Page 9 of Blurred Lines

I was still writing in Café au LA, but not as often. The juice bar at Planet Health yielded twice as much eye candy for half the calories, and the low-fat muffins were surprisingly tasty. I’d lost seven pounds. Seven freaking pounds in a month!

The first day I walked into Planet Health, I’d been the new kid in school, hoping for the best but secretly waiting to get bullied. I wasn’t a skinny Instagram influencer or a trust fund kid. I didn’t belong there. But Cristian had gifted me something more than an expensive membership at an exclusive gym. He’d given me hope, and I couldn’t afford to pass that up.

The coaches at Planet Health were fantastic. I’d tried joining a gym once before, but after the initial introductory session, you were on your own unless you could afford to pay extra for personal training. But in the Health Zone, I’d been assigned a personal coach I could call or email for advice, plus there was constant support from the other staff on shift. I’d even tried a kickboxing class and nobody had laughed at me. Better yet, strapping on a pair of boxing gloves and punching a heavy bag had been super satisfying. Thwack, thwack, thwack. I’d just imagined it was my primo online stalker’s genitals.

Thwack.

And now I could fit into my jeans again. Only just, but the button did up, so I was taking that as a win.

“I’ll have the chicken salad with low-fat mayo.”

“Coming right up.”

I might have stopped visiting Café au LA altogether if it hadn’t been for Macie. She’d become a friend now. We’d bonded during the two days she’d spent in the hospital while the doctors monitored her concussion, and then she’d swallowed a handful of headache pills and shrieked alongside me at the Indigo Rain concert, although she wasn’t a Rush Moder fangirl. No, she had a crush on Dexter Reeves, the bass guitarist. He always seemed a bit grouchy to me, but she said she went for the moody, creative type. Her downfall, apparently, because grumpy artists made terrible boyfriends.

As for app developers, they made good boyfriends. My relationship with Theo was settling into the next phase, where the sex was fun but not rabid and we’d rearranged parts of our lives to make space for each other. On Wednesday evenings, we went out for dinner, and then I stayed at his place. On Thursdays, we cooked. Or rather, Theo cooked. He was a control freak in the kitchen, even if it was my kitchen. Last week, he’d come over to Mulberry Lodge for the first time, and he hadn’t even asked who lived in the main house, which was another point in his favour. Things were comfortable. A part of me wondered whether “comfortable” would be enough for the long term—Violet and Dawson had been together for nearly a year, and he still looked at her like he wanted to rip off her clothes—but this was my first real relationship, and I was still getting used to being part of an “us.” For now, I was happy.

And in time, maybe I’d cut down my waitressing hours further to spend more time with Theo, because the words were finally flowing. In the past week, I’d added five chapters to my new book. The Ex Files was a sexy romcom about a California girl who rented herself out as a fake girlfriend for weddings, parties, and funerals, with plenty of drama along the way. My publishing plans were back on track, even if Theo thought my habit of writing grubby scenes longhand in a cute notebook was weird. Not that I’d let him read any of my rough drafts—they were my private thoughts, unedited, full of typos, and definitely not for public consumption. But they were also building blocks, the foundations of future stories. The jigsaw pieces I needed to be an author.

Right now, there wasn’t a thing I’d change about my life.

My phone pinged.

Okay, there was one thing.

If I were a man and my dick looked like that, I wouldn’t send pictures of it to women I didn’t know, but this jerk clearly had no shame. Today, he was called John Hopkins. Yesterday, he’d been Eric Edwards, and the day before, Danny Skagger. It was definitely the same guy. His dick was shaped like a mushroom and weirdly purple, plus he had a mole just above it with hair sprouting from the top. He’d never heard of a razor either, and from the salt-and-pepper pubes, I guessed he must be middle-aged. Yeuch. As fast as I could block him, he created new social media accounts, and I wished I could close my messages completely, but readers needed to be able to contact me.

Delete.

Block.

Tomorrow, he’d be back. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, email, he used them all, although he hadn’t mastered TikTok yet. He claimed to be my biggest fan, but he definitely wasn’t. Not in any way. In my head, I’d christened him Mario because of the mushroom thing, although there was definitely nothing super about him. Dawson’s friend Alexa, who was a super-geek, had tried to track him down, but he was careful, and he used a VPN to block his location. His profile pictures were lifted from other sites on the internet, and sometimes his fake names too. All I could do was watch my back. Theo said Mario was just a sad, harmless loser, and I really hoped he was right.

“Here you go.” Macie slid a plate onto the table beside me. “One chicken salad, and I added some toasted pumpkin seeds.”

“Thanks.”

“Are you going to the gym this afternoon?”

It was a Monday, so yes. I took Thursdays and Sundays off. Tuesdays and Saturdays were my juice bar mornings—or Nutrition Zone mornings, as the juice bar was officially called—and I’d worked out that there was a staff meeting on Tuesdays at eleven a.m. sharp. Cristian always showed up for that. Catching a glimpse of him was a guilty pleasure, a tiny indulgence I’d never admit to enjoying, like profiteroles for breakfast or cocktails for lunch. I had a boyfriend. Cristian probably had a girlfriend. But for the same reason that I had a Firefighters ’n’ Puppies calendar on my desk, I liked to look at pretty men in the gym. Call it research, call it professional curiosity. When Cristian was working out, he swapped the jeans for shorts, and he definitely didn’t skip leg day. My notebook was filled with scenes starring Mr. Hotly. This exercise thing was proving to be more enjoyable than I’d ever imagined.

“Yup, I’m going to the gym this afternoon. Do you have any time off this week? Want to get brunch?”

With Violet away so much at the moment, I’d found myself growing a little lonely, especially on days when Theo was working, which seemed to be most of them. I admired his dedication, don’t get me wrong, but there were times when I wished he paid more attention to me than to his phone.

“I can do Friday or Sunday?” Macie said. “Not Saturday, though. I’m covering a shift for Mandi on Saturday.”

“Friday works.”

Macie grinned. “It’s a date.”

“Keep your back straight.”

I’d know that voice anywhere. Cristian’s words were followed by a brush of his hand that came dangerously close to my ass, and I nearly dropped the barbell onto my toe. Fortunately, it missed, and he stopped it with a foot before it rolled away. Damn these sweaty palms. My Wednesday-morning gym session had suddenly become a whole lot hotter.

“Apologies, I didn’t mean to make you jump.”

“It’s okay,” I assured him. “I’m still getting used to this.”

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