27 - Jess
Jess
The silver screen of my phone remained stubbornly dark on the locker room bench.
Three outgoing calls went straight to voicemail last night, and the green text bubbles from this morning sat without a read receipt.
Dane opted for complete radio silence, a classic corporate retreat tactic that made irritation simmer beneath my skin as I laced up my sneakers.
The main floor of Capitol Fitness bustled with the usual five o’clock madness. The metallic clang of iron plates and the steady thud of treadmills formed a wall of sound.
Dane stood by the cable crossovers, his back turned, the muscles of his shoulders tensing as he pulled the handles downward. The rigid set of his spine practically screamed a desire for isolation.
“Hey,” I said, stepping into his line of sight as he released the weights.
Dane picked up a gray gym towel from the top of the machine, wiped his neck, and adjusted his grip on the attachments without a single glance in my direction.
He launched into another set of twelve, his movements mechanical, ice-cold, and perfectly detached.
He looked right through me, treating my presence like a glitch in his workout routine.
“Dane. We need to talk about last night,” I muttered, leaning against the steel frame of the adjacent equipment.
The stack of weights slammed into the base with a loud clang.
Dane unclipped the handles, retrieved his water bottle, and walked straight toward the free weight section without uttering a syllable.
The silent treatment felt incredibly childish for a man who managed multi-million-dollar corporate restructures for a living.
Hunter blocked my path near the dumbbells, a concerned crease between his eyebrows. “Jess, let him cool down. He's spiraling. I tried talking to him in the locker room and he nearly bit my head off.”
Brock joined him, arms crossed over his chest, his gaze following Dane’s retreating form. “Want me to go shake some sense into him? He's acting like an idiot.”
“No,” I told them, placing a hand on Hunter’s forearm before dropping it. “This is between Dane and me. Go do your squats. I'll handle this.”
They hesitated before retreating toward the power racks, leaving the floor clear.
Dane claimed an incline bench, lifting a pair of seventy-pound dumbbells into position. I moved right along with him, claiming the empty space at the head of his bench. When he leaned back to press the iron toward the ceiling, my face occupied his entire field of vision.
His dark eyes narrowed, a flash of irritation breaking through his icy exterior as he completed the repetitions. He dropped the weights onto the rubber matting with a dull thud and stood up, immediately moving toward the leg press machine at the far end of the gym.
This ridiculous game of fitness-labeled hide-and-seek reached its absolute limit.
Following him across the black rubber flooring, I stepped directly onto the metal footplate of the leg press before he could load his weight. I crossed my arms, blocking his access to the machine entirely, eliminating all pretense of a normal workout.
“Get off the plate, Jess,” Dane said, his voice a low, gravelly rasp. The words finally broke through his self-imposed embargo. “I'm trying to finish my set.”
“No,” I demanded, leaning forward so only he could hear me above the roar of the gym. “You ignored my calls, you ignored my texts, and you ran out of my apartment like a scolded teenager because Hunter kissed me. Look at me, Dane. Right now.”
Dane rested his forearms on the padded vinyl backrest of the leg press, his posture slumping as the fight leaked out of him. He looked up through a fringe of dark hair, a faint, weary crease bracketed his mouth. “You're really stubborn, you know that?”
“It's my best quality,” I barked back, leaning my weight into the metal footplate to ensure he stayed put. “After my intelligence and killer sense of humor, of course.”
“Of course,” he murmured. A tiny tug at the corner of his lips betrayed him, the hard corporate armor finally showing a hairline fracture. His dark eyes darted across the main floor, where a group of personal trainers stood chatting near the water fountain. “Let's go somewhere less... visible.”
I quirked a brow, a slow grin spreading across my face. “The underground parking?”
A genuine laugh broke from his chest, a brief glimpse of the man beneath the analytical exterior. He shook his head, the memory of our backseat tryst instantly softening the rigid line of his jaw. “The spin studio. It's empty until seven.”
The cycling room sat in total darkness, a forest of stationary bikes silhouetted against the black mirrors.
The faint, metallic tang of industrial cleaning solution clung to the rubber flooring.
Dane clicked the door shut behind us, cutting off the bass-heavy playlist bleeding from the main gym floor.
He leaned back against the instructor's elevated stage, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Alright,” he said, his voice flat in the quiet space. “We're here. Talk.”
“You skipped out of my living room like you caught me committing a felony, Dane. Then you ghosted my phone for twenty hours. I deserve an explanation that doesn't involve a fictional restructuring meeting.”
Dane rubbed the back of his neck, his fingers digging into the muscle.
The cool, detached facade dropped away, leaving something raw and frustrated in its place.
“I have a hard time with it, Jess. Seeing you with Brock, watching Hunter press his lips to yours on your couch while your roommate plays referee. It doesn't work for me.”
“They're part of this, Dane. We talked about this.”
“Knowing it is different from sitting five inches away while it happens,” he countered, his voice rising slightly before he checked the volume. “I'm bowing out. You have them. They're your speed. They've got the history, the easy locker-room banter. You can have them.”
“I don't want to just have them,” I insisted, taking a step into his personal space, the heat from his skin radiating through the darkness. “I want you in this mix, too. You don't just get to quit because it gets uncomfortable.”
“I know what I want, Jess, and it's not a timeshare,” Dane said, his jaw tightening as he stared down at me. “I don't do joint ventures with my personal life. I don't share.”
“You aren't sharing a commodity, Dane. You're figuring out a connection with me.”
“By watching another man kiss you in your own apartment?” He stepped off the stage, towering over me, the frustration rolling off him in waves. “What is it you want, huh? What?”
“I want you to stop running away the second things get complicated!”
“That's not an answer,” he snapped, his dark eyes locking onto mine, his breathing deep and ragged as the space between us shrunk to nothing. “What do you want from me, Jess? What?”
“I want... I want... to go dancing,” I blurted out, the words flying into the empty studio before my brain could filter the impulse.
Dane froze. The intense, brooding fury on his face collapsed into total bewilderment. His arms dropped to his sides. “What?”
“You heard me,” I said, squaring my shoulders and refusing to back down from the absolute absurdity of the moment.