Chapter 1 #2
“Run in the morning,” Jared says, climbing into the cab.
“My business is open in the morning!” I’m louder than is helpful. “This is the only time I have.”
He shifts the truck into gear and hits the gas.
“Shelburne Falls is a safe place,” I point out.
“Until a traveler comes through one night and slaughters a family,” Jax argues, “and people start saying ‘it was such a safe town, we used to leave our doors unlocked…’”
I drop my head back, locking my hands on top. “I’m in prison.”
“No.” Jared turns down his music. “You’re our little sister. And beautiful. A born target.”
For what? Men who might want to talk to me?
I meet his eyes in his rearview mirror and actually laugh. “Do you have any idea what your daughter,” and then I point to Jax, “and your son, for that matter, are getting up to at that camp with their significant others?”
“Don’t piss me off,” Jared bites.
“Don’t gross me out.” Jax scowls.
This is part of the reason I feel younger than my niece and nephews. Jared and Jax are well aware their children are in love—and acting upon it—but I’m too fragile to go out at night.
For a minute, I think he’s driving me back to the bakery—or to my parents, where I still live since I just finished school and haven’t had time to rent an apartment—but he stops a block over, in front of the new gym that popped up a couple of years ago.
Which I was interested in checking out, but again, haven’t made time for.
They drag me inside where a young woman is smiling at the counter. “Hi, welcome to Astrophysics. Can I help you?”
“Look, Quinn, a track.” Jared points above, and I see runners circling the building on the second floor.
Jax slips his hands into his pockets, nodding in approval. “Indoor, cameras, proper lighting…loving it.”
I give the girl a tight smile as Jared slaps down his credit card. “Set her up.”
I should fight it, and I have every intention of being quite the handful for my brothers when I have more time, but I’m just too tired.
It takes twenty minutes to fill out my information and sign some papers.
I bypass the tour, schedule a fitness test for another day, and grab a towel, heading through the lobby.
Jax works on his phone at a small round table near the doors. Jared sits with him, elbows on his knees as he peels a complimentary orange.
“You’re just gonna sit there?” I ask. “The whole time?”
Like he doesn’t trust me to get home on my own?
He just tips his eyes up at me but says nothing, and I remove my jacket and head into the gym. I wish Madoc was here. He’s a lot more reasonable. He’d get them to leave.
Sticking my earbuds back in, I restart “The Boys of Summer”, leaving my towel and jacket on a bench.
I step onto the three-lane track, wait for another jogger to pass by, and quickly follow.
An arrow on the wall dictates the direction we’re running, accompanied by a sign letting runners know that eleven-and-a-half laps equals one mile.
I dig in my heels, loving the slight cushion of the ground, easier than pavement, and I pass under a digital timer above our heads that keeps minutes and seconds if we want to pace ourselves.
Not a bad set up, actually. I just want to go, though.
There are mirrors on the outside wall, sporadically interrupted with windows, the inside walls occasionally giving way for people to leave the track and head into the workout areas.
Two-dozen weightlifting machines sit on the oval floor at the center of the track, and I look around, seeing a few women, but mostly men.
One huge guy with a long silver beard lifts a massive dumbbell over his head with one arm as he sits on a bench and watches himself in the mirror.
Another props up his phone to film himself doing squats.
I float my eyes over the room, seeing a man in black track pants with a white hoodie doing pullups. I let my eyes linger for a second. Long, lean, broad… Blond.
A wall cuts off my view, and I blink, my heart suddenly pulsing a mile a minute.
I try to swallow, but I can’t. The wall breaks again, and I jerk my head, looking back into the workout area.
He keeps going, pulling his chin up over the bar, and I stare at the side of his face and the back of his head…
but it’s too far away to be sure. His hair is wet with sweat, and he has earbuds in like me.
I lose sight of him again. I can’t get a look at his face. Another wall, and then I enter the other side of the gym giving way to a different workout area. I try not to, but I find my legs moving a little faster to circle around again to the other side.
It’s been eight years since he left town. If he were back in town, Madoc and Fallon would’ve made a big deal about it. I would’ve heard.
The Cubs cap feels tight. His Cubs cap. I keep going, my braid bouncing over my chest, but when I come up on his weight room again, he’s gone. Runners pass me, and I scan the room twice out of the corner of my eye.
Then…
I see him.
