Twenty-four.
My teeth grit together so hard I'm probably going to need a dentist. My back flexes—I can feel it, that satisfying stretch of muscle fibers engaging, the way my shoulder blades pull together like wings preparing for flight. The phone propped on the tripod across the gym captures everything: the strain, the sweat, the determination carved into every line of my face.
Content. This is content. This could be content.
Twenty-five.
I hold at the top, arms trembling, muscles burning with that delicious fire that tells me I'm alive. The gym is empty at this hour—4:47 AM according to the digital clock on the far wall, glowing red in the dim pre-dawn light. Just me and the equipment and the faint scent of rubber mats and industrial cleaner, the ghost of a hundred workouts past lingering in the recycled air.
The small-town fitness center isn't anything fancy—basic free weights, a few machines that look like they've seen better decades, mirrors along one wall that are spotted with age but still functional. Someone's hung motivational posters featuring impossibly buff people doing impossible things. "PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY," one declares in aggressive font.
Pain is also your body telling you to stop, but sure, let's ignore millions of years of evolutionary survival instincts for aesthetics.
I lower myself down with controlled precision, feeling every inch of the descent in my lats, my biceps, my forearms. The pink Beats headphones nestled over my ears pump something aggressive and bass-heavy directly into my skull—the kind of music that makes you feel invincible even when you're one pull-up away from collapse.
Twenty-six.
This is what I do. Film workouts I'll never post. Create content for an audience I'll never have. Build a fitness influencer portfolio that lives exclusively in my camera roll, gathering digital dust alongside photos of latte art and screenshots of encouraging text messages from Ruby.
Who wants a muscle mommy girlie omega with piercings and tattoos who looks like she lifts Alphas for breakfast?
The thought is bitter and familiar, worn smooth from repetition like a worry stone in my mental pocket. I've beenapproached before—back in Chicago, people would stop me on the street even when I was drowning in my standard Starbucks apron, asking if I was a fitness influencer, if I had a channel, if I took clients. Something about the way I carried myself, they'd say. The confidence. Thepresence.
I never pursued it.
Why didn't I pursue it?
The question catches me off guard mid-pull-up, and my grip falters for just a second before I recover. I hang there, suspended between earth and intention, genuinely trying to remember what excuse I'd given myself. Fear of judgment? Too busy with work? Not the right time?
All bullshit. Every single one.
I let go of the bar.
My feet hit the rubber mat with a soft thud, and I stand there catching my breath, chest heaving, staring at my hands. They're shaking—not just from the exertion, but from something deeper. Something that's been building for days, maybe weeks, maybe years. The tremor starts in my fingers and works its way up my wrists, my forearms, until my whole body feels like a fault line waiting to crack.
I've been in my head lately.
The acknowledgment feels like confession, whispered in the empty gym like a secret I'm finally ready to admit. I've been drowning in my own thoughts, treading water in the ocean of anxiety that's been my constant companion since I fled Chicago. Since I ran from an arranged marriage that's only going to happen sooner or later. Since I escaped a pack that treated me like complete and utter shit.
Damien. Milo. Caden.
Their names taste like ash on my mental tongue. Three Alphas from "good families"—translation: old money with new cruelty—hand-selected by my parents to be my forever. As ifforever is something you can purchase. As if love is just another line item in a business merger.
Why would a rich omega from a hierarchy of wealth deserve real love and not financially beneficial transactions in the line of marriage of convenience?
Not me, clearly. Never me.
As if my thoughts have summoned the inevitable—because the universe has a sick sense of humor and I'm apparently its favorite punchline—my phone begins to ring.
The cheerful jingle cuts through my music like a knife through silk, and I don't have to pick the phone up from the tripod to know who it is. The ringtone is a custom one I set specifically for family calls: the Imperial March from Star Wars, because I'm nothing if not thematically appropriate.
I sigh.
It's a deep sigh, the kind that comes from somewhere beneath your ribs and carries the weight of generations of disappointment. I take a breath—in through the nose, out through the mouth, the way my therapist taught me before I could no longer afford a therapist—and answer with a tap to the side of my pink Beats.
"Rose."
My aunt's voice is immediate and sharp, cutting straight to the point without bothering with pleasantries likehelloorhow are youorI acknowledge you as a human being with feelings. That's Aunt Vivienne for you—all business, no warmth, the emotional equivalent of a corporate email marked "URGENT."
