Page 174 of Top Shelf

“I don’t know you well enough to remember your name.”

“You remembered my groin.”

Zoe chokes somewhere behind me, but Mila’s expression doesn’t move. “Your groin is medically relevant. Don’t get attached.”

“It’s actually my adductor.”

“Congratulations.”

Rhys opens his mouth, shuts it again, then laughs under his breath. The grin he gives her isn’t like the one he walked in with. It tugs at the corner first, reluctant and a little helpless, and Mila looks away quickly.

My train of thought is interrupted by my phone buzzing somewhere, followed by Zoe’s. She checks hers before I find mine, and all the color in her expression changes at once.

“Heidi.”

My stomach drops. “What?”

Her eyes are wide. “I got you a segment.”

For a moment, the studio goes completely still around me. Mila with the phone in her hand, Rhys beside the reformer and sunlight spilling across the floor.

“A segment,” I repeat.

“Local news with a human performance angle, women in sport, new specialist studio, return-to-play gap. They’re coming here at three.”

“Today?”

My pulse kicks hard enough to hurt, and Zoe’s smile is fierce now as she nods. “They want to talk to Dr. Heidi Grant, founder and specialist. That’s you, babe.”

I look across the studio I dragged into existence with emails and stubbornness and too many sleepless nights. Mila, standing there with her sharp eye and my whole social strategy in her camera roll. Rhys, still awkwardly standing there representing an entire category of athlete this place was built to serve.

My eyes sting before I can stop them.

“Oh no,” Mila says, rushing forward. “Don’t cry. I need to do your make-up.”

A thin, shaky laugh breaks out of me, and Zoe snaps her laptop shut.

“Okay. We’ve got four hours. Mila, pull Rhys’s cleanest take and send it to me. Heidi, eat something that is not pistachio adjacent. Rhys, please continue being enormous and professionally useful.”

Rhys looks around at us one by one. “Do I have a choice here?”

“No,” Zoe and Mila say at the same time.

For the first time since Friday, the pressure in my chest shifts. I pick up my phone to text Viktor, then stop when I see a message already waiting.

Viktor: Can you talk?

My stomach dips for a reason that has nothing to do with sponsors. This will be about our looming marriage contract expiry, and right now, I have no time to discuss it. I hate myself a little for thinking it, but I think it anyway. Not while the studio is shiny and new, and media are finally coming to hear me speak. I type back, my thumb hovering too long over the screen.

Me: I’m about to prep for an interview! Zoe just secured one. Later?

His reply comes as Mila starts fussing with my hair.

Viktor: Yes. Later.

Viktor: I love you.

Me: I love you too. Wish me luck.