Page 9

Lori

I had to have a discussion with my dad about what I’d really been doing in Seb’s room, which was as awkward as I’d expected.

‘No, Dad, there’s nothing going on. I know him from an online thing and I just wanted to check that he was settling in okay despite Colin’s welcome. Now can you please go and ask Colin about his love life?’

‘All right, all right, Molly,’ he said in a tone that was gratingly patronising – even for an actual father.

But I loved that he called me Molly, my Irish middle name. He was the only person who did – except occasionally Colin, when he wasn’t calling me monster – and it was a magic word for that safe place he’d always been. He pushed me, but he also caught me, no matter how far I fell.

Racing had always felt like flying for me and that’s the thing about flying: sometimes you fall.

Dad liked to say I was born on a bike. That was typical, and a little insulting to my mum, who’d gone through pregnancy hell and major surgery to bring me into the world, but that was my larger-than-life dad.

I owed him everything and it was the least I could do to forget about romance for a few more years – ten at least, if I avoided another injury.

At least on the topic of my non-existent personal life my parents were in agreement.

I hated to think what Mum would have had to say if she’d been the one to walk in on Seb and me but, lucky for me, she didn’t travel with the team any more.

She had her work with the triathlon club in Melbourne and Dad had his career and they barely saw each other these days.

That they seemed happy about that fact was something I’d been shutting out since before I got hurt.

‘How’s the war wound?’ It was just like Dad not to dance around the issue – and to avoid talking about anything to do with romance for long.

‘Great,’ I said, a study in subtlety. ‘No pain – at least not related to my back. I don’t think I’m at full fitness yet, but I’ll be good by Nationals.’

He gave me a rough squeeze and a pat that would have hurt like hell four months ago. ‘That’s my girl. Your watts are looking good. We’ll do your VO2 and lactate tomorrow, so save your strength.’

Great. I’d be strapped up to a bunch of machines and spend a gruelling couple of hours pushing my body to the limit so someone could stab my finger and scientifically prove where that limit was.

I sounded jaded like Seb, but at least I was nowhere near giving all of this up for cheese.

After the initial hiccough on the hill with Seb and Matilda, my training camp progressed well.

I had as many doctor’s appointments as I did training rides, but I was back in the bunch.

I could almost feel the old me, the woman who broke records and made history.

For the first two weeks, I even managed to push away the suspicion that I’d stumbled into a spate of rotten luck.

Sure, I had a slipped gear and screwed up a finish, snapped a chain halfway up a tough climb and knocked a wheel out of shape, but I figured I was getting all my mechanicals out of the way before the real racing season started.

I would get all the intrusive thoughts, all the uncertainty out of my system before the Australian Nationals in January. By then, I was determined to have banished the recurring thoughts and questions about Seb too.

Although one time I accidentally googled him instead of being sensible and zoning out in front of the telly during rest time – actually, a couple of times.

It was bad that there were so many photos of him on the internet for me to study, from the old ones where he was baby-faced and red-cheeked in the colours of teams that now had different names to action shots of him dripping with sweat as he clutched the drop bars of his bike, his jersey flapping open to reveal the heart-rate monitor strapped around his chest – and some skin that I would never admit I’d studied in detail.

A particularly compelling photo of him hefting a bike over a muddy ditch revealed he’d been a cyclocross competitor as well as road racing in his early career. That explained the shoulders.

I read about his Tour de France stage wins, the most recent of which was six years ago, powering into Limoges after unexpectedly dropping the others in the breakaway on the last climb.

We all had those special days where it felt as though someone had replaced our blood with pure electricity and we pedalled with fire instead of mortal muscles.

I lived for those days, even though I knew there was never any guarantee that I would get one.

But I had to believe I would, so it didn’t make sense that I was staring longingly at photos of a guy instead of resting and focusing on my fitness – no matter how delicious that guy looked in skintight Lycra.

Or soft-looking hoodies in the breakfast room. Even the jersey that Colin snuck into his things that read: ‘Never underestimate an old man on a bicycle’ looked hot on Seb because of the cocky smile on his lips when he strode out wearing it.

I was walking a dangerous line cataloguing those smiles.

He caught me a few times and those were my favourite, the smiles that said, ‘ I see you, Folklore .’ Even more dangerous was the chance that my brother would catch me and I’d never hear the end of it.

He hadn’t grown out of the ‘kid brother’ thing with me, despite turning 23 and starting to take on the lead rider position more often – a position I wasn’t entirely sure he was ready for, given the way he was acting out under pressure.

The training camp was carefully devised to combine intensifying endurance rides, recovery days and various core fitness activities that often doubled as team building – which wasn’t my favourite.

I’d done a decent job of hiding my turmoil – all of it – from my roommate Doortje and the others on the women’s team, but it was kind of hard to be best buddies when most of them were employed to help me win.

Doortje was seven years older than me, Moroccan-Dutch and blunt to the point of rudeness, and she was one of my favourite people in the world – although I’d never say it to her face.

As the daughter of the manager and the lead rider in the team, I didn’t expect hugs and tears from my teammates and I appreciated Doortje’s straightforwardness, where some of the other girls tied me in knots with comparisons and fear of resentment.

All that stuff was in high definition in my thoughts after the months of reflection while I recovered.

I kind of wished I could discuss it all with LoonieDunes, but there was no opportunity for that, even if it had been a good idea.

