Page 3 of Ripped

Jesus. I’ve been living with Miles for over a year now. I fall asleep and wake up next to him almost every goddamn day. Wyatt has been my ride-or-die since the first day of film school. We’ve gotten drunk together, high together, laid together. We’ve pulled countless all-nighters, eating cold pizza at three in the morning. They’re the two most important people in my life, the ones I turn to when shit hits the fan.

Even now, when they’re the shit that’s hit my fan, my first instinct is still to call up one of them and tell them what happened.

Except, they aren’t the people I thought they were. The boyfriend I know and the best friend I have would never do that to me. They wouldn’t lie to me and betray my trust and do it all right under my fucking nose. In my apartment—the one I spent months looking for when Miles wanted us to move in together. In my goddamn bed.

And where else? The couch, the shower, the kitchen counter? If my stomach wasn’t already empty, I might just hurl. Bile burns in my chest either way.

I straggle down the street. My legs are already useless from the spin class and now the cold helps numb them even more. But nothing can mute the riot in my head. Questions and accusations and denials crash into each other until I want to scream at the top of my lungs. Maybe then I’ll wake up and find that this is all a horrible, very bad nightmare.

I walk. My feet take me down streets and around corners until there’s a bright storefront beside me. I wrench the door open and stumble inside. Warm stale air, sharp and tangy like air isn’t supposed to be, assaults my nose. I push back the hood of my coat and stare at my surroundings.

I’m at Mars Fitness.

“Hey, Connor.”

I flinch. My name doesn’t sound like mine anymore. My body doesn’t feel like mine either. The life I thought I had less than an hour ago was a sham and now I don’t trust anything.

“What’s up? You forget something?” Sawyer eyes me curiously from behind the front desk.

Donnie’s at the far end. He’s changed from his cycling gear into a staff t-shirt, the Mars logo a bright crest on his chest. Black-rimmed glasses are perched on his nose and he’s tapping a pen on a stack of papers.

Oh god. What am I doing here? I need to leave. I need to hide.

My feet stay planted exactly where they are.

I need to pretend I’m okay so they won’t guess what happened. Can they tell by looking at me? Do I have it written across my face?

I open my mouth and the sound that comes out isn’t human. It’s a cross between a dying duck and nails on the chalkboard. My vision goes blurry and suddenly, the floor is rushing at me. I make it halfway down before strong arms come out of nowhere and catch me.

CHAPTER TWO

DONNIE

One minute, he’s standing there like he can’t figure out how he got here. The next, he’s swan diving toward the floor. If I was standing even one foot farther away, I would never have made it to him in time.

“Oh, shit!” Sawyer shouts from behind the front desk. “Is he okay?”

I’m on my knees with this guy and his puffy winter coat in my lap. He’s simultaneously hyperventilating and sobbing. He’s having some sort of attack. My guess is that he’s not okay. Not by a long shot.

“What did you say his name was?”

“Connor. His name’s Connor.” Sawyer somehow knows the name of every single member of the gym, which is mind-boggling to me, but that’s what makes him so great at his job.

I’m not so great with names, I’m better with faces. And I’ve seen Connor in my spin class before. Just earlier tonight, in fact. He was in his usual spot in the back corner and he’d seemed fine. I hadn’t noticed any signs of distress or overexertion. He’d looked good at the end of class when I did my personal check-ins with each person.

“Hey, Connor, buddy. You want to stand up for me? So we can get out of the way?” It’s getting late so the gym isn’t all that busy, but we’re right in front of the door and there are already a few people hovering around us, rubbernecking the action.

Connor is about my height, but he’s got broad shoulders and probably a good fifty pounds on me. I wave Sawyer over to help me get him to his feet. The staff break room is behind the front desk, so we maneuver him back there and out of sight of the curious onlookers.

He clings to me the entire time like he can’t stand up on his own, and when I try to deposit him on the couch, he won’t let me go. I have no choice but to sit with him, holding him as great big sobs wrack his body. His hands are fisted in my shirt and his face is plastered to my shoulder. Hot, wet tears soak through to my skin.

His crying is making my heart hurt. They’re soul-shattering, coming from deep inside, ripping through him like they’re trying to turn him inside out. I know what those kinds of cries feel like. I know how your mind goes blank and the only thing that’s real is the excruciating pain. How you want to scream and tear things apart because that’s the only way to keep the pain from destroying you.

I’ve spent the past three years cycling in and out of crying sessions like this. Watching someone else go through it is almost as hard as going through it myself. “Shh, it’s okay. Let it out. I’ve got you.”

My thumb slides across my palm to spin my wedding ring around my finger. It’s hard to believe it’s been three years already. Well, closer to four now. During those first few months after Roger died, I spent every day like this. I lay in bed for days on end, drenching my pillow in tears. Even when I managed to come back to work, I had to run into the staff showers whenever the grief got too much and stick my face under the water in case I suddenly burst into tears. I still feel it sometimes, the need to exhaust myself with sobbing whenever the pain gets overwhelming.

I take a deep breath, then another. I’m shaking almost as hard as Connor is. It’s impossible not to feel the misery rolling off him, to not internalize it a little bit.

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