Page 17 of Your Pace or Mine (Running for the Romance #1)

Jamie

J amie was shit at resting. He always had been. It didn’t seem to matter what anyone said; he always felt like any time off would set him back far further than he could afford.

Nice to know that mentality had transferred over from dance to running, he thought sarcastically.

He knew the injury was nothing serious, but he couldn’t shake the fear that he was losing his edge, that he’d fail at this marathon just like he was failing in his career.

It had been radio silence from Jonathan, and he was starting to think he’d never set foot on stage again.

He was picking up more casual shifts at his dance studio, covering for other teachers when they couldn’t make it, but it barely passed as a casual job. It certainly wasn’t a career.

He still loved dance. He loved the art and mechanics of it, but the longer he spent out of work, the less certain he felt about wanting to get back up on stage.

Or at least about his willingness to submit to the audition process again.

Even if the injury hadn’t held him back, he wasn’t sure he’d be able to muster the enthusiasm for a dance call right now.

“Take a few more days off. You’ll bounce back, love.”

He was on the phone with his mum, having needed some kind of connection to his home to get through the week. He hadn’t been home in months, his schedule had been too intense, and he was really feeling it now.

Jamie was close with his parents. He was an only child and had grown up surrounded by family, with his parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles all living within walking distance of each other.

Except Uncle Marty, who’d up and moved to the Costa del Sol when Jamie had been about four.

Even Marty still came back to Liverpool every Christmas, though.

The contrast to his life in London, where he had no family and barely saw the few friends he did have, was jarring.

The home Jamie had grown up in was open, accepting, even a tad too sex-positive if he was being honest— he didn’t really need to know everything .

Though it had surely made coming out easier.

He’d just kind of announced it at dinner one evening, and his parents had congratulated him on knowing himself so young and bought him a Pride T-shirt.

He knew it wasn’t like that for everyone, obviously, but he hated to think of himself as fortunate for having parents who did what really should just be the standard.

They were his biggest cheerleaders. So many of his industry friends had to fight their parents tooth and nail to go into the arts, but not Jamie.

Moving to London had been a big deal, but his parents had helped him every step of the way.

He remembered sitting at the kitchen table with his dad, filling in his student loan application and feeling this sense of possibility, of everything that could be stretching out in front of him.

“Jamie, I’m serious. Take some time off. Do you need me to send you some money?”

He’d taken too long to respond. “No, Ma, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“You know, when you say that, it just makes me worry more.”

“I know, I’m sorry.”

Jamie hated that his parents worried about him like this, hated that they didn’t see him as a capable adult.

He hadn’t grown up wealthy, but they’d been comfortable enough.

Sometimes, Jamie worried he’d never be able to reach the standard of living he’d grown up with.

He certainly wouldn’t in London. Still, he’d never take money from them.

His parents were nearing retirement age, and he wanted them to go into that phase of life without the burden of supporting their son’s increasingly out-of-reach dreams.

“You’ll tell me if you need anything?”

“Of course,” he lied.

His mother sighed, as if she could see all his tells even through the phone. “And call your dad, he’s driving me mad asking about your marathon.”

Jamie laughed. “I will.” At least that wasn’t a lie.

“Good night, love.”

“Night, Ma.”

Jamie disconnected the call and flopped down on his bed, staring up at the cracks in the ceiling.

He could hear his flatmates bickering through the thin walls and knew he was in for a restless night.

With a sigh, he curled onto his side, picking up his phone again and flicking to Instagram.

He had a few new notifications, but only one of them caught his eye. A like , from Darius Hewitt.

It was surprising because Jamie knew he had been a bit of a dick to him the day before.

Jamie had always considered himself more of a lover than a fighter, but something about Darius made him just want to push.

To see how much it would take to crack that calm exterior.

He’d known he’d gone too far the second he’d seen the way Darius’s expression shuttered. He’d touched a nerve.

There was no going back, though, and if Darius was liking photos on his profile from eight bloody months ago, then he couldn’t have been too broken up about it. He thought about the situation for all of thirty seconds before he flicked open his texts.

Jamie

Stalker.

