Even without his glasses, the silhouette in the doorway was unmistakable.
Warren.
He stopped dead in the doorway, staring at him as if he needed a second to believe what he was seeing. Jude’s pulse kicked hard. He bent to pull on his sock, but his fingers fumbled the fabric, useless against the thud of his own heartbeat.
Warren waited for the door to click shut, then stepped fully inside and stopped opposite Jude. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Jude stood, buttoning his shirt, keeping his eyes down.
“I didn’t know you used the school gym.”
“Sometimes.” Jude tucked in his shirt. He turned for his tie, then flicked it around his neck.
“You should’ve said.” Warren’s tone was calm, but underneath there was a faint tremor Jude caught anyway. Not nerves, exactly. More… unsettled. “I’d’ve spotted for you. Helped you reach.”
Jude furrowed his brow. “Reach what?”
“Whatever your goal is.”
Jude spun, snorting. “Bench pressing isn’t my thing. I have no goal weight to lift.”
“Right.” Warren worried on his lip, watching him. Waiting. As if Jude might say more. Or get some double meaning he was clearly missing.
So he dropped back on the bench to pull on his trainers and Warren’s gaze caught on them instead, noting they weren’t the usual dress shoes. Nor the polished brogues Jude wore for work. Or if he was trying for causal then the Chelsea boots. Or the boat shoes. No, they were the trainers he’d worn on the school trip.
Warren sat across from him, elbows braced on his knees, as if closing the space was the only option. He pointed at the Tesco carrier at Jude’s side. “Where’s your kit bag?”
Jude stamped his heel into the shoe and looked up, meeting Warren’s gaze. Too direct. Too sincere. It landed somewhere deep, where it had no business landing, in the foolish part of him that thought maybe this man cared. That maybe he’d already worked out what Jude was hiding. That somehow, in less than a month, Warren had shown up at the right times more than the people Jude had known for years.
What the hell was that about?
“Jude—”
The door banged open and a pack of lads barrelled in, laughing and shoving each other, bags slung over their shoulders, cutting off whatever Warren had been about to say.
Warren stood. “Keep it down, lads,” he barked, stepping towards them. “This ain’t no nightclub.”
The volume dropped, though a couple muttered under their breath. Warren’s gaze swept the group, until one by one they found somewhere else to look.
Warren pointed to a lad at the back. “Boots off before you hit the benches. Drag half the pitch in here and the cleaners’ll have my head.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jude used the moment to slip his glasses on, rake a hand through his hair, and gather his things. When he turned, Warren was still watching him. Hard to speak with eleven loud teenagers bouncing around the changing room, but they didn’t need words.
It was there in the look.
Whowasthis man?
This quiet wall of muscle who somehow kept appearing at the exact moment Jude needed someone. This intuitive bastard who seemed to hold his heart without even trying.
Too good to be true.
Which meant he was.
Jude knew better than anyone that people weren’t always what they looked like on the surface. Take Callum. Hero at first, swooping in to pull him out of a bad scrape in a Leeds nightclub. Rescued him from a situation that would have left a bitter taste in his mouth. But that hero had rotted fast, revealing the man Jude now wished he’d never met. If he’d just taken the tenner that night, let that stranger have his five minutes, maybe he’d have swallowed the disgust and been done with it.
Instead, he’d signed up, without knowing it, for ten years of misery and regret.
