Chapter 4 #2
He rises too, and lingers close as I take over his machine. “Want me to make sure they’re not?” he teases.
Van der Berg puts on a show for Quinn, curling his biceps as he lifts a bar. The other one leans into her ear, whispering something from behind. A glimmer of amusement curves the edges of her mouth.
I release the handle, the sound of the weights clanging against each other making the others in the room startle.
I turn to my friend, teasing, “Just don’t send one of our old buddies after her for a young wife of his own to match yours after I leave, okay? She’s a kid.” I grab a weight bar. “And leave them alone.” I indicate the boys she’s with. “You’ve settled into calm, domestic bliss. Keep it that way.”
I should’ve been as smart as him back in the day, and then I wouldn’t be in the mess I’m in now.
He circles around my other side. “You saw his tattoo?” he asks under his breath.
I dart my eyes to the Green Street guy with Quinn. “Yes.”
I’ll ask Lance about Green Street later. It’ll save me from asking Madoc. I was hoping to avoid any mention of the club altogether, but I see now that it will be impossible.
Lance and I get busy lifting, one of my eyes staying on Quinn through the mirror in front of us.
“Sit ups.” Noah gestures her to the floor. “Wanna race?”
She breathes out a laugh. “No.”
Quinn moves to the pec machine, straddling the seat and sitting tall with her back arched. I shift my gaze away from her hips in her tight leggings.
“Leave her alone,” the other one chimes in. “You can’t fit her into your schedule anyway, Van der Berg.”
The latter just smiles at him. “Wanna race?” he repeats.
“Not really.” Green Street shrugs. “We already know I’m a better rider.”
“Can you even get into a bar?”
“And when I can,” he moves in closer to Noah, “what are you going to do then?”
“Take Quinn to a different one.”
She snorts, quickly folding her lips between her teeth to stop from laughing.
I scowl.
She rises from the machine, grabs a free weight in each hand, and raises both arms over her head. But she stops before she even starts, pivoting toward Green Street, who lurks behind her.
“Come around the front,” she instructs, pointing.
He smirks. “Yes, ma’am.”
He moves to the area in front of her, not at all embarrassed that she knew he was ogling her ass.
Quinn lifts both arms into the air, again and again. “So I hear you leapt at the chance to move here,” she tells Van der Berg. “Is this you living the good life?”
Why am I not talking to her? And if I’m not talking to her, then why don’t I move-the-hell-on to another area?
Noah puts his foot up on a bench, leaning his shoulder onto a machine as he smiles playfully at her.
“You mean, is it fun not waking up at four-thirty in the morning to shovel snow with a hangover because the Internet has been down for a week due to a storm, and the only thing to do is remain consistently drunk?” he retorts.
“When you get to wake up every day and know that not one hour will be spent being unhappy, yeah, that’s the good life. ”
To that, she smiles. Soft, genuine, and it stays there.
Fucking little shit. He sure knows how to talk to women. He’s sensitive, personable, wise… I don’t like him.
“Touché,” she breathes and then turns to the other. “What about you? Living the good life?”
He doesn’t miss a beat. “The only way out is through.” He shoots Noah a look. “I don’t leave my people behind.”
Noah’s eye twitches, but he doesn’t argue.
So, they both live here. Or close, anyway. Green Street Guy is younger than Quinn and Van der Berg. But probably only by a year or two. I gathered that much.
Noah drops to the ground, does one pushup, but then the other one drops down in front of him, eye to eye.
“Last one to twenty goes home?” Green Street suggests. “Now.”
He might be a little younger, but he’s bigger. Maybe an inch taller, but broader too. Like he was an athlete.
As a Motocross racer, Noah would try to keep his weight down.
“You sure?” he grins.
“I’m sure. You ready?”
“Almost.” Noah looks up. “Quinn?”
I find her in the mirror.
“Lie down on my back,” he instructs her.
Excuse me?
She stops mid-exercise, and I think I see her gaze dart to me, but it was too quick to tell. “No.”
“Please?”
He says it so fucking gentle, and even after all this time, I know Quinn hasn’t changed. She finds it hard to disappoint people.
My muscles burn as I watch her set the free weights down, lower to him on the floor, and press her chest into his back. The tips of her shoes rest on his heels as she layers her forearms across the back of his shoulders.
“Like this?” she asks, and I wait for her to look at me again. She doesn’t.
Noah smiles. “Perfect.”
“Set?” the other one snips.
“Go,” Van der Berg announces.
Everything tenses as I watch both young men dip and rise, pushing their body weight—and in Van der Berg’s case, Quinn’s too—up off the ground.
Again.