He didn’t expect a reply. It was pushing midnight, and Darius seemed like one of those early to bed, early to rise types, so Jamie was surprised to see dots appear and then disappear on the screen.

When no message came, he let out a disappointed sigh and tossed his phone down on the bed next to him.

It buzzed almost immediately.

Darius

How’s your knee?

Jamie

Just going to ignore your stalking tendencies then?

Darius

Yes.

Despite himself, Jamie found he was smiling down at his phone. It was just such a Darius response.

Darius

Have you booked physio yet?

Jamie

No, I will.

Darius

Ok, take it easy, though. Rest is important.

Jamie

Yes, Mum.

It felt like a natural end to the conversation, but Jamie was feeling restless, somehow unsatisfied by the exchange. Impulsively, he hit the video call button and was rewarded by Darius’s handsome face filling his screen.

It was an objective observation; the man was good-looking. Anyone could see that.

“Hey,” Jamie said softly, suddenly conscious that his flatmates’ argument had ended, and the flat was silent, barring the street noise filtering in from the single pane windows.

“Hi Jamie,” Darius replied. His head was cocked to the side like he wasn’t quite sure what was happening, and he had a pair of reading glasses resting on the bridge of his nose.

“Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, I was just reading.”

“Anything good?”

Darius waved a book in front of the screen. It was a beat-up-looking paperback on athlete mindset.

“No, then?” Jamie replied with a smirk, earning himself an eye roll from Darius. They slipped into silence for a moment. “I wanted to apologise for yesterday,” he said slowly. “It wasn’t fair to call you out like that.”

“You still think it’s true, though,” Darius stated. Jamie had the distinct impression he was trying to come across as completely unbothered, but the way his shoulders seemed to hunch up around his ears told a different story.

Jamie took a breath. “I think you probably went from some posh boarding school to being a professional athlete and may not understand what the rest of us deal with on a day-to-day basis. But I didn’t mean to imply you were a bad person or have no value.”

“Sure.” There was a tightness to Darius’s jaw when he replied. “And I suppose I didn’t intend to imply you don’t take things seriously. I don’t know you well enough to make that judgment. It was unfair.”

“So, we’re both arseholes…and that means we’re ok, right?

” Jamie asked, tentatively hoping to avoid any further awkwardness.

Training was rough enough with Mark making a general nuisance of himself; he didn’t need to alienate Darius.

And he respected him, really. He was disciplined and still kind.

He was clearly dealing with a lot of professional shit right now, but didn’t seem to be letting it deter him from his performance.

Jamie wished he’d had that kind of focus when things went wrong in his career, but generally, one sign that someone didn’t like him and he was jumping to see what he could do to fix it, whatever it took.

“We’re ok, yeah,” Darius replied softly. “Are you really going to take it easy this week?”

It was like he’d somehow seen through all of Jamie’s half-truths in just a two-minute conversation. “I’d love to, but taking it easy isn’t an option for me right now.”

“What do you do while you’re in between shows?”

“I teach, mostly. Though I’ve been running by-donation classes as fundraisers lately, so that’s added a lot to my schedule. And I have an evening job. Plus, like, auditions, if I ever get another one that is.” He mumbled the last part under his breath, but Darius caught it.

“Dry spell?”

“Something like that.”

Darius nodded, clearly sensing Jamie’s hesitation in discussing his career any further.

“What’s the deal with you and Anders?”

Darius sighed. “I don’t know exactly. There’s the politics thing, my grandfather, he…wasn’t great. It feels more personal than that, though. Something to do with my father, probably. They were at university together, and I imagine Dad was even more of a stuck-up dick then than he is now.”

“Maybe they were secret lovers.” Jamie waggled his brow, and a look of utter revulsion passed over Darius’s face.

“That was absolutely not an image I needed in my head, thanks.”

“Do you actually have an issue with two men being together?” Jamie challenged.

And look, he knew he was being a dick, and he really had thought there’d been a flirtatious edge to some of their banter, but if those articles had been true and Darius was going to turn out to be homophobic after all, then this conversation was fucking over.

That head tilt came back, confusion looking strangely adorable on Darius’s patrician face. “No?”