Doortje and I arrived at the fitness studio in the basement together at the end of the second week, grumbling as usual that the men got out of doing Zumba because their masculinity was so fragile, to find Seb there chatting to the instructor, who was definitely making heart eyes at him.

She was a curvy little woman, who could shake her hips, so I could understand the appeal.

My booty was entirely muscle and refused to move independently of my torso or my legs.

When I did Zumba, I usually looked like one of those inflatable tube guys with the generator on the blink.

My brain worked through all of this before noticing that Seb was warming up to do Zumba with us, even though the rest of the men’s team was somewhere else doing testosterone yoga or something.

‘Did Colin tell you that today was Zumba day?’ I asked with a withering sigh.

He wrenched his gaze from our cute instructor – okay, he actually didn’t have any trouble looking away from the instructor, but I was oversensitive – and turned to me in dismay. ‘Yes. Does that mean the room is booby-trapped?’

‘No,’ I said curtly. ‘It means you’re the only guy here to dance.’

‘Ohhhh,’ he said stiltedly, with a desperate look through the glass panels, as though he could find the men’s team just outside and escape his fate.

But he bucked up quickly, even accepting that his fate was in the front row as the rest of us filled up the back. If you ask me, he accepted his fate a little too eagerly once the music started.

He looked more like Mr Bean than Shakira, but it turned out he could do a mean body roll. He copied the moves with such intensity, that Doortje stopped dancing entirely and feetched her phone to film him.

He was definitely a goof, but he was a sexy goof I could picture pressing up against on the dance floor. He noticed what Doortje was doing, but he just winked at her, which summoned that ball of jealousy in my stomach again. God, it was annoying.

At the end of the session, his hair was drenched with sweat and he rubbed a towel over his head, emerging with a grin that he directed at me. ‘I’ll have to thank Colin,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s missing.’ Leaning closer, he said softly, ‘You’re my preferred Gallagher anyway.’

Before I could reply, Leesa Kubicka joined us.

‘That was awesome!’ she gushed with a smile that my jealousy interpreted as proprietary and my intellect interpreted as me being a chump over a guy and sensitive as usual about my American teammate, who was pretty and poised and apparently Mensa-worthy intelligent.

‘ None of the other guys would have stayed – except maybe Lars, but he wouldn’t have done it with so much style. ’

One morning at the beginning of the third week, Seb didn’t show up for breakfast and I spent the entire time it took me to knock back my espresso and pancake with fruit (yes, the diet was weird and we were allowed pancakes but no cheese) wondering if Colin had finally broken him.

But when we headed out of the dining room, I caught a glimpse of him across the lobby in the conference room, in the corner that had been set up as a photo studio.

Doortje, Bonnie and Leesa must have noticed me looking, because they stopped and peered through the door.

‘Now, hands on your hips. We’ll try that,’ said the photographer as an uneasy-looking Seb stood in front of the lights in his full team kit.

Orange wasn’t a great colour on everyone, but it worked for him, with his smooth brown eyes and thick hair.

That and his shoulders looked impossibly broad, his corded arms lean and tough.

Twenty years he said he’d been in the saddle.

His body looked it: every inch built for power and resilience.

But in that moment I wasn’t thinking about his performance on the bike. My mouth was dry, my gaze glued to the bumps and furrows of muscle and bone.

Damn it, LoonieDunes was hot and I’d kissed him and I didn’t have time to lose my shit over a guy right now.

He rocked back on his heels, a smile pasted onto his face, as the photographer snapped away, murmuring approvingly. The movement pushed his hips out and I heard Bonnie titter beside me.

‘Who’s got the ruler?’ she whispered, holding a hand out in front of her and squinting to measure—

‘Bonnie!’ I hissed.

‘Come on,’ Leesa said, turning to me with an eye-roll. ‘The guys make twice as much money as we do, are able to pee over the side of their bikes without even stopping and you want to take away our one remaining joy: that their dicks don’t fit in bike shorts?’

I resented her even more when she had a point.

‘I bet he’s got a big one,’ Doortje said with a speculative nod. I had not been thinking the same thing.

The photographer spoke before I finished my inarticulate humph. ‘Try a few poses. Have you seen the website? All the guys are doing something different.’

‘Poses?’ Seb repeated, his voice high. ‘What, like this?’ He raised his fists and eyeballed the camera as though ‘Chariots of Fire’ was playing in the background.

‘That’s great!’ the photographer gushed.

‘Really?’ Seb said with a chuckle. He puffed up his shoulders and crossed his arms in front of him, every ripple of muscle visible through his skintight jersey. But he ruined the effect with a wry smile.

‘Hold up an arm like a bodybuilder,’ the photographer suggested and I stifled a snort, wondering how mortified Seb would be later when he saw his portrait on the team website.

‘Pull down the zip of your jersey a little – a bit more,’ said the photographer and my hair stood on end. He stared into the camera, intense and a little uncertain. Tugging on the zip, I could imagine he was undressing for me, peeling off the layers so I could run my tongue—

He looked up, his gaze snagging on mine and he froze for a heartbeat. Or maybe I froze and my heart stopped beating. His mouth kicked up on one side and I was back in his hotel room, his hands on me, wishing my dad hadn’t interrupted.

I couldn’t afford another season like last year’s, full of setbacks and distractions and a giant, public break-up with a teammate, even before I crashed out of my life for three months. I had to get Seb out of my system.

As I watched him intently, my skin blooming with goosebumps and my heart trying out a Zumba beat, I wondered whether there might be a better way to do it.