So, I let it go outwardly, even though internally, not a chance in hell.
“Okay,” I said.
Her brows pulled together like she’d expected more from me. An argument. A demand. A scene. Maybe some part of her was braced for it, and that pissed me off almost as much as the bruise.
I reached for a towel and wiped my hands, forcing my voice back into something normal. “Speed down.”
She blinked. “What?”
“You keep talking and forgetting you’re walking uphill.”
Her eyes dropped to the treadmill screen, and sure enough, the incline had climbed two levels higher than where she’d started.
“Oh my gosh.” She hit the button fast, color rushing back into her cheeks. “This machine is aggressive.”
“You pushed the button.”
“Victim blaming.”
“That’s not what that means.”
“It’s treadmill violence, Cade.”
“Pip.”
“What?”
“You’re losing a fight to cardio.”
The corner of her mouth twitched, and some of the panic eased out of the room. Not all the way. Not enough. But enough for her to breathe without looking like she had to think through it first.
“You’re a terrible trainer,” she muttered.
“You’re still alive.”
“Barely.”
“Yet somehow still dramatic.”
She gave me a look and stepped off the treadmill, grabbing her water bottle from the cup holder. The bruise moved with her, faint but visible every time her wrist turned, and I made myself look away before my expression did something I couldn’t take back.
Because once I noticed it, I couldn’t stop noticing everything else. The way she glanced toward the gym door when voices got louder upstairs. The way her body tensed for half a breath before relaxing whenever someone slammed something in the kitchen above us. The way she positioned herself where she could see the door without seeming aware she had done it. The way her fingers slipped toward the pocket of her hoodie tiedat her waist, searching for something that wasn’t there because she’d left her bag near the wall.
Somebody had taught her to live ready.
That kind of fear didn’t come from nowhere. It was trained into a person slowly, until their body learned danger before their mind had time to name it. Bliss had learned it so well she didn’t even seem to realize how often she obeyed it.
I started reracking plates because doing something with my hands was better than standing there with violence crawling under my skin. Metal clanked against metal, sharp and clean, the sound cutting through the low music humming from the speakers.
“You’re brooding,” she said.
“I’m lifting.”
“You’re brooding near weights. Different aesthetic, same emotional issue.”
I glanced over. She was trying to pull us back. I could see it in the joke, the tilt of her mouth, the forced lightness. She wanted the bruise gone from the room without having to explain how it got there, and for now, I let her have that.
“For someone who voluntarily walked into a gym, you’re very judgmental,” I said.
