Page 8

Seb

I made my mind up then and there: I was quitting cycling.

Sure, I’d made that decision a few times before, but this time I meant it. No one should have to discuss their performance on a bike with the father of the woman they’d just kissed.

Holy shit, I’d kissed Lori Gallagher. I’d had my tongue in her mouth and my hands on her butt and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to recover from that. She’d let me lose it with her and it might have been the best kiss of my life.

It was hard to listen to Tony Gallagher when half of my brain was stuck on the feel of Lori’s skin under my fingertips.

I wanted to kiss her ear, near the little studs leading to small hoops in her lobes.

I wanted to scrape my teeth on her neck.

It felt as though all those online conversations had snowballed into that moment, that touching her was the final piece of a puzzle.

Thank God I wasn’t wearing bib shorts. I needed to adjust my boxers, but now really wasn’t the time, so I tried to ignore the way the cotton pinched. I still couldn’t breathe properly. I might never breathe again, after Lori’s tongue had swiped over my lip.

It didn’t help that she was a bare few metres away, behind the bathroom door, occasionally failing to stifle a snicker.

‘I realise we haven’t got a good indication of your form yet,’ Tony continued. ‘I’m not going to be a hard arse about the rides we’ve done so far.’

‘Not a… eh, thanks.’

‘In fact,’ the general manager continued, clapping me on the shoulder, ‘you’ve proven you can take a joke, which is a key skill on this team.’

‘I noticed.’

‘But we need to develop a strategy for you as well as a plan for the events our leaders are starting this year. At this point I want you fit and ready to support Colin for the entire Tour. But what about the Spring Classics? Do you want to give some of them a burl?’

I gulped, wondering if I needed Lori to come out and translate. I’d learned a few phrases from her on Zpeed, but ‘give something a burl’ was not one of them. ‘Yes?’ I guessed. ‘The Tour of Flanders is my lucky race.’

‘A lucky man! Always happy to have some extra luck in the team. What about Paris-Roubaix? Have you got the balls for that?’

There was a titter from behind the bathroom door. ‘Well, I’ve started it every year for the past twelve years.’ I hadn’t always finished it.

‘Ah, so you don’t have any balls left!’ Tony said with a snort.

Lori didn’t make a noise, but I could feel her laughing. At least the crass joke got rid of the last traces of an erection. Even thinking that word in front of Tony Gallagher made me want to dematerialise.

‘Look, Colin is starting the Paris-Roubaix, so we’ll plan to get you in at this stage. You never know what’ll happen in that race, so your experience will be valuable. And if the Tour of Flanders is your lucky one, how about we try and win it! All in, show us what you’re made of!’

‘Eh, what I’m… Win it?’

‘Yes, you drongo! Winning!’

I mustered enough enthusiasm somehow, because he made some more mumbling exclamations I didn’t quite understand and clapped me on the shoulder some more. He wasn’t serious about the winning. It was mind games that I was getting too old – and too jaded – to play.

But for all I’d said about cheese and a fucking B I’d had my team salary and a trickle of prize money over the years, not a deluge. It was more about what I was running away from, rather than towards.

‘Regarding that, ah, stunt with the doll, Colin’s just testing you, son. Don’t let him get to you, ay?’ Tony said as he turned to go, sending a ripple of surprise and something warm and sharp through me when he called me ‘son’.

I had no idea how to respond. ‘Ay?’ I repeated, adding a panicked, ‘okay,’ onto the end when he shot me a confused look. ‘A-okay,’ I repeated brightly, choking off the urge to add a ‘sir’ before I embarrassed myself completely.

Tony’s fingers were on the door handle and I was looking forward to getting back to Lori – to talking to her – when the tinkle of a cell phone sounded through the bathroom door, followed by a bump and a bang before the room fell silent again.

Because I’m an idiot, my knee-jerk reaction was to glance at my own phone, sitting on the desk behind me. Tony blinked and his brow dropped.

