CHAPTER FORTY-THREE –
Megan POV
“This is an absolute disaster!” Lilly exclaimed dramatically, tossing a glossy magazine onto the coffee table with a flourish.
I peered at the lurid cover photo dubiously – a grainy long-lens shot of Chris and I at the cafe the other day. Our body language certainly appeared rather… intimate for a standard business meeting, I had to admit.
“Serves you right, Megs! First you go blasting that little tease onto Instagram implying all sorts of naughty goings-on. And now they keep tagging this shmuck as your reclusive new boyfriend?”
Rolling my eyes, I reached for the offending tabloid, thumbing through it with detached amusement.
“A ‘shmuck,’ huh? I wouldn’t exactly call Chris that.” Despite myself, my gaze lingered a beat too long on one particular photo spread speculating breathlessly about his physique and rumored talents behind closed doors.
Lilly’s keen eyes missed nothing as they narrowed shrewdly, lips curling into a pleased smile like the cat who’d got the cream.
“Oh ho, what’s that little spark of interest I detect, hmm?” She sing-songed in a syrupy tone, grinning wickedly. “Finally owning up to those thirsty little stirrings writing boy has been kindling within us, are we?”
My cheeks flushed hotly as Lilly cackled in unrepentant glee at having struck a palpable nerve so easily.
“Get off it, will you?” I huffed, tossing the tabloid aside with no small degree of peevishness. “We both know this lurid gossip means nothing – they’d spin any innocuous photo op into a scandalous affair if it drove clicks for a day.”
“Mmhmm, go ahead and keep telling yourself that, hot stuff,” Lilly retorted with an audible wink. She leaned back into the plush divan, somehow managing to drape those ridiculous stilettos across my lap with casual intimacy.
“But you and I both know where there’s this much smoke billowing?” Her eyebrows arched wickedly. “There’s definitely a little fire smoldering under the surface somewhere.”
My fingers flexed infinitesimally atop her proffered calves before I scowled and shoved them back onto the cushion beside me.
“Don’t be crass, Lilly,” I snapped, with more sharpness than intended. “Chris and I are… god knows what we are half the time. But there’s exactly zero fires or smoke or any of that nonsense going on, for the last time.”
She regarded me placidly through my outburst, unmoved.
“Mmhmm,” she murmured again with infuriatingly nonchalant calm. “Sure, pull all the indignant denial cards you want, champ – I’ve known you far too long to not recognize the real signs.”
Rather than further rise to the bait, Lilly simply arched backwards into a full-body stretch, joints popping audibly.
“Self-sabotage through deflection, a heaping dose of martyrdom to gaslight your own inconvenient longings,” she sighed, almost sadly. “How very on-brand for one Megan ‘Too Cool For Love’ Williams.”
“You’re the one being melodramatic now,” I scoffed haughtily. Except there was no masking the way her words landed a bit too sharply this time.
I fidgeted with discomfort under the weight of her disapproving look.
“Am I, though?” Lilly probed softly. “Or am I just the only one actually naming the massive blockade you’ve been steadfastly ignoring around sharing any real intimacy since… well, since that scumbag used you up and tossed you out like last week’s garbage?”
A muscle jumped in my jaw as I clenched my teeth against the instinctive lash of anguish those memories never failed to rekindle.
I rose in one abrupt, terse motion – suddenly desperate to extricate myself from her pinpoint emotional incisions before she cracked my defensive walls entirely.
“Thanks for the pep talk and critique of my love life,” I tossed over my shoulder with as much offhandedness as I could muster. “But I’ve got training with Jane in twenty if you wouldn’t mind making yourself scarce…”
Lilly didn’t so much as bat an eyelash at my transparent retreat. She simply draped herself across the couch with that same infuriatingly placid expression.
“Sure, sure,” she waved an airy hand in dismissal. “I’ll just leave you to your endless cycle of sparring routines and comfort food delivery – anything to distract yourself from the pesky notion of needing another person in your life again.”
I froze mid-stride towards the bedroom to collect my gym kit, knuckles whitening where they gripped the wall frame.
Suddenly the silence between us grew as thick and suffocating as straight-jacket restraints.
“Are you quite finished, Dr. Lillian?” I managed in a tight, clipped tone without turning around to look at her.
A theatrical sigh sounded behind me, followed by the soft squeak of sofa upholstery shifting under her slight weight.
“For now,” came the hushed reply laced with what almost sounded like resignation. “Just promise me one thing before I buzz off, yeah?”