My stomach flips. He lies on a bench, holding a bar over his body before bringing it down and pumping it back up, again and again.
His long legs are bent, his shoes on the ground, and even though he’s wearing a lot more clothes than the other men here, I can’t stop staring at everything but his face.
Built chest under the hoodie. Narrow waist. Toned shoulders and strong arms. The muscles on the top of his thighs bulge just a little under the black pants.
The wall separates us again, and when there’s a break, I glance quickly, seeing him replace the bar and sit up. He rises, grabs his towel, and lifts his head, meeting my eyes.
My heart plummets into my stomach.
Oh my God.
Lucas?
I look away, disappearing behind another wall and entering the other side of the gym.
My chest hurts. I stop, tapping my earbud to pause the music as I step through the entrance to another workout area. I stagger a little over to the water fountains on the wall and bend over, pressing the button. I drink, wetting my parched throat.
What the hell?
How can he be here? How can he be here for even an hour without me hearing it from someone?
But he’s just working out like he’s been here for days.
I stand upright, wiping off my mouth. Did he recognize me?
I should say ‘hi,’ I guess. I grew up with him, even if I was way younger.
After college, he worked with Fallon as an architect before transferring out of the country all those years ago to build skyscrapers in Dubai.
I was thirteen when he moved abroad, and his baseball cap is all I have left. I traded him my compass for it on his last night in town. Does he still have the compass? I guess he wouldn’t be wearing it. I dip my head down to hide the hat, my cheeks warming with embarrassment.
But I catch myself in the mirror behind the fountain. My hair’s a mess, makeup’s gone, and I’m sweating already. Thankfully, my tired eyes are hidden under the bill of the cap.
No, it’ll be awkward. This isn’t how I imagined seeing him again.
I walk to one of the Pelotons and climb on.
Starting a Lanebreak workout, I mute the music and just follow the designated pacing and resistance while I absently read the headlines floating across the bottom of the TV screen above.
Through my earbuds I hear barbells clanging and feet pounding the treadmills, and I almost settle into a pace until he passes behind me with a friend.
“Come on, cardio,” his buddy says.
His friend jumps on the treadmill on my left, Lucas taking the one on the other side of his friend.
I pedal hard, glancing at them both in the mirror on the wall in front of us.
His friend turns his head toward me, his short dark hair falling over his brow.
He wears black shorts and a gray, sleeveless T-shirt with the sides cut out, showing off his tanned muscular arms and pecs.
Is that…Lance?
He turns to Lucas on his other side. “I fucking hate working out at night,” he says. “What do you do with the endorphins when you leave?”
Lucas doesn’t reply. Guess it was a rhetorical question. I keep facing forward, minding my own business.
Lance is an old friend of Lucas’s from college. I saw him maybe once or twice growing up, but Lucas kept his friend group largely separate.
“I need my wife,” his friend remarks with a smirk as he jogs. “Thank God, I married a woman with as much energy as me.”
“Girl,” Lucas corrects him. “You married a girl ten years younger than you.”
“I had to cast a wider net to find my soulmate.”
They obviously think my earbuds are on and that I can’t hear.
And if he’s the same age as Lucas, then his wife is older than me. That’s not a girl.
His friend is right, though. I hate working out at night. It takes longer to calm down when I go home and try to sleep.
Lucas taps his earbud. “Lucas Morrow.”
My stomach swims up to my heart, hearing him say his name. My hands almost slip off the handlebar, but I wipe the sweat from my palms onto my shorts and refasten my fingers around the bike. I hide my smile.
Why didn’t I know he was here? He didn’t stay in touch, walked away from us as if he just wanted to keep his eyes forward and the past in the past, but...we were all so close once. Wouldn’t he want to see me?
Why would he, I guess. I was just a kid. He’d probably be more interested in looking up an old girlfriend first.
His friend continues to run next to me, Lucas listening to the other end of his call.
“I won’t be away long,” he tells whoever he’s talking to. “Retrofitted? No. That boat’s fifty years old. He’s not paying for that.”
I watch him, his squared shoulders outlining the wall of his chest that’s bigger and broader than the last time I saw him. It would feel like I was in a cocoon if he wrapped his arms around me. I lick my lips, my blood warming at the thought.
He just told whoever he’s talking to that he won’t be away long. Would he just leave, without me ever knowing he was in town?