The receptionist smiled before Sebastian had fully reached the desk.
“Morning, Mr Hale!”
His eyes flicked to the name badge for half a second. “Morning.”
She held out the folded towel. “Same locker as always?”
“Please.”
He walked through the turnstile. She turned to her colleague and shook her head, still smiling.
“Third year running, and I could shave my head tomorrow, he still wouldn’t know it’s me unless I introduce myself again.”
Qinn watched him through the glass from the lobby. Daniel had told her once, half-joking over a beer he probably should not have had, that his boss could shake a board member’s hand at a merger dinner and fail to recognise the same man twenty minutes later at the bar. Prosopagnosia. Face blindness. Born with it. He had spent his life covering the gap with name badges and memorised voices instead of faces.
I only meant to test it once. New hair, a library two boroughs from here, see if he’d notice a stranger who wasn’t a stranger. I never expected it to actually work. What I’m doing might be foolish. It might even be cruel, dressed up as something romantic. But it’s the only way I’ve ever found to stand in front of him without him deciding, before I’ve said a single word, that a makeup artist from the wrong postcode doesn’t belong anywhere near his world.
She pushed the door and walked in wearing charcoal athletic wear, hair in a high ponytail, hazel contacts over her natural brown eyes.
Sebastian lay on the bench, barbell in his hands, eyes on the ceiling. The bar wavered. Qinn stepped in and caught the right end before it slipped.
“Thanks. Lost count for a second there.”
“No spotter, no phone in reach, and your mind somewhere else entirely. Rookie mistake.”
He laughed once, short. “I’ve been doing this for twelve years.”
“Then today’s just an off day. Happens to the best of us.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen you here before.”
“New membership. Ivy.”
“Sebastian.”
She set a dumbbell down and nodded at the bench. “Since I just saved your bar, you can spot me on bench. Fair trade.”
“Fair trade.”
She lay back. He stood behind her head, hands hovering under the bar. On the fifth rep her arms trembled. His fingers came close enough that the back of his hand brushed her wrist as he helped her rack the weight.
“Good rep.”
She looked up at him from the bench, still breathing hard, and smiled. “You’re better at that than you think you are.”
His hand lingered near her shoulder before he offered it to pull her upright. Their palms met.
The gym music dropped away in her head. His grip tightened on her wrist and yanked her forward. She slammed into his chest and they both dropped onto the long bench. Her damp sports top clung to her breasts. He braced above her, arms locked, sweat dripping. His mouth found the hollow of her collarbone, hot and open. One large hand slid down her side and gripped her hip through the stretch fabric. She hooked a knee over his thigh and fisted the damp material of his T-shirt.
Metal clanged somewhere across the room. She was sitting up, chest heaving, cheeks flushed. He had already stepped back half a pace.
“Are you alright, Ivy? You look overheated.”
She grabbed her water bottle. “Just pushed a bit too hard on that last rep. Let’s get some air.”
They sat on the bench by the river windows.
“So, twelve years, same gym, same time, alone. That’s either discipline or you’re hiding from someone.”
“Both, probably.”
“Who are you hiding from?”
His jaw tightened. “My mother, mostly. She has a very clear picture of who I should become. I spend most of my week negotiating how much of that picture I’m willing to be.”
Two women in two weeks, and he’s told both of them more than he’s ever told the girlfriend he’s paying to sit next to him at dinner.
“That sounds lonely.”
He looked at her. “It is.”
Her phone buzzed. She stood.
“I need to go.”
“Same time next Tuesday?”
Their fingers brushed on the water bottle.
“Maybe.”
In the women’s changing room she removed the hazel contacts. Her real brown eyes looked back at her. She pulled the tie from her hair and the strawberry-blonde fell. Her fingers touched the wrist he had held.
Twelve years alone at that gym, and today he told a stranger more than he’s told me in three weeks of contract. I don’t know if that should make me happy or terrified.
Sebastian watched the door of the changing room close. He opened the notes app. The title already existed: ELENA. Beneath it he typed a new line: IVY. Then the details he had noticed: freckles across the bridge of the nose, the way she covered her mouth when she laughed, the habit of saying “let’s leave it there” when she dodged a question.
His thumb hovered over the lengthening list.