‘Er, Amir must be—’

‘I saw him in the dining room on my way up.’

Zut, now I was in the poop. ‘Oh, um, I must have—’

‘I know it’s none of my business, boy, but it’s supposed to be rest time—’

The bathroom door swung open and Tony’s theatrical gasp would have been funny in any other situation. ‘It’s just me, Dad. Don’t chuck a wobbly.’

Were they even speaking English?

‘What are you—’

‘Seb is a friend of mine. I didn’t know he was joining the team.

We… met last year.’ She mumbled the last bit after a moment’s hesitation.

Tony looked doubtfully from Lori back to me.

‘You caught me. I sneaked into his room so we could make out like teenagers,’ she said, deadpan.

Any words I might have uttered died in my throat.

But Tony grinned and patted her shoulder. ‘Always the joker, like your old man. Maybe you can talk some sense into your friend. I’m not so sure his head’s screwed on right, this one.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ she agreed.

‘You need to prioritise your rest, though, especially after last year,’ Tony said.

‘I’m just about to,’ she assured him, although the look that passed between them suggested that wouldn’t be the end of the discussion.

I studied Tony, thinking of all the things Folklore had told me about her cheerleading dad and hard-arse mum and, if I’d grown up with these expectations, I would be at home feeding goats right now. She was a tough one. Tough and really very sexy.

With one more perplexed glance, Tony left us alone. When the door swung closed behind him, we both slumped in relief.

‘I hope I didn’t get you into trouble,’ I blurted out.

‘If anything, I got you into trouble.’ She laughed then, her body shaking.

Grasping my upper arms, her forehead brushed my shoulder as she doubled over with it and I got those full-body tingles again, as though she really was my friend, my…

mine. My entire skin bloomed at the light touch and I was getting into trouble again in my boxers.

‘Did you really say “a-okay” to my dad?’

‘I was terrified he’d hear you. I knew you were laughing in there. And you told him we’d been making out like teenagers. It’s not funny,’ I insisted when she snorted with renewed laughter. ‘Your family will want to kill me.’

She looked up and grinned at me and it took all my restraint not to kiss her again. ‘It was pretty funny. “You don’t have any balls left.”’ she quoted with a snort.

I had unfortunately chosen that moment for my desperate attempt to rearrange the seam of my boxers to ease the pressure.

‘Seb, do you have a hard-on?’ she asked, her mouth swinging open.

‘Not any more,’ I said emphatically.

‘Did you have one while you were talking to my dad?’

‘Only… half. And not for long.’

Clapping a hand over her mouth, she shook with laughter. ‘You seriously had to talk to my dad at half-mast?’

Throwing up my hands, I said through gritted teeth, ‘I didn’t choose to! After a kiss like that, I can’t just say, “Down boy, no more of that.” My mind was blown!’

Leaving Lori speechless was my new favourite feeling.

But she pulled herself together disappointingly quickly. She raised her eyebrows and asked, ‘Have you really raced the Paris-Roubaix twelve times?’ changing the subject abruptly.

‘Four times I didn’t finish,’ I explained.

‘You mean, “I finished the Hell of the North eight times,”’ she prompted, giving me a shove. ‘I have no idea how you got this far with that attitude.’

‘Not to the podium, that’s for sure,’ I quipped.

‘I love the Paris-Roubaix,’ she said wistfully, the way normal people talk about their beach holiday.

Her hair was swept off her face in a no-nonsense ponytail and she wasn’t wearing any make-up, showing all of the pale freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks, but she had such a sweet face when she smiled like that.

Her blue eyes glinted with silver. She had a generous bottom lip that would star in my fantasies for years to come.

An angular face with a strong, elegant jaw.

It struck me again that this was Folklore standing in front of me, my eyes tracing her cheekbones. Her throat bobbed and my lungs started playing up again.

‘I saw you— your finish,’ I said, clearing my throat, ‘last year.’

‘When I came third?’ she clarified with a huff.

