Chapter 6: The Trainer's Choice
The thud of the gym door closing echoed in the sterile air, a period at the end of Richard’s sentence. Dee stood frozen, her back to the empty bay, the metallic taste of finality on her tongue. Then she turned. The elevator doors were still open, a silent invitation.
She didn’t take it. Instead, her heels clicked across the concrete towards the private interior staircase that led up to the penthouse’s main level, bypassing the lobby. Each step felt heavier than the last. The grand, cold space greeted her with a blast of conditioned air. Floor-to-ceiling windows showed a postcard view of the city, a kingdom she was now being evicted from.
Her phone buzzed in her hand. A notification from her security app: Garage Access – Richard Thorne – Departed. He was gone. Probably to his club, or to his lawyer’s office to set the machinery of divorce in motion before the sun set.
She walked through the vast living room, her reflection ghost-like in the dark TV screen. Into the kitchen of sleek, untouched marble. She filled a glass with water and drank it all, leaning against the counter. The silence was absolute. It was the silence of the last three years, amplified to a deafening roar. It was over.
A different vibration. Not her phone. A low, rhythmic thumping from downstairs. It took her a moment to place it. The bass from the gym’s sound system. He was still there.
Marcus.
She hadn’t answered him. She’d just left him standing there, surrounded by the very equipment that had started this, the air thick with the unspoken thing growing inside her. She put the glass down. The water felt like a stone in her stomach.
The walk back to the gym felt longer. She pushed the door open softly. The lights were low, the room lit only by the ambient glow from the equipment panels and the city lights bleeding through the high windows. Marcus was on the leg press machine, not working out, just sitting there, his head in his hands. The music—some aggressive electronic track—pulsed around him. He hadn’t heard her come in.
She stood watching him. The powerful lines of his back, now slumped. The sheen of sweat on his neck from what must have been a frantic, confused workout. He was just a kid, really. A kid who’d gotten tangled up in a rich, lonely woman’s crisis.
She reached over and tapped the control panel on the wall. The music cut off mid-beat, leaving a ringing silence.
He flinched and turned. His face was pale, his eyes red-rimmed. He looked wrecked. “Dee.”
She stayed by the door, arms crossed. “You’re still here.”
“Where else would I go?” His voice was ragged. “I just… kept moving. Couldn’t stop.” He wiped his face with his forearm. “I kept waiting for you to come back. Or for security to come throw me out.”
“He’s gone,” she said.
Marcus absorbed that. He nodded slowly, then his face crumpled again. He slid off the machine and stood up, but didn’t approach her. He looked like he might be sick. “I’m so sorry. I don’t… I don’t even know what to say. That was so out of line. I’m your trainer. I crossed a line that… there’s no coming back from.”
“You didn’t cross it alone,” Dee said. Her own voice sounded distant to her. “I unlocked the door. I led you upstairs.”
“That doesn’t matter!” The words burst out of him, loud in the quiet room. He gestured helplessly. “I’m the professional. I’m supposed to… Christ.” He paced a few steps, his running shoes squeaking on the floor. “Are you…? I mean, is it…? Are you keeping it?”
The question hung there. Direct. Terrible.
“Yes,” she said.
He stopped pacing. Closed his eyes. Let out a long, shuddering breath. When he opened them, he looked directly at her, and the fear in them was almost childlike. “Okay.”
“Okay?” she echoed.
“I just… I need a second.” He walked to the weight bench and sat down heavily, his elbows on his knees. He was silent for a full minute, just breathing. Dee watched the play of muscle in his shoulders, the same shoulders that had carried her weight, that had held her down in the sunlit bed. Finally, he looked up. “I don’t have much. You know that. I rent a one-bedroom over in Ridgeview. My car’s a lease. I’ve got about six grand in savings, most of it for my trainer certification loan.” He spoke in a flat, rehearsed tone, as if listing assets for a bank. “But I’m not… I’m not a ghost. I won’t be one.”
Dee felt something tighten in her chest. It wasn’t romance. It was responsibility, stark and simple. And it was more than Richard had ever offered.
She pushed off from the doorframe and walked toward him. She stopped a few feet away. “You don’t have to do this. I’m not your problem. This,” she gestured vaguely at her own body, “is not your obligation.”
Marcus shook his head, a sharp, frustrated motion. “Don’t. Just don’t. You’re not a problem. You’re a person. And that’s…” He looked at her stomach, then quickly away, as if it were a light too bright to stare into. “That’s a kid. My kid.” He said the words like he was testing their weight, and finding them crushingly heavy. “I don’t know how to do any of this. But I’m not running.”
A laugh escaped her, sharp and without humor. “You’re sweet. And you’re insane.” She knelt down in front of him, ignoring the protest in her knees. They were almost eye-level. “Look at this place, Marcus. Look at me. My life is about to explode. There will be lawyers. There will be stories in trashy magazines. There will be my husband, who is a very powerful, very angry man. You signing up for that is like… it’s like volunteering to stand in front of a tidal wave.”
He reached out, hesitant, and his fingers brushed a strand of hair away from her face. The touch was startling in its gentleness. “You asked me once why I never hit on you. Even though you’re… you know. You’re you.”
