There was no receptionist when Hannah walked in. The sign on the door had indicated it was after-hours, but Madison had definitely said six o’clock. She pulled out her phone to check her calendar but instead found a text from Kate.
Come on, you have to let me put Father Thorne on the podcast. He handed you freakin’ annulment papers. Who does that? No one, Hannah. No. One.
Kate was seriously low on material if she was asking to put Will and Hannah’s Hamptons adventure on Bitching about Boyfriends. Hannah sent back a pair of emojis, the eye roll and the raised hand.
“There you are,” Madison said, stepping into the lobby. She wrapped Hannah in a hug. “I was just getting set up.”
Hannah followed Madison back into the main room. Bikes lined one wall, exam benches another. Exercise equipment was scattered throughout the space. Madison handed Hannah some paperwork before taking a seat on top of a balance ball.
Hannah sat on the mat in front of Madison and rummaged through her wallet until she found her newly printed insurance card. “Your boss doesn’t mind our session being after hours?”
“Nah, I cleared it with her. She’s a hard-ass, but I told her you were family.” Madison grinned. “It was close enough to the truth, at least.”
Hannah felt herself relax as she filled out the forms, writing in the drab details. There was no primer with Madison. She’d jumped right in, happy to accept Hannah since that first morning coffee run. A week later, Madison texted Hannah more than Kate.
“You know, I met Jon here,” Madison said. She rolled almost off the ball and held a tricep dip.
“Really?” Hannah asked, transcribing her ID number.
“Yeah, he hurt his shoulder playing tennis.” She glanced back at a grouping of equipment. “We fell in love over TheraBands and the rowing machine. I was sitting on that bench when he kissed me for the first time. It shook my whole world.”
“That’s adorable.”
Madison rolled back into a seated position. “You must know what it’s like. I mean, William’s kiss must have really been something for you to marry him so fast.”
Hannah blushed about five shades of red—of course Madison would fish for details. “Our first kiss was in college, but our second kiss...” Hannah paused. It was best to stick to the truth as much as possible. “It was actually kind of clunky and unexpected, but there was a spark.”
“Ah, the spark. Can’t deny it.”
“No, you can’t,” Hannah said, handing over the completed paperwork.
Madison looked over the paperwork. “You hurt your knee in a car accident, right?” Hannah nodded, and Madison wrote a few notes in the margins. “Did you know what grade the tear was?”
“Two?”
Madison scribbled another note. “Well, I think the key here is to properly build up the muscles around your knee, giving you a good foundation for healing. Since you haven’t had any official PT, we’ll start slow and see where your triggers are. We’ll meet once a week here, but you’ll have homework to do every day, and I will know if you don’t do it.”
Hannah laughed. Madison’s boss clearly wasn’t the only hard-ass on staff. “Homework. Got it.”
“All right, hop on that bike for a quick warm-up.”
Madison sat on the bike next to her, alternating between a slow cycle and resting her head against the handlebars.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” Madison asked from her headrest.
“Sure.”
“I know you knew William before...” She waved at the open air in front of her. “But how did you just marry him without missing a beat?”
Hannah considered her answer. The truth and the lie, in this case, were the same—because it was Will. Will was and always had been her person. It was as simple and as complex as that.
“There was definitely a beat,” she said. “But Will and I, we had all these missed opportunities in college. Ones we didn’t even know about. Then he was there, standing in line for funnel cake, and it was like this part of myself fell back into place. And that was before it was ever romantic.”
“It couldn’t have been anything else,” Madison said, a wistful smile on her face.
Hannah shrugged. “Maybe, maybe not. I mean, he was fresh off heartbreak, and I was in a relationship. It could’ve gone a different way, I suppose.”
“That didn’t scare you? His broken heart?”
Hannah had learned Madison was in love with love and fate and destiny. Otherwise, she would’ve suspected she was trying to pick apart the story, to find the flaw that would pull it all apart.
“I guess it scared me a little,” she said, glancing over at her future sister-in-law. “But we didn’t go from out-of-touch friends to lovers in an instant. And as we got closer and shared a bit more about our feelings for each other—from then and now—I knew Will could never use me as a rebound. We’re about more than that.”
“Clearly.” Madison smiled and went back to pedaling. “Pick up the pace a bit. Focus on how your knee feels.”
Hannah pedaled for a minute, training her thoughts on her injury. She hoped she remembered these answers. She’d have to fill Will in and make sure Kate understood the timeline of their supposed relationship too.
“Any pain?” Madison asked.
Hannah shook her head.
“Good. So, to be clear, you broke up with your boyfriend to be with Will?”
Hannah rolled her eyes at the intensity with which Madison had asked the question. Holding it in to focus on her job must have been killer.
“Yes and no,” Hannah said, aware she was treading a fine line and this story could go completely off the rails. “Brian and I had been ending almost since we started. When Will showed up, and I realized how I felt—how I never felt that way about Brian—it was an easy choice. And it’s not like I woke up with one boyfriend and went to bed with a different one. Even though everything happened so fast, it was still slow.”
“So, what? Like forty-eight hours before you jumped his bones?”
If only. They were closer to that in the week since they started sharing a bed. It had been agonizing. She felt every movement of his throughout the night. She woke up sweaty from vivid, mostly naked dreams to find the star of them with his arms wrapped around her, his bare chest warm against her back. The other night when he’d leaned in and kissed her goodnight, she had wanted to pull him down on top of her. He’d even lingered over the kiss, their bodies gravitating toward each other. Hannah felt her cheeks brighten at the memories. Another night, one with more drinks and less editing, and it might have gone another way. But they were carefully treading the line of uncomplicated for now.
Madison stared at her expectantly. Hannah tried to imagine their proposal in a more romantic fashion—one where it wasn’t so clearly platonic, where the lines were already blurred. They wouldn’t have waited very long, if at all. She met Madison’s gaze head-on. “Sixty-three-and-a-half hours.”
Chapter 24Hannah
The city was already awake, though the sun was barely rising on Central Park East. Hannah had gotten used to the relative quiet of Queens. She could go out for an early-morning jog, and the neighborhood would be stirring with her—teachers bustling to get to school, corporate types walking their dogs, and millennials like herself pounding the pavement. It was rarely quiet on Central Park East, but there was something nice about the scene outside her window. It was different than the one she had in Queens and different than the one she watched each night from work, and yet they all offered her the same comfort. It was her city; they were her people.
She sipped her coffee, letting the mix of vanilla and hazelnut draw her closer to being awake and warm. She burrowed deeper into her college hoodie. God, she wanted to be in bed. She’d gone right from PT to a show—because that’s what her knee needed—and then Riley kept her late last night to go over a too-long and too-detailed list of everything Hannah might need to know in her absence. Hannah hadn’t said they’d survived her first maternity leave and they would survive this one, but the truth was that they would. They’d gone over the list twice, and after the next day, Riley would turn her attention to all things baby—supposedly. Hannah had her doubts.
Her phone vibrated, and she glanced down at the text from Madison. Did you have any questions about the exercises I gave you?
Of course Madison was up. She was probably doing interval workouts in her living room. No, I got them. Still on for Tuesday night?
You mean for date night with the brothers Thorne? Hell yes!
Hannah laughed. She didn’t know what was so exciting about dinner with both Jon and Will, but Madison had been practically bouncing since Hannah suggested it at the end of their session. It would be nice to have a break. November had already kicked into high gear a week into Deafening Silence’s annual “30 Concerts in 30 Days” event. The schedule had been set for weeks, but Hannah had no idea how she was going to manage it.
