Chapter 5
Catherine Celia
I should have gone upstairs when I noticed him.
That would have been the prudent thing to do.
I should have stepped off the elevator with my parents and Jaden, gone into the condo, taken off my shoes, washed my face, and crawled into bed with a textbook I had no intention of reading.
I should have done what responsible people did after a family dinner where they spent the entire meal pretending not to be aware of the man sitting beside them.
Instead, I stood in my bedroom for exactly four minutes, staring at my reflection in the dark window, still feeling the ghost of Hunter Russell’s thigh against mine.
Bare skin against bare skin. A second of contact.
Maybe less. Except my entire body had reacted as if he had put his hand on me intentionally.
Worse, Hunter had gone still too. I had felt it beside me, the sudden tension in him, the way his body locked down while the rest of the table continued as if nothing had happened, while Hunter and I had been sitting there like one inch of contact had lit a match under the table.
At least it did for me. I couldn’t tell if he was just terrified that he had touched my bare thigh or if his body was reacting in the same heated way mine was.
No, that would be crazy. He was one of my father’s best friends.
He had a daughter the same age as my sister.
But I couldn’t deny it was the first time in months I had felt anything that sharp.
That alive. Which was probably why, ten minutes after walking into the condo, I changed into workout clothes, tied my hair into a high ponytail, and told myself I needed to burn off some energy.
Pent-up energy. That was the phrase I used because it sounded clinical enough to be harmless. Yet nothing about Hunter felt harmless.
The hallway outside the condo was quiet when I stepped out.
The building gym was three floors below Hunter’s condo and several below ours.
I had been there a handful of times when school allowed it, usually late enough that I could pretend I wasn’t neglecting cardio for flashcards.
It was a good gym, sleek and quiet, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city, a row of treadmills, free weights, benches, resistance machines, and a polished wood floor in the stretching area.
Usually, it was empty this late. I walked up to the glass door, and my breath hitched.
My heart skipped a beat. Hunter was on the treadmill.
For a second, I stopped with my hand near the handle and let myself look at him before he saw me. He was wearing black workout shorts and a dark T-shirt dampening slightly at the collar. His headphones were in, his pace steady, his body moving with a kind of controlled power that was sexy as hell.
Before I could decide whether to leave, Hunter turned and saw me through the glass.
Our eyes locked for a moment. I pulled the door open.
There was no turning back now. Cool air hit my skin, carrying the faint smell of rubber mats, metal, and citrus cleaner.
Hunter slowed the treadmill by one level but didn’t stop.
His gaze flicked over me quickly, so quickly I might have missed it if every nerve in my body hadn’t been tuned to him.
Then his eyes snapped back to my face with the kind of discipline that should have made me laugh but didn’t, because I was too busy trying to keep my own gaze from dropping to the way his shirt clung to his chest.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asked, pulling one earbud free.
I walked inside and let the door shut behind me. “I didn’t try.”
His mouth twitched, but he kept running. “Someone your age should have an easy time falling asleep.”
He said that as if we were born in different centuries, which I didn’t like.
“I’m a grown woman, Hunter, and I happen to have a lot on my mind,” I countered.
His stride faltered. It was small, the kind of shift most people would have missed. His shoulders tightened, and his hand flexed against the rail before he let go again.
“I know you’re a woman,” he said.
His voice changed. It was lower now, rougher around the edges, and it slid over my skin in a way that made me forget I had walked into the gym to burn off energy, not create more of it.
I arched a brow. “Do you?”
Hunter looked over at me then. The gym was quiet except for the hum of his treadmill and the low mechanical rhythm of his steps.
Beyond the wall of windows, Dallas glittered in the dark, all city lights and glass towers, but inside the room, everything felt too close.
My skin buzzed with awareness. His gaze moved over my face.
“Yes,” he said. “I do.”
Something warm and reckless sprouted inside me.
I wasn’t the young girl who used to sit on his living room floor while Isla stacked blocks beside me anymore.
I had experienced life, love, sex. I stepped onto the treadmill next to his and pressed the start button.
The belt shifted beneath my sneakers, slow at first, and I rested one hand lightly on the rail.