She remembered. A flirty, testing question during a cool-down stretch months ago.
“I said it was unprofessional,” he continued, his voice low. “And it was. But it was also because you seemed… untouchable. In a castle. And I’m a guy with a set of weights and a tight budget.” His thumb traced the line of her jaw, a fleeting contact. “The castle’s gone now, Dee. The walls are down. And I’m still here.”
The raw vulnerability in his words, in his touch, was a different kind of shock. It wasn’t the calculated passion of their single afternoon. It was messy. It was real. It terrified her.
She caught his hand, holding it still against her cheek. “So what’s the plan, trainer? You gonna rep your way through fatherhood?”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “I have no idea. But I can spot you. However this goes.” He took a deep breath, his expression shifting from fear to a determined clarity. “You shouldn’t be here. Not with him… not with all this.” He gestured at the oppressive luxury around them. “Where are you going to go?”
The practical question was an anchor. “I have a lawyer. I’ll go to a hotel. The firm has a corporate account at The Laurent.”
“That’s still his world,” Marcus said, standing up, pulling her up with him. His hand was warm and sure around hers. “Come home with me.”
She blinked. “What?”
“It’s not this,” he said, looking around the gym with a dismissive frown. “It’s small. The shower pressure sucks. But it’s mine. And it’s not his.” He squeezed her hand. “Just for tonight. So you’re not alone in some hotel room staring at a minibar.”
The offer was so simple, so devoid of the complicated dance her life had become. A place that was not his. The temptation was a physical ache.
“Just tonight?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“However long you need.” He let go of her hand and ran his own through his hair, the gesture betraying his nerves. “I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m not… I’m not expecting anything. Jesus. That’s the last thing…”
She believed him. That was the most shocking part. She believed this beautifully naive, in-over-his-head man meant every word.
“Okay,” she said.
The word seemed to change the air in the room. The crisis wasn’t over, but it had a new shape. A temporary harbor.
“Okay,” he repeated, a faint light returning to his eyes. “What do you need?”
“My things,” she said, her mind starting to click into a practical gear. “From upstairs. I can’t take much. He’ll have the inventory.”
“Then we take what matters,” Marcus said, and the ‘we’ felt solid, like a floor beneath her feet.
Twenty minutes later, she stood in the walk-in closet that was the size of his apartment. She bypassed the shelves of designer handbags, the racks of gowns. She pulled a single, large overnight bag from the top shelf—the one she used for the spa weekends Richard never joined. She filled it with simple, expensive leggings, soft sweaters, sneakers. From her jewelry case, she took only the pieces her mother had left her—a few modest, vintage things. She threw in her passport, her birth certificate, the folder of her prenup documents.
She paused at her cosmetic table. Dozens of creams and serums, each a tiny hope in a jar. She swept a handful of essentials into a makeup bag.
When she turned, Marcus was leaning in the doorway, watching her. He had her forgotten gym bag slung over his shoulder. “That’s it?” he asked, nodding at the single suitcase.
“That’s it,” she said. She looked around the cavernous, beautiful prison. “Let’s go.”
He drove an older Jeep Cherokee, clean but clearly well-used. The interior smelled faintly of protein powder and clean laundry. He held the passenger door open for her, a gesture so antiquated and genuine it made her throat tighten.
As he pulled out of the building’s underground entrance, the doorman gave a deferential nod, not registering the man in the driver’s seat. They merged into the evening traffic, leaving the shimmering tower behind.
They didn’t speak. The radio played a low alternative rock song. Dee watched the neon signs of the city blur past, the familiar landscape shifting into unfamiliar neighborhoods. The buildings grew smaller, closer together. The streets were busier, louder, more alive.
He parked on a tree-lined street in front of a narrow, three-story brick building. “Home sweet home,” he said, with a wry, self-deprecating smile.
His apartment was on the second floor. It was exactly as he’d described: small, clean, sparsely furnished with a comfortable-looking gray sofa, a large TV, and bookshelves filled with textbooks on kinesiology and anatomy. A single framed poster of a mountain landscape hung on the wall. The air smelled like him—that same clean, straightforward scent.
He took her bag and set it by the sofa. “Bathroom’s there. Kitchen’s… well, it’s right there. Help yourself to anything.”
Dee stood in the center of the living room, feeling utterly displaced. She was a piece of expensive art plopped down in a functional, friendly space. She looked at Marcus, who was watching her with cautious concern.
“I’m gonna order some food,” he said, pulling out his phone. “Thai okay? There’s a place that delivers fast.”
She nodded, unable to form words. She wandered to the window, looking down at the street. People walked dogs. A couple argued good-naturedly on a stoop. Life, normal and messy.
This was her life now. Not a penthouse, but a second-floor walk-up. Not a husband, but a scared, decent boy who made her laugh and who had, for one afternoon, made her feel real.
She placed a hand on her stomach, over the subtle, firm curve beneath her sweater.
The castle was gone. The walls were down.
And the terrifying, wide-open world was right outside the window.
"Now, are you gonna welcome me to my new place? Pregnancy hormones are gonna keep you busy, trainer boy."