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Seb

I’d competed in the Tour de France eight times, but I’d never felt the way I did at the starting line that day.

The air was thick with summer on the piazza in Trieste, the arches on the square bathed in sunlight.

But it wasn’t the stunning city – one I’d never visited before and wouldn’t have time to see now – that was different.

I couldn’t remember ever having sex the day before a race and it was concerning that I could still feel her in my body.

Maybe I’d fail the post-race drug test because they found traces of Lori in my bloodstream – one of the most potent performance-enhancing drugs I could imagine.

‘You all right, mate?’ Colin asked and I gave him a quick smile, hoping that would satisfy him.

No, I think I’m in love with your sister wasn’t an answer for the moments before a race.

I was in a lot of trouble. She’d become so precious to me I was starting to understand that character in Lord of the Rings who sacrificed everything, only to become a jealous, shrunken husk of a person because the ring didn’t rightly belong to him.

Not that Lori was a ring. She was a person. And people were free to make their own decisions – decisions like when to leave me.

I’d awoken to her pressing kisses all over my face, with my heart ready to explode out of my chest. I’d never been happier about having access to a single room, even if it meant that Colin knew where I’d been last night – and I knew he knew, because of the pointed looks he’d been giving me all morning.

I didn’t blame him. He was under a lot of pressure and my performance would have a knock-on effect on his.

He leaned towards me and said, ‘Are you going to ask me not to say anything?’ out of the side of his mouth.

‘Hmm?’

‘About you sleeping with Lori.’

‘I didn’t realise I needed to hide it.’

‘Dad still thinks it’s some misguided stunt for publicity. If he knew you were really together, things would change. And my mum is a whole other problem.’

Glancing at him with a frown, I wondered if he might be trying to help me, rather than warning me off.

But that didn’t stop his meaning from sinking in: I was a stick in the wheel of Lori’s success – of Colin’s.

I’d been in her room last night instead of resting up for the opening stage of the biggest race on the calendar.

I found her weakness beautiful, but she was stronger by herself. She didn’t need me to convince her. She’d see that soon too – maybe already today, if I screwed up the way I was scared I might.

‘We aren’t really together,’ I insisted. ‘It is a publicity stunt – at least that’s why she keeps kissing me in public.’ I couldn’t quite stifle my rueful smile at the memories of her flying at me and planting kisses on my mouth and how they’d been the highlights of my season.

‘It’s not why you weren’t in our room last night,’ Colin said gruffly.

‘Don’t worry,’ I assured him. ‘I’m not coming back next year.’ I couldn’t, with these feelings choking me. ‘She’ll be free of me soon enough.’

‘Maybe not soon enough,’ Colin mumbled. ‘If Mum finds out you’re sleeping with her – casual or not – she’ll make life difficult for Lori. I try to take the pressure off her, but Mum’s always been—’

‘I know,’ I cut him off. Cold was already creeping over my skin despite the warm summer morning and the crowd of cyclists. ‘She told me,’ I explained when Colin looked at me in confusion.

‘She… told you?’

An image of Lori saying goodbye flashed behind my eyelids with the inevitability of a relationship with winners and losers. Except she might not even say goodbye. She’d ghosted me once, after her mum had sent her into a panic.

As I waited in the restless bunch at one of the defining moments of my career, I saw with sudden clarity that it was truly time to give up. For Lori’s sake, for the sake of my own fragile emotional state, I had to give her up – in four days at the latest, when she left for her own race.

‘I understand, okay? I’ll stay away from her. She’s heading off to train in a few days anyway and I know how important the Tour is to your dad.’ It was time anyway – time for this dream season to fizzle out.

‘Your… last Tour, then?’ Colin asked me quietly.

‘I suppose so.’

He extended a hand haltingly to me and I grasped it, letting him give me a slightly aggressive bro handshake. ‘We’d better make it a memorable one, then.’

Later that day, after I’d launched him into an attack, my legs screaming from too long at my limit, I dropped back into the peloton to rest with the satisfaction of knowing he had a good chance of finishing well in the first stage.

And then I was free to think of the woman waiting for me at the finish line.

Glancing at the ‘X’ she’d drawn on my forearm herself that morning, I knew she’d be there.

What I didn’t know was exactly why. I wasn’t going to be anyone’s hero today.

This wasn’t a one-day Classic where I could go hell-for-leather and see what happened.

As Tony had said that morning, ‘A dead man is no use to anyone.’

I crossed nine minutes after the stage winner in 26th place – a decent result for me, nothing special.

But there was Lori standing behind the barriers, her hair in a high ponytail.

To look at her face, you would have thought I’d won the thing.

I didn’t believe I’d stolen her luck any more, but I’d certainly chased away Top Gun Gallagher right when Lori should have been back at full strength.

Light-headed – not only from the exertion – I indulged the thing between us even as the clock ticked, letting her kiss me, brushing her cheeks and giddy with the view of her face after too many hours.

Cameras flashed, one close enough to make her flinch. And I couldn’t ignore the question that rose in my mind: how long until you’re gone from my life again?

Tony clapped me on the shoulder when I dragged myself into the team bus. ‘Nice work, Frankie. You didn’t leave enough for yourself today?’

I ignored the question. ‘How did Colin do?’

‘Fifth,’ Tony told me. ‘He’s only thirty seconds down. It was a good result – a real team effort and I’m proud of y’guys!’

