“I’ll teach you.” I couldn’t find the words to object. Honestly, I didn’t want to, either. “Okay. So, how do I start?” I said instead. He motioned to the padded block at one end of the machine. “Sit here.” I obeyed. “Put your feet here.” I put my feet where he indicated and strapped them in. Barnett bent over me and checked the straps on my feet. My heart fluttered at the smell of his sweat and the feel of his arms as they wrapped around me. This felt just like when Barnett coached me in hockey, except somehow more…intimate. “Good. Nice and tight.” Like the back support belt, I said in my mind. “Now, I want you to grab this.” He leaned over me and handed me what looked like a pole on an elastic string. “And we’re going to turn this on to keep track of your progress.” Again, he leaned over me to press some buttons on the monitor by my feet. I tried to pay attention to

I had no idea what was going on, nor did I want to know. I had too many problems of my own at the moment to want to be dragged into anyone else’s, so I decided to leave as quickly as possible. It wasn’t worth the few bucks I’d save on gas to wait for Barnett’s ride.I took a couple steps toward my car, determined to leave Barnett to handle his own marital problems, when I felt his arm wrap around my waist. He pulled me close to him. “Julia, this is my new girlfriend, Anna,” Barnett said, sticking his chin out proudly. My eyes widened, and my jaw dropped. I couldn’t even enjoy being so close to Barnett with the shock I was in. Tears welled at the edges of Julia’s eyes. Her cheeks turned bright red, and the color crept up the back of her neck to her ears. “How dare you!” she screamed. “You cannot treat me this way. I planned to give up my modeling career so we could start a family, and you found someone else?” “Oh, no,” I said. “I—”

I muted the TV and answered the phone.“Hello?”“Hello, Anna? It’s Barnett.”“Hi, Barnett.” I paused. “You’re calling a bit late.”“Yeah, I know. I was just looking through my social media, and I wanted to apologize for everything.”My heart fluttered. “You don’t need to apologize.”“Don’t I?”He almost sounded angry. At me? At himself?“No. You didn’t do anything.”I waited for him to respond, but Barnett remained quiet. The silence between us stretched to an almost uncomfortable length when he finally spoke again.“Well, it’s getting late. I should probably let you get to sleep.”“Yeah. Thanks for calling.”“No problem. Good night, Anna.”“Good night, Barnett.”•* *When I fell asleep, Barnett filled my dreams.He stood in front of my bed. His eyes narrowed as they roved over my body. Chills ran up my spine at the hunger in his stare.I looked down to see that I wore nothing but a pink, lacy, see-through nightgown. My instinct was to cover myself from Barnett’s gaze. Instead, I foun

I heard Rebecca talking with one of Arthur’s dog walkers.“I can’t believe she actually finished putting that makeup on him,” the dog walker, John, said so loudly that I was obviously meant to hear it.“What was she going to do? She was running out of time.” Rebecca’s mocking tone cut me to my core.“It’s just so hideous. She shouldn’t have even kept it in rotation.”“We all make mistakes. None usually so big, mind you…”The two share a laugh. My first clenches as I resist the urge to punch them both.“I doubt that even Arthur’s favorite will get away with this one,” Rebecca continued.I should have known that they hated me for how gentle Arthur was with me, especially when the rest of them had been working for him for so much longer. It wasn’t my fault that I had made friends with my boss. Still, even I doubted that this seeming favoritism would get me out of trouble this time.“That’s enough.”I turned to see Arthur step out from behind the folding room divider. I died a little insi

Now I knew Lily was just being delusional. I shook my head. “No, that’s not possible.” I was well aware of the ever-growing gap between me and socialites like Barnett and Julia. There was no way that Barnett would be interested in some upper-middle-class-if-her-divorce-settlement-paid-off worker like me. Not old money like him. There was the fact that Barnett and I might have had the same dream, but that didn’t mean anything. Honestly, I didn’t even know what his dream was about. It might not have even been the same as mine.Everyone was right. There was too much of a gap between us—age-wise, financially, and socially. “You don’t know him too well.” Lily smirked. “He never wastes a second on useless people.” “It’s probably because I brought him trouble.” I took a drink of my flavored water and shrugged. “I’m sorry, really.” “Trust me, sweetheart, you wouldn’t even have the chance to bring him trouble without his permission.” Lily