Denied

I don’t know how long I’m there, but when I finally let up and take a moment to think, I’m drenched, my knuckles are sore, and my breathing is erratic. I catch the bag and let it settle, then take a cautious glance around the gym, wondering if my lash-out has been noticed. No one is staring. I’ve gone totally unnoticed, everyone focused on their own gruelling workout. I smile to myself and collect a cup of water and a towel from the nearby shelf, wiping my pouring brow as I make my way from the huge room, a certain skip to my step. For the first time in weeks, I feel prepared to take on the day.

I head to the changing rooms, sipping my water, feeling like a lifetime of stress and woes have just been knocked out of me. How ironic. The sense of release is new and the urge to go back in and pound for another hour is hard to resist, but I’m already at risk of being late for work, so I push on, thinking this could get addictive. I’ll be back tomorrow morning, maybe even after work today, and I’ll thrash that bag until there are no more traces of Miller Hart and the pain he’s caused me.

I pass door after door, all with glass panes, and peek into each. Through one I see dozens of tight backsides of people pedalling like their lives depend on it, through another are women bent into all sorts of freakish positions, and in another there are men running back and forth, randomly dropping to the mats to do varied sets of push-ups and sit-ups. These must be the classes the instructor told me about. I might try one or two. Or I could give them all a go.

As I’m passing the final door before the women’s changing rooms, I pull up when something catches my eye, and backtrack until I’m looking through the glass pane at a punchbag similar to the one that I’ve just attacked. It’s swinging from the ceiling hook, but with no one in sight to have made it move. I frown and step closer to the door, my eyes travelling with the bag from left to right. Then I gasp and jump back as someone comes into view, bare-chested and barefoot. My already racing heart virtually explodes under the added strain of shock it’s just been subjected to. The cup of water and my towel tumble to the ground. I feel dizzy.

He has those shorts on, the ones he wore when he was trying to make me comfortable. I’m shaking, but my shocked state doesn’t stop me from peering back through the glass, just to check I wasn’t hallucinating. I wasn’t. He’s here, his ripped physique mesmerising. He looks violent as he attacks the hanging bag like it’s a threat to his life, punishing it with powerful punches and even more powerful kicks. His athletic legs are extending in between extensions of his muscled arms, his body moving stealthily as he weaves and dodges the bag when it comes back at him. He looks like a pro. He looks like a fighter.

I’m frozen on the spot as I watch Miller move around the hanging bag with ease, his fists wrapped in bandages, his limbs delivering controlled, punishing blows time and time again. The sounds of gruff bawls and his hits send an unfamiliar chill down my spine. Who does he see before him?

My mind spins, questions mounting, as I quietly observe the refined, well-mannered, part-time gentleman become a man possessed, that temper he has warned me about clear and present. But then I retreat a pace when he suddenly grabs the bag with both hands and rests his forehead on the leather, his body falling into the now subtle sway of the punchbag. His back is dripping and heaving, and I see his solid shoulders rise suddenly. Then he begins to turn towards the door. It happens in slow motion. I’m rooted in place as his chest, slicked with a sheen of sweat, comes into view and my eyes slowly crawl up his torso until I see his side profile. He knows he’s being watched. My held breath gushes from my lungs and I move fast, sprinting down the corridor and flying through the door of the changing room, my exhausted heart begging me to give it a break.

‘You okay?’

I look across to the shower and see a woman wrapped in a towel with a turban on her wet head, watching me with slightly wide eyes. ‘Sure,’ I breathe, realising I’m splattered against the back of the door. I can’t blush because my face is already bright red and steaming hot.

She smiles through a frown and carries on her way, leaving me to find my locker and retrieve my shower bag. The water is far too hot. I need ice. But after five minutes of fiddling with the controls, I fail to cool it down. So I make do and set about washing my tangled, sweaty mane and soaping down my clammy body. My earlier relaxed frame of mind and body have been obliterated by the sight of him, and now the visions are replaying in my mind, too. There are hundreds of fitness centres in London. Why did I choose this one?

I haven’t time to waste thinking too much or time to begin appreciating the pleasant effect of the hot water, which is now massaging my post-workout muscles, not burning my already heated flesh. I need to get to work. It takes me ten minutes to dry my body and hair and get dressed. Then I’m skulking out of the gym with my head down and my shoulders high, bracing myself for that voice to call me or that touch to ignite the internal flame. But I escape safely and hurry to the Tube. While my eyes are thankful for the reminder of Miller Hart’s perfection, my mind is not.

Chapter Two

As soon as the lunchtime rush dies down at the bistro where I work, Sylvie is on me like a wolf. ‘Tell me,’ she says, dropping to the sofa next to me.

‘Nothing to tell.’

‘Livy, give me a break! You’ve looked like a bulldog chewing a wasp all morning.’

I cast a sideways frown to find my co-worker’s bright pink lips pressed into an impatient straight line. ‘A what?’

‘Your face is all screwed up in disgust.’

‘He texted me,’ I grumble. I’m not telling her the rest. ‘He texted me to ask how I am.’

She scoffs and takes my can of Coke, slurping loudly. ‘Supercilious moron.’

I jump forward without thought. ‘He’s not a moron!’ I shout defensively, immediately snapping my mouth shut and retreating back on the sofa when I clock Sylvie’s knowing look. ‘He’s not a moron and he’s not supercilious,’ I say calmly. He was loving, attentive, and thoughtful . . . when he wasn’t being a supercilious moron . . . or London’s most notorious male escort. I drop my head on a sigh. Landing myself with one hooker is bad luck. Two? Well, that’s just unreasonable of the gods.