The Tour was a marathon – a hellish three-week marathon – and wasn’t won or lost in a day. We’d stuck to our strategy and brought Colin in with a good time. We’d been saving our strength, not going for a win.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the beginning of the end, perhaps because my agent had the contract from Harper-Stacked sitting on his desk, waiting for me to formally refuse it – along with two other offers I’d never wanted. Or maybe my luck was just running out now.

There were too many eyes on me at dinner, where I sat with Amir and Nelson, keeping my gaze off her. I was only allowed to eat, sleep and race during the Tour. She knew that. I was lucky Colin wouldn’t say anything to the DS about last night.

It pricked me to think that the night with her truly had been the beginning of the end.

Discipline was important at the beginning of a stage race, so I summoned all of mine and I didn’t even text her when I rolled over to go to sleep that night, Colin and I ignoring each other because we were both struggling in our own heads.

I woke up to a message that read: Everything okay?

I miss you. You’re doing great. I took a second to wonder at the earnest words that didn’t sound much like the prickly Folklore I knew, but I didn’t have time to answer as we ate an early breakfast and then set off for the starting point of the race, in the Julian Alps in Slovenia.

Conditions were miserable. The climbs needed all of us around Colin to keep the pace, taking turns to punch it at the front.

As the day wore on and other teams pushed the pace, the guys gradually had to drop back.

I held on as long as I could, but I was dropped eventually, slipping out of the peloton and joining the struggling gruppetto.

Although the sun came out as we crossed back into Italy, the day had taken a lot out of us and we had 19 stages to go. I wouldn’t be able to face Lori’s pride.

But she could read me too well. Seeing her in the crowd, I glanced around for the cameras as I unclipped a foot and pushed the bike towards her, my back aching – my balls aching, and not in a fun way.

I didn’t want a congratulatory kiss. I wanted to rest my head on her shoulder and why would she want that?

When I raised my head to kiss her, I wasn’t expecting anything, which was why it caught me in the gut when she grasped my face.

‘Seb,’ she said, her hands torturing my cheeks. ‘I have to go the day after tomorrow.’

‘I know. You have to focus on your training.’ I met her gaze, reading confusion there. God, I was going to miss her eyes, the way she could look at me and strip away the nonsense. Lifting a hand to the back of her neck, I said, ‘It’s your time, Lore.’

Tony called and I only had time for a quick peck on her lips before I had to get back to the bus.

There were eight hours of driving ahead of us before tomorrow’s third stage – not quite far enough away to warrant the packing and inconvenience of a flight, but long enough for all the riders to suffer in the coach.

Lori didn’t drive with us and her mother was absent too, an observation that made my concerns flare up. She should just go, get away from her mum – away from me.

She sent me another message asking if I was suffering much, but I ignored that one on purpose. I had to let her go.

Stage three was flatter, with the sprint teams vying for position in the peloton.

The pace in the final kilometre would likely be too high for the riders aiming for the general classification – the coveted maillot jaune, the yellow jersey.

But I got in a good rhythm, blocking everything out as I pulled Colin with me, even the fuzzy tiredness from sitting in a coach until past midnight.

It was only later in the afternoon that the looming disaster I’d sensed finally struck.

At a roundabout on the outskirts of Nice, I was riding on the inside of a curve and clipped a barrier with my foot.

A stupid mistake, a split-second lapse in concentration.

A moment of weightlessness felt like a year of my life and then the asphalt greeted me with a crunch and a white-hot shock slammed through me.

I couldn’t make any sense of the words over my radio for several seconds as only my heartbeat and the blinding throb of pain registered. But the adrenaline in my blood was working hard and I hauled myself up, looking around for my bike in a panic.

Amir was down as well, a graveyard of bikes strewn across the road between us. And up ahead, there was Colin, pushing his bike at a run to try to get started again.

‘ If anyone can get to Colin, do it! ’ came the DS’s voice over the radio and I snapped into action, throwing my leg over my bike and pushing hard to catch up.

By the time I’d paced him back to the peloton, my shoulder was screaming – my legs stung, my eyes were as dry as burned toast, since I’d broken my sunglasses in the crash, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to get through another 18 days of this.

It didn’t help to tell myself I felt this way every single year I was named in the team for the Tour, or that I’d been expecting this irrational dip in confidence. It was like my relationship with Lori: I’d seen the end coming, but I still didn’t know how to stop it hurting.

Luckily, she was leaving tomorrow and wouldn’t have to watch me screw up any more.

I limped over the line with a grimace, almost wishing I never had to finish, because Lori would see me like this and any hope I had of going out of her life as some kind of hero had fled.

Flicking sweat out of my eye, I glanced at my fingertips to see a smudge of red and realised it hadn’t been sweat at all. Shit . If I didn’t pass a physical exam, I’d have to pull out of the race and then I wouldn’t be of use to anyone any more.

Catching sight of Lori, I pushed over to her with a sigh. Surely she could see this was no victorious finish. She’d pull away, give me a wave instead of a kiss. That would be for the best, even though it meant missing our last kiss.

Our last kiss … With my vision blurring, I imagined I could see those words on the backs of my eyeballs. I’d always known if there was a first kiss, there’d be a last one.

But I couldn’t do it. Not like this.

I drew away, hoping it didn’t look as much like a flinch as it felt. ‘I’m disgusting, Lori,’ I muttered. ‘We can’t do this any more. You should just go.’

She opened her mouth to say something – disagree with me, I could tell – but I shook my head in warning and turned away.

I needed her to get the message that we were doing the fake break-up thing. She could ghost me again if she wanted. The alternative was saying goodbye to her properly tomorrow, and I wasn’t sure I could survive it.