d said he was willing to wait until I was ready, but instead he’d been spreading lies about me like a high schooler.
He was also terrible at Scrabble. Dating Gerard was the romantic equivalent of the disastrous scissor kick that had ruined my knee.
A crazy, impulsive moment. Both things had taught me the same lesson.
Sometimes when you seize the day, you end up shredding parts of yourself—your knee ligaments, your self-respect, your faith in the male species.
“You shouldn’t be here alone at night. Derek can’t help you if you get in trouble lifting,” Kieran said.
I dared to stretch my leg out in front of me and flex my knee the slightest amount. No pain. No twinge. Thank goodness. “I like the gym when it’s quiet.”
His curious gaze fell back to the knee brace.
“ACL tear. It’s fine. I just need to stay positive.” I tried to inject some enthusiasm into my voice.
He raised a dark brow. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you need to stay positive?”
“It’s what people say, isn’t it? Stay positive. Hang in there. Keep your chin up.” I pasted on a smile and trotted out the words my well-meaning family issued to me on repeat.
He scowled. “I don’t believe in all that positivity bullshit. You don’t have to stay positive.”
A surprised chuckle escaped me. “I’ve never heard anyone make positivity sound like a bad thing.”
His inked biceps bulged when he folded his arms. “Sometimes everything is shit. I don’t like the pressure of pretending it’s not, and I don’t like people that pressure me to pretend it’s not. If you’re showing up and doing the work, that’s enough.”
An interesting take. If only it was true. Showing up and doing the work might be enough for someone like him. Not for me. Not for my dad.
He surveyed me with an intense brooding gaze. “I suppose you’re happy about the commercial. You got what you wanted.”
What I wanted? Excuse me? Still, better not to moan about it in case word got back to Claire or the others. Whining about a free holiday that others here would kill for wouldn’t win me any friends.
“It’s good for . . . building my brand.” I trotted out Skylar’s words.
“Your brand. Right.”
His stony face and flat tone irked me. Did he honestly believe I wanted to do this commercial? “You seemed pretty adamant you weren’t going to do it. I’m surprised you changed your mind.”
“Are you?” His narrowed eyes were accusing, even though I had no idea what I’d done wrong.
I folded my arms across my chest. “Yes.”
His gaze flicked to my phone on the bench and the lock screen photo of Ollie.
The photo had been taken at the launch party for Ollie’s third album.
Ollie sprawled across the hood of his fuchsia Lamborghini, wearing an oversized silver coat and looking like a baked potato wrapped in tinfoil. I posed next to him in fits of giggles.
Kieran’s sharp, critical gaze didn’t budge from the photo on my screen. His lips thinned with displeasure. What was this guy’s problem? I’d spent the past nine months mostly alone or in the physio office. It hadn’t exactly sharpened my social skills, but at least I wasn’t purposefully rude.
“Do you know Ollie?” I spoke just to break the weird silence. “He’s friends with your brother.”
“I know of Ollie.”
What was that supposed to mean? My family was eccentric, but I’d never known anyone nicer than my brother.
To me, he would always be the earnest ten-year-old kid who had held a funeral for a dead magpie and forced us to listen to the song he’d composed in the unfortunate bird’s honor.
“Majestic Magpie” had five falsetto verses with key changes and a bridge.
I suspected he’d recycled some of it for his most recent album.
My heart pounded. Don’t be difficult. Don’t give people what they expect from you. I didn’t do confrontation, but this was my brother. No one got to look at him like that. “Do you have a problem with Ollie?”
He stepped closer. My nose filled with his manly scent. He smelled like the inside of a lacquered box—of cedar and leather. His mouth twisted wryly. It wasn’t really a smile. I’d never seen him smile. Not once. Not even when he was cracking sarcastic jokes about Fizzz. Maybe he never smiled.
“I don’t have a problem with anyone.”
Liar. He looked like he had a problem with the air around him.
“Get yourself a spotter next time you lift or you’re going to hurt yourself,” he said.
Arrogant man. I knew how to lift. Just my luck, he’d caught me making my first mistake in this gym. His scowling appraisal made me hot and awkward, but I fought to hold his gaze.
I forced a polite smile. “I’d better let you get on with training. See you at the airport.”
He lifted his headphones back up. “You will.”
He marched to the men’s changing room without a glance back.