“Good,” I said. “Because I don’t have the patience to be treated like I’m seventeen.”
“I wasn’t trying to treat you like you’re seventeen,” he said, sounding apologetic.
Hunter exhaled through his nose, his gaze moving back to the screen in front of him. “I meant you shouldn’t have the kind of things keeping you up that people my age have.”
I gave a short laugh. “That’s a nice idea, but life didn’t exactly wait for me to hit thirty before handing me real problems.”
His head turned slightly. “That sucks.” He said it like he cared, like he understood, not like he pitied me.
I pushed the speed higher until my walk became a jog.
The movement helped. It gave me a way to vent the restlessness under my skin, the strange, charged awareness that had followed me out of dinner, up the elevator, into my room, and then down here like a dare.
Hunter matched my pace without seeming to think about it.
For a few minutes, neither of us spoke. I tried not to look at the sweat darkening his T-shirt at the collar, the muscles in his arms, the strong line of his profile when he stared straight ahead. I failed.
The problem with Hunter Russell was that he didn’t have to do anything to be distracting. He didn’t flirt. He didn’t fill the room with noise the way some men did when they wanted attention. He was quiet, steady, and controlled, which only made the things he didn’t say feel louder.
“So, what’s on your mind?” he asked.
I almost said nothing. That would have been easier.
Safer. It would have kept the conversation on the surface, where we could pretend this was normal.
Two people who lived in the same building using the gym at the same time.
Nothing strange about that. Except his stare made my pulse trip when he looked at me too long.
“I started running after I caught my boyfriend cheating,” I confessed. Or more like blurted.
Hunter’s hand shot toward the treadmill rail. He caught himself before he grabbed it, but barely. His stride shortened, his jaw locked, and the controlled expression he had worn since I walked in cracked clean through.
“What?” he asked, as if he hadn’t heard me right.
I kept my gaze forward. “My ex. We were together for two years.”
Hunter slowed his treadmill, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. If I stopped moving, the confession would settle too heavily, and I didn’t want to stand still under the weight of it.
“He was a resident,” I continued. “Which, at the time, I thought was a good thing. I thought he understood what my life looked like. The hours, the pressure, the way medicine can take over everything if you let it. I thought we were both ambitious and tired and trying to build something.”
Hunter didn’t interrupt. That made it easier to keep going and harder at the same time.
“I went looking for him one night while we were both on shift. I thought we could steal a few minutes together.” My voice went flatter, and I hated that. “I found him in an on-call room with a nurse.”
Hunter stopped running. The treadmill slowed under him until he stood still, one hand braced on the rail, his body tight with a kind of anger that felt too intense for a story that wasn’t his. I kept jogging.
“It wasn’t dramatic the way people think it would be,” I said. “I didn’t throw anything or scream. I just stood there for a second, trying to understand how something so ugly could happen in such a normal place.”
I swallowed, focusing on my pace.
Hunter’s voice came out rough. “What did you do?”
“I closed the door and didn’t turn back.” I was out of breath now from the speed I was running.
He was quiet.
“I finished my shift. I answered questions, reviewed charts, smiled when people spoke to me, and went home. Then I started running because if I moved fast enough, I didn’t have to think about how humiliated I felt.
” There it was in a nutshell. I had always looked up to my parents, who had a great marriage.
Dad supported all of Mom’s dreams and vice versa.
There was never a time when Mom had to worry about a puck bunny or Dad’s eyes wandering.
“You weren’t the one who should’ve felt humiliated,” he said, his jaw so taut I thought it might snap.
I finally slowed my treadmill to a walk and looked over at him. My breaths were fast, and my body was coated in a sheen of sweat. Hunter’s expression was different now. His usual restraint was still there, but underneath it was something rawer.
“You sound sure,” I said.
“I am.”
“I was a fool, Hunter. I had these great parents who set the bar high, and I thought every man would be devoted in the same way.” I huffed and took a sip from the water bottle I’d brought down with me.
“I know all about that. My parents are still madly in love,” he said with a crooked smile. “But someone else’s betrayal doesn’t make you a fool. It means you trusted someone who didn’t deserve it.”