CHAPTER 4: THE RULES OF HIS WORLD
1071 Words
Two Days Later — Morrow Global Executive Gym.
I found the gym by accident.
I'd been looking for the stairwell when the door swung open and I walked into forty feet of professional-grade equipment, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and Kade Morrow doing pull-ups like he was punishing himself for something.
He was shirtless.
He dropped from the bar, reached for a towel, and looked at me with zero surprise, which meant either he'd seen me on a camera somewhere or he simply never looked surprised by anything.
I was betting on both.
"There's a gym on eight," he said.
"I was looking for the stairs."
"The stairs are on eight too."
"Good. Now I know." I didn't leave. His assumption that I'd leave immediately made me want to stay. I set my bag down on the nearest bench. "Unless this is a private floor."
He looked at me for a moment — that flat assessing look I still hadn't found an appropriate response to. Then he turned back to the weight rack without answering.
Which was, I was learning, his version of *stay if you want.*
We orbited each other in loaded silence — both pretending the other wasn't there while being aggressively aware of exactly where they were.
I ran intervals. He moved through a lifting sequence with the mechanical efficiency of someone who'd stopped thinking about it years ago. I watched him in the mirror — not attracted, I told myself. Just cataloguing. The economy of how he moved. The way he never wasted motion.
It was so annoying.
I moved to the cable machine, adjusted the weight, took my position, and started my set. My form was good — I knew it was good — so when I felt him behind me I almost dropped the cable entirely.
He didn't ask. That was the thing. He just stepped in, reached past my left shoulder, and adjusted the height of the cable attachment two inches down with the calm confidence of someone who'd never once considered that touching a person without permission might require an introduction.
"Your shoulder's compensating," he said. "Lower anchor, you'll feel it correctly."
I turned my head. His face was eight inches from mine. Close enough that I could see the line where his jaw met his throat, could feel the warmth radiating off him after an hour of lifting. His eyes were on the cable machine, focused, like I was a form problem to be corrected.
Nothing about it felt professional.
"I've been doing cable rows for six years," I said.
"And for six years your right shoulder has been taking the load your lat should be carrying." He stepped back. Gave me room. "Try it."
I tried it.
He was right.
The muscle engagement was completely different. Deeper. More precise. My body had been doing it wrong for six years.
I finished the set. Set the cable down.
"You watched my form from across the room," I said.
"Yes."
He moved back to his bench. Sat. Picked up his water bottle. "You were doing it wrong. Now you're not."
"You could have said something from over there."
"I could have." He didn't offer more than that.
I turned to face him fully. I was flushed from the run, hair pulled back, wearing a sports set that was entirely functional and somehow felt insufficient under the directness of his attention. I didn't fidget. I never fidgeted.
"Do you do that with everyone?" I asked. "Just touch first and explain later?"
"No." He looked at me steadily. "Just when I'm certain."
"Certain of what?"
"You didn't pull away from me."
I opened my mouth. Closed it. He was right and I didn't want to confirm it and we both knew all of that simultaneously — which was infuriating.
"You have a way," I said carefully, "of behaving as though consent is a formality."
"I have a way of reading rooms." He set his water down. "And people. You didn't want me to ask — you wanted it to just happen so you didn't have to choose it." He held my gaze. "I'm not wrong."
The anger was immediate.
"Don't do that," I said. "Don't psychoanalyze me before seven in the morning like it's a service you're providing."
"It wasn't a service. It was an observation."
"It was presumptuous."
"I'm frequently presumptuous. I'm telling you now so it doesn't catch you off guard later."
I stared at him. "You're warning me about yourself."
"I'm being accurate about myself." He leaned forward, elbows on knees. For the first time since I'd known him he looked like something other than a man fully in control of every variable.
"I'm not a good man, Vivienne." He said my name the way he always said it — like it had weight. "I need you to be clear on that early. Before this gets complicated."
The gym was very quiet.
"Before this gets complicated," I repeated. "What is this?"
He looked at me for a long moment.
"I don't know yet. That's the problem."
Instead I realized I wasn't afraid of what he'd said.
I had every reason to be.
The absence of fear bothered me more than fear would have.
I was still working out what to do with that when his phone rang.
He ignored it. Kept his eyes on me. The phone went quiet.
Then it rang again.
Something crossed his face fast as he glanced at the screen. I caught it from six feet away.
One word. One name.
*SERENA.*
Every line of him changed. Not dramatically — he wasn't a dramatic man — but I'd been studying him long enough to see the microshift. The way his jaw set differently. The way he was suddenly somewhere else behind his eyes.
He stood. Picked up his towel.
"We're done for today."
He was already walking toward the exit, phone in hand, the conversation closed like a door I hadn't realized had a lock.
I stood in the empty gym and listened to the silence he left behind.
I turned back to the cable machine and finished my set.
Perfect form, both sides.
I hated that he'd been right.
But I kept thinking about the way his face had changed when he saw the name on his screen.
I'd dismantled expert witnesses in courtrooms for years. I knew what it looked like when someone had a weakness.
Serena was his.
- Writer
