In my peripheral vision, I saw her jaw fall open.
He produced another cup, this time handing it down to me. My whole body locked down like someone had poured me into concrete.
His eyebrow, dark and slightly foreboding, rose slowly.
Kelly cleared her throat loudly, and I blinked.
Coffee.
The cup.
Right.
On the side of the cup was my last name in black Sharpie, and I swear, my hand didn’t shake in the slightest when I reached forward to take it from him. Our fingers didn’t touch because I damn well made sure of that.
His eyes, steady and, yup, unsmiling, watched me as I took a wary sip.
My eyes widened when it hit my tongue because it was exactly what I normally ordered.
With a slight dip of his chin, he murmured a short, growly, “Ward,” in greeting and was gone. As he walked away, long legs striding easily over the black rubberized floor, I caught sight of another full drink carrier in his massive hands.
“What the fuck,” I whispered.
Kelly burst out laughing.
I gave her the side-eye. “You never heard me say that.”
She notched two fingers to her forehead in a salute. “Aye aye, boss.”
Like I was handling a pin-less grenade, I set the coffee cup onto the floor next to me and kept unpacking boxes with Kelly’s help. Only a few regulars were in, using the bags and the weights, so the gym was quiet.
After how long I’d worked there, the noises hardly even registered to me anymore. The clang of weights hitting a rack, the laughter of people talking, the music playing over the speakers, and the rhythmic tapping of someone on a speedbag in the corner should have all been comforting and made me feel better.
But everything was just … off. I couldn’t find my bearings in the place that was my touchstone.
“How many for your class today?” I asked Kelly.
Her face scrunched up as she thought. “Twenty-five, I think? I checked about an hour ago when I got here.”
“Yeah, why are you here this early?”
“I wanted to get in a workout.”
I glanced at her taking a leisurely sip of her coffee. “How’s that going for you?”
“Quite well, as I am helping my beautiful manager unpack these beautiful gloves from her hiding spot,” she said with a magnanimous gesture. Picking one up, she studied the design. “Now I get why Amy didn’t want the logo on the wrist strap. She knew what was coming.”
The pair I was holding lowered slowly into my lap because I hadn’t even realized it.
A change had been on the horizon for longer than I realized, peeking over the edge of my days unnoticed. It was me who hadn’t been paying attention.
Kelly chattered happily in my silence, but very little of what she said registered. Beyond the boxes, Aiden was familiarizing himself with the computer programs we used and reviewing the policies, schedules, and day-to-day information I knew like the back of my hand.
And I was hiding behind boxes because my reaction to him made me feel like I was bungee jumping naked from the Space Needle. A teenage crush was nothing to be embarrassed about, but there I was. Hiding.
“Iz,” Kelly said. By her tone, she must have been trying to get my attention.
“Huh?”
She grinned. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”
“I …” My shoulders fell. “Not really. I’m sorry.”
Kelly waved that away. “I said that you should go in there and thank him for the coffee.” An innocent enough statement, but then she fluttered her long eyelashes.
My head tilted. “Are you high?”
“Never on Wednesdays,” she answered gravely. Her wide smile broke across her face, and I found myself laughing under my breath. “I’m only half kidding. You should thank him, but honestly, that man is gorgeous, and he’s single, and you two have a million things in common.”
I wanted to shove a towel in her mouth to shut her up because hearing her talk about us together had my palms going a little sweaty.
“Kelly,” I said quietly.
She beamed.
“Stop talking about it.”
Kelly sighed.
An alarm went off on my phone, and I cursed under my breath.
“What?” Kelly asked.
“I forgot I have a bridesmaid dress thing with my sisters.” I blew out a hard breath.
“Am I invited to Molly’s wedding?”
I gave her a look.
Kelly sighed. “I know. But she’s marrying Noah Griffin. He’s Keith’s favorite player on the Wolves, and your brother is his favorite coach, which means half the team will be there, and then my boyfriend could die a happy man.”
I smiled. This was the byproduct of being in a family that was practically NFL royalty. I was constantly surrounded by world-class athletes, but look how it did me absolutely no good when it really counted. The mental image of spilling my coffee at his feet would haunt the hell out of me.
“As fun as that sounds, I don’t think siblings’ co-workers are invited,” I said. “Can you take my session with Glenn after your class? That’s the only thing I had on the schedule.”
She nodded. “No problem.”
I stood, stretching my arms over my head.
Kelly pointed at the untouched cup on the floor. “Don’t forget that.”
I swear, I looked at that cup like it was a snake coiled up around my legs, ready to sink its fangs into my skin.
She laughed, shaking her head as she left to get set up for her class. “You’re so suspicious, Iz,” she said over her shoulder.
Maybe to her, it was that simple. A thoughtful gesture from a serious guy. To me, though, it felt like something else entirely. If I drank that coffee, I’d start thinking about how—in his first week owning a new business—he took the time to figure out what every single employee on the schedule liked to drink. I didn’t want to think about Aiden Hennessy, with his excellent eyes, wide-as-a-house shoulders, and long-legged stride, doing quietly thoughtful things because it would shred my already embarrassed heart into a heap.
What it did was make me feel like that fifteen-year-old girl again, and I hated that.
Not because fifteen had been a bad year. On the contrary. Our family finally felt settled and right when I was that age. Paige was pregnant with Emmett, and I felt safe. Loved. It was why doodling in my purple diary about marrying MMA fighters who were ten years older than me felt completely acceptable.
The reality of my adulthood might look different than the one I’d dreamed up, but everything about it was great.
And what I didn’t need was Aiden making me feel like a starry-eyed young girl whose heart was soft enough to be crushed into bits. Been there, done that, and had a T-shirt and abandonment and control issues to go with it. I did not need to put myself in that position ever again.
And sure, it was great if he didn’t turn out to be an asshole, but holding that coffee, it felt far, far more dangerous that he might be more than what I’d built up in my head so many years ago.
That was why I walked that coffee over to the drinking fountain, took off the top, and slowly poured it down the drain. It was a small way to assert control over all the flutteries.
The brown liquid swirled quickly through the holes, and I breathed deeply once it disappeared. Decisively, I capped the travel top back onto the empty cup and tossed them both into the trash can next to the fountain.