Meddling Maleficent

Jordan

“You're not even paying attention to a damn word I'm saying, are you?” Ty said as he waved his hand in front of my face.

“I'm sorry, what?” I shook my head a little bit as I tried to refocus on Ty sitting next to me.

“Dude. You are so whipped,” he laughed.

“What?”

“You keep looking over at Hannah's empty seat.” He nodded.

She had left a little while ago, and I hadn't seen her reappear.

“She's been gone for a while.”

“She probably just went to the bar or the bathroom or something,” he reasoned, and I nodded.

“Tell my sisters that I'm going to check on Hannah.” I patted him on the back as I stood up.

“Go find your girl. Maybe you two can sneak out of here for a little one-on-one.” He winked, and I rolled my eyes at him.

I wished I could leave early for some one-on-one time with Hannah, but I was stuck here for the night. The curse of being the owner. I was expected to attend all the events for the entire duration.

As I slipped out of the party room, I managed to avoid a few people who were trying to get my attention.

Mal was at the bar flirting with a bartender. I knew she shouldn’t be drinking again, but I wasn’t her parent. She was an adult.

The hallway where the bathrooms were located was quiet, so I leaned against the wall near the entrance and checked my phone.

“Waiting for your dramatic girlfriend to catch on?”

My head popped up as my sister appeared in front of me. “What do you want, Mallory?”

“I want you to stop looking so desperate.” She rolled her eyes.

“Would you stop? Enough, Mallory!”

She really needed to stop worrying about my love life and focus on herself. I couldn't keep doing this with her. I should have walked away instead of engaging in the back and forth with her.

“I don’t know what your problem is with her, but I told you before I don’t like the attitude.”

Ever since I snubbed her friend from high school, she's been a royal bitch to whoever I tried to date. She also had it in her head that I'd tried to date previous team members of mine.

I'd dated one woman who I met at the studio when I first opened, and it was very short-lived. She'd met someone else and stopped coming to the gym. She was nice, but I think she was just more of a time filler than anything.

Then there had been Brianna. She was on my challenge team two years ago and ended up being the top female.

But she was fucking unhinged. She'd practically stalked me, and I had to stop teaching classes for a while because she made me so uncomfortable.

I'd hidden in the office a lot during those days, and she'd eventually found a new target to obsess over and stopped coming to the gym.

Mallory was convinced that something unprofessional had happened, but the woman scared me.

Last year had been Anita. She worked really hard to get to first, coming off a bad relationship and using the gym to cope with her messy divorce.

I had been an emotional coach of sorts for her as well, and we went to lunch several times when she needed to talk.

But it was never romantic. Shortly after she won the challenge, she had moved to start over, and I saw on Facebook she had recently gotten engaged again and was pregnant.

Mallory had teased me with both of them, saying that I had seduced them to get results, but I hadn't dated seriously in a long time.

I was busy, and it honestly wasn't worth the effort to try to adjust my schedule to fit a woman's. Most women didn't understand that I went to bed before ten every night and was up before the sun.

“Last year, you didn't try to date the fat girl.”

Now I was getting mad. Mal didn't behave out of line in class, but she was constantly fat-shaming members behind their backs. Not everyone had a rabid metabolism and ate nothing of substance for meals.

These people were trying. I was proud of every person who was a member of my gym. Some of them didn’t have huge gains or losses in the long run, but they showed up and tried to better themselves.

I let Mallory rant at me for a few more minutes, checking the hallway for any signs of Hannah. I wanted to talk to her, but Mallory had kept pushing people in my path all night.

“Mind your own business, Mal,” I growled, getting tired of her feeling like she had the right to an opinion on how I lived my life.

“You agreed that I was right. Just think about it. It doesn’t have to end as it has before.”

I was so tired of this shit. When my dad and Cynthia asked me to hire her, I’d been okay with it. But it was apparent to me that she hadn’t held up her end of the bargain.

There was no way that Mal was still seeing her therapist and acting like this. Maybe it was time for us to step in again and force the issue as a family. She wasn’t just affecting her own life now.

“It’s not like that,” I insisted.

She didn’t get it. I genuinely liked Hannah, and I had tried to remain professional throughout the entire challenge and establish healthy boundaries, but she had kicked all my defenses down.

She wasn’t what I expected. She was still pretty insecure at times and a little closed off, but she was funny and sarcastic.

And I liked that she was driven. She could have given up at any time along the way, and she kept pushing herself just a little bit further every class.

“You keep telling yourself that,” she scoffed.

Mollie peeked her head out of the private room, her eyes falling on us with a shake of her head. I think she could see her twin was starting to spiral as well.

It wasn’t easy for her either, seeing her sister and her best friend hit rock bottom and flounder there.

“I think Mollie is looking for you,” I said as I gripped Mallory’s arm and steered her away from the bar. The last thing she needed right now was to be drinking.

I wasn’t cleaning up that mess, and this was a professional function.

“Do I need to get her out of here?” Mollie asked as I passed off a scowling Mal to her sister.

Hannah still hadn’t come back, and I was starting to get worried. I saw her meal at the table, untouched, and made my way over to Tatum and Javi.

“Hey, there, man of the hour. How’s it going? You seem to be popular tonight,” Javi smiled.

“Eh, it’s going. You know how these things are. I’ve got to keep the clients happy,” I shrugged.

“Well, if you keep winning every year, then you’re just making more work for yourself,” Tatum laughed.

“I can’t help it that I don’t have much competition from the other coaches,” I said cockily. Once Ty took it seriously, he didn’t do half bad, but Mallory’s team definitely lacked some motivation.

“You’re so modest,” Tatum sighed dramatically.

“Do you know what’s up with Hannah? I went to look for her, but she wasn’t at the bar. Mallory started yelling at me, so I may have missed her coming out of the bathroom.”

Tatum checked her phone, and her face fell. “She texted me a few minutes ago. Something is going on with Parker, and she needed to take off.”

“Do I need to call her to see if she needs help?” If something is going on, I want to be there to support her.

“I’m sure she’ll be fine. She might just want to handle this on her own.”

I nodded and checked my own phone to see if she’d texted me. Nothing.

I made my way back to the other side of the room and ate my cooling chicken, getting pulled into a conversation about training for an upcoming triathlon that some of the members were participating in.

By the time I rechecked my phone, it was nearing ten o’clock, and my team was starting to clear out. I sent Hannah a text and hoped that she’d get a hold of me.