She reaches over and squeezes my knee. ‘I hope you didn’t entertain him with a reply.’

‘I couldn’t even if I wanted. Which I don’t,’ I say, pulling myself up.

‘Why?’

‘My phone’s broken.’ I leave Sylvie on the couch with a wrinkled brow and no further explanation.

All I’ve told her about my break-up with Miller is that there was another woman. It’s just easier that way. The truth is unspeakable.

When I enter the kitchen, Del and Paul are laughing like hyenas, each with a vicious knife in one hand and a cucumber in the other. ‘What’s so funny?’ I ask, making them both halt their happy tittering, their faces morphing into a wash of pity as they each assess my weak body and mental state. I stand quietly and allow them to reach the only conclusion there is. I still look washed out.

Del’s the one to snap back into action, pointing his knife at me, clearly making himself smile. ‘Livy can judge. She’ll be fair.’

‘Judge what?’ I ask, taking a step away from the blade.

Paul pushes Del’s hand down on a tsk and smiles at me. ‘We’re having a cucumber-chopping competition. Your silly boss here thinks he can beat me.’

I don’t mean to, but I laugh. It makes both Paul and Del jump back a little, shocked. I’ve seen Paul slice a cucumber, or I tried to see. His hand is a blur of motion for a few seconds until the vegetable is splayed out neatly, each slice perfect. ‘Good luck!’

Del smiles brightly at me. ‘I don’t need luck, Livy, sweetheart.’ He spreads his legs and lays his cucumber down on the chopping board. ‘Say when.’

Paul rolls his eyes at me and stands back, a wise move judging by the hold Del has on the knife. ‘Are you ready to time it?’ he asks, handing me a stopwatch.

‘Is this a regular thing?’ I take it and reset the display.

‘Yep,’ Del answers, focusing on the cucumber. ‘He’s beat me on a pepper, onion and lettuce, but the cucumber’s mine.’

‘When!’ Paul shouts, and I immediately press down to start the timer as Del flies into action, bringing the knife down repeatedly and savagely on the poor cucumber.

‘Done!’ he yells, out of breath, looking over at me. He’s broken out in a sweat. ‘What did I get?’

I look down. ‘Ten seconds.’

‘Pow!’ He jumps into the air, and Paul immediately confiscates the knife from him. ‘Beat that, Mr Master Chef!’

‘Piece of cake,’ Paul claims, taking up position by the chopping board and scraping away the dismembered cucumber before setting his own down. ‘Say when.’

I quickly reset the timer, just in time for Del’s, ‘When!’

Paul, as I knew he would, sails through the cucumber with finesse and control, as opposed to Del’s heavy-handed massacre. ‘Done,’ he declares calmly, no sweat and no heavy breathing, which belies his overweight frame.

Looking down at the stopwatch, I mentally smile. ‘Six seconds.’

‘Get out of town!’ Del shouts, marching over to me and snatching the watch from my hand. ‘You must’ve cocked up.’

‘I did not!’ I actually laugh. ‘And, anyway, Paul sliced, you hacked.’

He gasps and Paul laughs with me, giving me an endearing wink. ‘So now I have the pepper, the onion, the lettuce and the cucumber.’ He takes a marker pen and puts a big tick through a basic picture of a cucumber on the wall.

‘Bullshit,’ Del grumbles. ‘If it wasn’t for the Tuna Crunch, you’d be history, buster.’ Del’s moodiness only increases our laughter, both of us chuckling as our boss stomps off. ‘Clean up!’ he shouts back to us.

‘Boys,’ I muse.

Paul smiles fondly. ‘It’s good to see some spirit, darling.’ He gives me an affectionate rub of the arm, not making too big a deal of it, before strolling off and shaking a pan of something on the stove. Watching him whistle happily to himself, I realise my earlier bubbling anger has completely subsided. Distraction. I need distraction.

It’s the longest afternoon ever, which isn’t a good sign of things to come. I’m left to lock up the bistro with Paul, Sylvie having got off early to get to her local boozer to nab a front-row seat in time for her favourite band that’s playing tonight. She nagged me for a solid half-hour, trying to entice me to go, but by the sounds of things, the band is in the heavy metal genre, and my head is banging enough already.

Paul gives my shoulder another friendly rub, the big man clearly uncomfortable with emotional women, before he heads off towards the Tube, leaving me to go in the other direction.

‘Baby girl!’ Gregory’s worried call hits me from behind, and I turn to see him jogging towards me in his combats and T-shirt, looking all muddy and grubby.

‘Hey.’ I fight against my body’s desire to fold in on itself at the prospect of another pep talk.

He catches me up and we start strolling to the bus stop together. ‘I’ve tried calling you a million times, Livy,’ he says, worried but annoyed.

‘My phone’s kaput.’

‘How?’

‘It doesn’t matter. You okay?’

‘No, I’m not.’ He scowls down at me. ‘I’m worried about you.’

‘Don’t be,’ I mutter, not giving anything else away. Just like Sylvie, he knows nothing of male escorts and hotel rooms, and he doesn’t need to. My best friend already hates Miller enough. There’s really no need to give him more ammunition. ‘I’m fine.’