Hard No: Secret Baby Enemies to Lovers Romance by Hazel Parker (fun to read txt) 📗

Bottom line, I didn’t really expect anything to come out of it. Now here I was, with…something. It’s more than a little vague, and that goes against every facet of my being. I don’t like vague. I like for things to be very direct and laid out.

On the other hand, I don’t feel that things with Steph are so cloudy that I can’t see how well they are progressing. I’m pleased with the developments so far. I suppose the thing that nags at me is the question of how deeply she’s invested in this.

As for myself, I know how I feel. I also feel sure about my short-term course of action, at least.

Keep going, I say to myself, and I activate my phone to make some more calls.

I’m in the gym tonight, even though the hour is late.  I need to do something that requires all of my focus.  I decide on the free weights.

It’s a solid theory, keeping my attention on balancing the bench press bar so that it doesn’t list to one side or the other, instead of dwelling on the fact that somewhere out there, Steph was no doubt up and about herself, busily working.

Not really somewhere out there, the voice in my head says. You know exactly where she is and can pretty successfully guess what she’s doing.

The bar I’m pressing wobbles at the top of its ascent, and I hastily set it onto its brackets and sit up.

I’m distracted after all, it seems. It’s too seductive, imagining her sitting at her kitchen table, working on her computer, a cup of tea at her elbow, forgotten and growing cold. I find myself wondering what she’s wearing as she stares intently at the computer screen. Has she changed clothes after coming home from the restaurant, or is making the cup of tea the only break she’s given herself tonight?

I look at my phone. I can easily call her. I’m sure she’s up, and I’m just as sure that she’d stop what she was doing to take my call.

I’m not going to do that, though. I know that she is on the brink of a life-changing experience, professionally, and how much that will mean to her. I’m not going to interrupt her plans for that, as absurdly burning the midnight oil as they are.

Instead, I incline the weight bench for some dumbbell presses. I can continue to work my upper body and not have to worry about crushing my own head as the result of a stray thought here and there.

Because it’s pleasant to think about her, to remember the way the moonlight looks on her bare shoulder, the way her voice speeds up the slightest bit when she speaks about something she’s passionate about, or the way she doesn’t seem to be all the way asleep even when I know for a fact that she is.

I lightly tap the dumbbells together at the top of their arc. I’m told you’re not supposed to do that, because it takes away from the effectiveness of the lift. I do it anyway tonight because the heavy clacking sound snaps my attention back to the present, the here and now.

That’s one of the secrets to my success, the focus I place on what’s happening right now and what’s going to happen in the future. Dwelling on the past, either its successes or its failures, has never been of much use to me.

I suppose that’s the reason I can look back on some things like Sharon’s bailing on our marriage without bitterness. I remember being hurt when I had been in the thick of it, even angry. Now, though, I have a calmness about it. She was here for a long time; now she’s not and never will be again. I could rant and rave about that, but what would that accomplish? She’d still be gone.

It would be easy enough to find out where she is and what she’s been doing with herself all this time. Like most other problems, a simple phone call can set the wheels in motion towards my enlightenment.

Again, though, what purpose would the knowledge serve? None that I could see, so it would be wasted energy. I’d rather focus my energies on the things I can affect right now, or in the near future.

Steph is right now. She is also the near future.

I end up working out for the better part of an hour, somehow managing to balance the weights against my wandering thoughts. My body and my mind are working overtime, and so both are thoroughly exhausted by the time I finally finish, shower off, and head for bed.

Sometimes, turning in for the night feels like surrendering. It’s tempting to wish that the rest of the world was awake and still as eager to get things done as me, but, like dwelling on the past, there’s not much use in that. Everyone else has long since gone to sleep, so now there’s nothing else but for me to do the same.

I can, however, hope for good dreams. I’ve had some success with lucid dreaming, where you’re aware that you’re asleep and can control what you dream about. It’s a handy technique for continuing to think about a problem or challenge even when you’re asleep, or for continuing a pleasant experience through the present moment.

I focus on the sensation of Steph’s arm through mine, and the smell of her hair, as I switch off the light and drift quickly off to sleep.

Chapter 19 - Steph

There was a movie that came out in the nineties, I can’t remember the name of it or who was in it, but it was about a man who manages to clone himself multiple times to deal with the pressures of his busy and demanding life.

I never actually