I crossed my arms and drew myself up. I would never be a big brutish type, even if I were allowed to eat cheese and pizza all the time, but I’d caught her checking me out and I could hit some serious functional threshold power stats with these muscles.

‘Tell me that wasn’t the best third place of your life, though.

I saw the highlights, how you pushed through the mud and carried your bike past the melee after that crash.

It was lucky I didn’t know who you were on Zpeed or I would have been too much of a fanboy and you would have dropped me faster. ’

She glanced away with a smile. ‘It was my best result in that race, but I still didn’t win it.’

‘Why do you like it so much? I already know you’re a masochist on the training bike but who actually likes the torture of the cobblestones?’

‘I do,’ she said lightly. ‘It’s do or die. Nothing else exists for those three-and-a-half hours except me and the road and the fight. It’s where I belong.’

‘The opposite of the training bike,’ I murmured as flashes of our conversations came back to me: when she’d casually explained that she had ADHD, how her mum had always expected more than Lori could deliver – both in the classroom and in sport.

She nodded her agreement, then froze and her gaze flew to mine. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? The stuff we… talked about?’

‘Of course not!’ I grumbled, snatching my arm away when she clutched at it. ‘You trusted LoonieDunes and you can trust me.’ For a second, the quiver of her brow made me wonder if I should have been more gentle with her, but then she lifted her chin, pride restored. Lori didn’t want gentle.

‘Okay, I’m sorry, fanboy. But even the girls on the team don’t know about… you know. They only joke about how I lose everything all the time. If you find a pair of socks somewhere, they’re probably mine.’

My skin felt tight again and this time it had nothing to do with the embarrassing situation in my underwear. This was the Folklore I remembered: a big mouth and a soft heart – and a broken body. I wanted to grab her and give her a hug.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said suddenly and, for a second, I was worried I’d spoken my thoughts aloud.

‘Okay, sure. I’ll… see you round then.’

She glanced at me doubtfully. ‘You do realise the kiss shouldn’t have happened?’

‘Ehm, I hadn’t quite finished rationalising it actually.’

‘Seb, I’m not—’ She met my gaze. ‘I’m not supposed to get distracted this year. I worked too hard in recovery.’

I tucked my tongue between my back teeth so I didn’t say anything and just nodded.

‘Plus we’re on the same team. It could get… awkward. I learned that the hard way.’

It took me a second to realise she meant when we broke up.

I definitely hadn’t thought that far ahead, but I also hadn’t dated a teammate before.

Folklore had spoken about her injury on Zpeed, but she’d never mentioned the ex.

There was a lot she hadn’t mentioned, while I’d gleefully gone on about my grandma and relaxed days cycling along the river, which must have sounded incredibly dull.

‘I didn’t realise the men’s and women’s teams would see so much of each other,’ I managed to reply, stumbling over my disappointment.

But she was right. We would never work in real life, even as close friends.

‘I haven’t been on a team where they share resources like this,’ I managed.

It said a lot about my previous teams that they hadn’t bothered.

‘Don’t worry, we’re separate enough that you can still walk around naked – and don’t you dare ask if we do the same.’

‘If the women’s team walks around naked, it’s none of my business,’ I confirmed gravely.

She paused, her hand on the doorframe and a smile on her lips. ‘I forgot you have a whole family of women – and a grandma who taught you manners. I’m… glad you’re on the team, LoonieDunes.’

‘Me too,’ I replied, my reservations about one last season, about getting used to a new team, new directors, gone up in smoke at her words.

‘But I’d better give you some alone time with Matilda.’ She laughed, but cut herself off with a strangled choke, her eyes darting to mine. ‘I didn’t mean anything by that— I didn’t think it through. I’m going and I won’t be thinking about you… Gah!’

I swaggered to the door of my room, grinning at her. ‘Bye, Lore. I won’t be thinking about you… either.’ I wondered if she could tell I was lying. ‘See you at breakfast,’ I added with a wink.