Against my better judgement, I peered over my shoulder to find her upright and studying me with an uncharacteristically sober expression for once.
“Whatever…” I muttered grudgingly.
“Promise me you’ll keep your heart open to the possibility that whatever’s brewing between you and mysterious new Boyfriend of yours… good. Maybe even healing for both your wounded souls.” Dr Lillian eyes bored into mine with surprising intensity.
“Ugghh, not you too doc!” I sighed but she ignores me.
“No sabotage, no martyr script, no gratuitous self-denial bullshit this time around. Just… open yourself up to the chance at happiness again when it comes knocking, Megs. And it really seems to be rattling that door repeatedly now.”
I held her scrutinizing stare for a long, weighted span of heartbeats, feeling transparently flayed open before this infuriating yet devoted woman.
Finally, an imperceptible nod shifted the curtain of tension clouding the air around us.
With a mirror of uncharacteristic solemnity, I turned and continued towards the bedroom – pausing only to deliver my parting rejoinder in a hushed murmur over my shoulder.
“I’ll… try, Doc.”
The whispered vow felt freighted with the weight of a sacred covenant – a vow to myself as much as anyone else, perhaps.
Though whether I possessed the reservoir of bravery required to keep it this time remained choked in agonizing uncertainty.
Out of my peripherals, I caught Lilly bobbing her own acquiescence before slinking towards the penthouse exit with unnatural grace.
Whatever soul-baring ceremony had just transpired between us hung in the air, electrified and raw.
As the echos of her stiletto strikes rapidly faded from the outer hallway, I sank heavily onto the bed’s edge – feeling as if the very foundations of everything had shifted another hairline fracture under my feet.
How long could I continue feigning nonchalance over the restless longings plaguing me of late?
The compulsions only growing harder to ignore with each tempting glimpse Chris allowed me to steal beyond his own fastidiously maintained public veneers?
Clutching the bedsheets in a white-knuckle grip, I fought against the rising inklings of dread swirling through my core.
Of all the myriad opponents and challenges I’d squared off against over the years, this private war with my own guarded heart felt like the most unsettling and insurmountable of them all.
Because deep down, I could sense the truth of Lilly’s incisive words cleaving straight to the most vulnerable parts of me still cauterized over with debilitating scars and baggage.
The notion of lowering those meticulously maintained defenses for any degree of intimacy… it petrified me, simple as that.
Yet destiny seemed utterly fixated on presenting this one unshakable man into my orbit as the ultimate test of daring to hope and bare myself again to such mortal frailties at long last.
I chewed the inside of my cheek hard, fiercely willing away the traitorous urge to dwell further down those treacherous inner pathways right now.
Christ, if ever I’d needed the clarion clarity of the boxing ring to help extinguish these wildly careening emotional bursts before they consumed me from within-
Muscles still coiled into a tightly-wound mass of neuroses, I lurched upright and headed for the adjoining closet containing my training kit with renewed purpose.
Within minutes I’d armored myself in the comforting weight of hand wraps, gripping gloves, and layered compression gear to seal off the rising tide of sentiments battering me every which way.
Burying my roiling disquiet beneath layers of protective armor felt like the only rational solution for the time being.
I eyed my ring-hardened reflection in the full-length mirror, squaring my shoulders and donning an air of detached composure.
Whatever inner conflicts simmered under my skin had no place invading the sanctity of the gym floor.
Just this once, I wouldn’t indulge or entertain the disruptive forces hell-bent on dismantling every facet of self-possession I’d fought tooth-and-nail to fortify over the years.
Turning on my heel, I grabbed my gym bag and strode for the penthouse door, features hardening into an focused expression of stoic resolve.
Lilly’s inflammatory words, this churning constellation of unspoken tensions swirling around a certain infuriatingly magnetic man… it would all have to wait
For now, the only longings I gave leave to indulge were the ones coursing through my lean musculature and steeled focus.
The kind of driving compulsions that left nothing behind in their wake except sweat-soaked exertion and a mind blessedly emptied out by fatigue.
After all, I mused with a wry twist to my lips, exhausting one’s demons through physical exertion tended to be infinitely less complicated than confronting their shadowed whispers of existential longings – no matter how seductive their siren song grew lately.
With one final resolute inhale, I pulled open the door and slipped across the hallway threshold towards the awaiting gym, a balm for all of life’s unsettled inner turmoils.
At least for the next hour or so. However long I could reasonably bank on my fortified solitude from the smoldering embers of other compulsions.
But then… then all bets would be off once more as ever.