And again, both bobbing up and down with damn near the speed of a bullet.
Quinn smiles, her stomach probably flipping because that’s what happens when we ride rides. What the fuck…
Looking across to Green Street, her eyes shine. A few people stop to watch, one taking out his phone and filming.
“Hey,” Lance blurts out at my side. “You’ve been doing that same exercise for about a hundred reps.”
I pause. Huh?
I remember the bar in my hands and drop it, just noticing how hard I’m breathing. My arms are on fire.
I turn my head over my shoulder, watching with my friend as Noah bounces and she starts to slip.
“Hold tight!” he shouts, excited.
She clutches his shoulders, squeezing her eyes shut and laughing, even as he slows around number twelve. The other one outpaces him and Van der Berg winds down more and more, losing strength, but he and Quinn beam anyway, even knowing they’ll lose.
Smart kid. He didn’t need to win, and Green Street knows it as he finishes first but isn’t happy. Van der Berg didn’t need to prove his manliness. He created an experience with Quinn. His own. His and hers.
Other people will make her happy.
“I win,” Green Street says as they all rise.
“Did you?” Noah dusts off his pants. He takes Quinn’s hand, helping her up.
“Better not let the mayor see his sister riding your back,” the other one warns. “Or…maybe he should.”
I grab my towel as he gestures to the security camera in the corner behind Van der Berg’s head.
“I’d be more worried about the other half of her family tree,” I interject, taking a seat at the arm press again. “One Trent will kill you both, the other will hide it.”
I didn’t mean to say it—or insert myself—but she’s not getting a quality workout with these two dipshits anyway. I know, in the basement of my mind, that I’m full of shit, but it’s a good enough excuse. She’s busy, and she’s here to workout.
Lance takes his cue, stepping off to make a call, and I begin my reps, not looking at either kid.
“Who are you?” Van der Berg asks.
But Quinn responds before I have a chance to say anything.
“This is Lucas Morrow.” She stands at the lat machine, elbows pinned to her waist as she just moves her lower arms, pushing the bar down. “He used to babysit me.”
Babysit?
I dig in my brow. Why would she say that? As if I’m so much older.
And these dickheads don’t need to know my name.
I rise and lean down, changing the pin on her machine to add more weight. “It wasn’t babysitting.” I lift the corner of my mouth in a smile. “It was my pleasure.”
“Morrow…” someone whispers.
I stand up straight, eyeing Green Street. He zones in on me, brows pinched together, and I can see the wheels turning in his head. My pulse throbs in my neck.
“How’s everything coming with the house?” Quinn asks me.
Noah touches her shoulder, giving her a nod as he takes his loss and leaves.
When he’s gone, I reply. “It’s going well.”
“Do you think it will sell quickly?”
Her eyes shine, wisps of hair falling around her cheeks and shoulders from her ponytail. I intended to give her the hat back, but…it’s nice to see her face.
“Why?” I ask. “Anxious to be rid of me?”
She moves to the next machine. “I’m just starting to wonder if I need a place of my own.”
As in buy my parents’ house? I go still for a moment, letting the thought sink in.
That would actually be nice.
I’d know it was staying in the family, so to speak, and she would take care of it. I never intend to return to the Falls, but that house was where I met Madoc. Made some good memories. Came of age. I’d love to know it was going to someone who would respect it.
But she doesn’t need a place of her own. I glance at Green Street. Where she can have a personal life…
I inhale a hard breath. “Stay with your parents,” I tell her, moving to the pull-up bars with my towel and water. “For as long as you can. Trust me.”
No need giving herself a mortgage, especially when Madoc says she’s at the shop eighteen hours a day anyway.
I slide past Green Street, staring him in the eyes a few inches from mine. “You can leave, too,” I nearly whisper, not bothering to ask. “I’ll see her home.”
He swallows, quiet for the first time tonight.
And that’s when I know that he knows exactly who I am.
Clearing his throat, he says, “I’ll see you later, Quinn.” He looks at me, though. “Gotta run.”
“Bye,” she calls out.
And he leaves, disappearing down the stairs.
I shouldn’t have done that. He’ll tell someone whose attention I don’t want.
But Quinn already told him my name, and now I know… They remember me in Weston. All I can hope is that I’ll be gone before anything goes wrong.
I look around for Lance, spotting him on the treadmill again. He’s keeping his distance because he thinks I’m about to get laid.
I stand next to Quinn’s machine. “I recognized Noah Van der Berg,” I tell her. “Madoc mentioned him. Who was that one who just left?”
Green Street…
“Farrow Kelly,” she replies. “Graduated from Weston a couple of years ago, I think. He’s friendly with Hunter and Dylan.”