Page 30 of My Trainer Neighbor
"Nicole—"
"I'll text you," I said, already heading for the door.
I didn't text him.
Tuesday night, he knocked on my door with food.I told him through the closed door that I wasn't feeling well.It wasn't entirely a lie.My stomach was twisted in knots, and I hadn't been able to eat all day.
Wednesday, I sent him a message canceling our session.Work emergency.Also not entirely a lie.The Carleton situation was getting worse by the hour.
By Thursday afternoon, I was hanging on by a thread.
David had called me into his office that morning.Told me I was being reassigned.Moved off the senior VP track.Said I needed to "find my passion again" before I could help brands find theirs.
I'd sat through the entire meeting with a frozen smile on my face, nodding at appropriate intervals, taking notes like my world wasn't crumbling around me.
Then I'd gone back to my office, closed the door, and stared at the wall for three hours.
Everything I'd worked for.Everything I'd sacrificed.Gone because I'd forgotten how to feel.
The irony wasn't lost on me.I'd spent the past week trying to shut down my feelings for Shawn, and now my career was ending because I'd shut down my feelings about everything else too.
When I got home, I walked into my apartment and finally let myself break.
I threw my laptop bag on the floor.Swept the papers off my coffee table.Knocked over a picture frame.Stood in the middle of my living room and felt everything I'd been holding back for days, months, years come pouring out.
I was crying.Actually crying.The woman who never cried was sobbing in her destroyed living room, and I couldn't stop.
That's when I heard the knock on my door.
***
SHAWN
I knew I was fucked the moment Nicole started pulling away from me.
It had been three days since our marathon Saturday, three days since I'd made her come so many times she'd been boneless and sated in my arms.Three days since she'd looked at me like I was her entire world.
And now she was back to treating me like a polite stranger.
She'd shown up for her Monday workout session like nothing had happened.Professional.Distant.Acting like she hadn't spent an entire weekend in my bed screaming my name.
"How was your weekend?"I'd asked, testing the waters.
"Fine.Productive."Her response had been clipped, businesslike."Should we start with stretching?"
Stretching.Like I hadn't spent hours kissing every inch of her body.Like she hadn't begged me to fuck her harder, deeper, more.
But I'd played along, because I could see the panic in her eyes.The same panic that had sent her running after our first kiss, magnified by a hundred.She was scared of what had happened between us, scared of how good it had been.
Scared of needing me.
And I got it.Because I was scared too.
Sarah had looked at me the same way once.Right before she'd told me she couldn't do it anymore.Couldn't wait for a man who didn't know where he'd be in six months.Couldn't build a life with someone who lived out of duffle bags and had no real home.
"You're not stable, Shawn," she'd said."You're not enough."
I'd spent five years proving her right.Moving from city to city, client to client, never staying anywhere long enough to put down roots.Keeping things casual.Keeping things safe.
