Page 19 of Your Pace or Mine (Running for the Romance #1)

“Not exactly, don’t get me wrong, she’s an athlete in her own right now, but unsurprisingly, it was disastrous,” Darius said, grinning now.

“We were both pretty terrible at it. They tied our legs together, and we couldn’t agree on which foot to start with.

I was obviously way taller than her. We must’ve fallen over three times before even crossing the start line.

The other kids were halfway down the field, and we were still arguing about who was ‘messing it up.’”

Jamie laughed. “Even as a teenager, you were so headstrong you’d argue with a four-year-old.”

“So obviously,” Darius continued. “I was ready to give up. I mean, we were dead last. So embarrassing. But Selena? She didn’t care.

She just started laughing, like full-on belly laughs, the way only a four-year-old can, and she said, ‘Let’s go, Darius!

We’re going to win!’ And somehow, that made it fun again, and we did eventually finish. ”

“So, is that when you caught the running bug?” Jamie asked.

“Oh, I’d fallen victim to it well before that day,” Darius admitted. “But it stuck with me. Even if you’re not the fastest or you mess up, you keep going. You enjoy it for what it is. Selena always reminds me of that whenever I start taking things too seriously… which is often.”

“You? Never?”

“Oh sure, laugh it up,” Darius replied. “You feeling ok for Saturday?”

Jamie shifted, phantom pain returning to his knee as if Darius had summoned it by merely questioning its status. “I’ll be fine.”

“Have you been to see someone about it?”

Jamie sighed. “Darius, I can’t afford that.”

“Why didn’t you just say that before?”

“You hate when we complain about money.”

“I hate when Mark hassles me to cover the thousand pounds he still needs to raise for his charity,” Darius countered. “You’re different.”

“Because I’m your pretend boyfriend?”

“Not just that, Jamie,” Darius sighed.

Jamie wanted to ask what he meant, but Darius was still talking, and honestly, he wasn’t sure if he was ready to ask anyway. “I have a physio I see regularly, he’d probably be willing to take a quick look if you piggyback on my appointment.”

“I couldn’t ask someone to work for free,” Jamie argued.

“He’s a friend, and he’d probably just bill me for the extra time.”

Jamie narrowed his eyes. “I don’t need you to pay my way.”

“Jamie.” Darius shifted. “Just come over tomorrow afternoon and he’ll take a look, okay?”

“I’ll think about it.”

He was on the fucking district line, again.

Darius had texted Jamie an address in Chelsea, near Sloane Square, because, of course, he’d live in the poshest part of London possible.

As much as Jamie wanted to dig his heels in and refuse, his knee still fucking hurt, and he was starting to panic about the marathon.

If Darius was to be believed (and like every article he’d read about running a marathon), then Jamie only had about five weeks left to work up to his longest run before he’d need to rest up for the race.

There was something terrifying about thinking that the 10-mile run he’d done last week wasn’t even half of the distance he’d be running on race day.

It was a short walk from Sloane Square station to the address Darius had given him.

He arrived at a Georgian-style townhouse with a black door framed by white pillars.

The house was four stories of well-maintained brick with white framed windows and a wrought-iron railing wrapped around a small balcony off the front.

There were no plants, though ivy crawled up the front of the two houses on either side.

Jamie walked up the black and white tiled path, trying not to mentally assess what a place like this would cost. He rang the buzzer and waited.

It took a moment for Darius to open the door, and when he did, Jamie was treated to the sight of a barefoot Darius, dressed only in low-slung grey joggers with a towel draped around his neck.

He stood gaping at him for a moment, watching the little rivulets of water drip from Darius’s short hair down his elegant neck to the curve of his collarbone, before Darius ushered him inside.

It wasn’t just that he was hot.

He was, obviously.

Darius was gorgeous with his long, lean muscles, impeccable posture and rich brown skin. It was more than that, though. It was how utterly normal he seemed, how much more approachable now that they’d spent so much time just talking to each other, that had Jamie a bit lost for words.

Aware that he was making things weird, Jamie spoke. “Nice mansion.”

Darius rolled his eyes, and just like that, the strange tension that had grown between them dissipated. “It’s a townhouse.”

Darius led Jamie into the house. “You can go first,” he said. “My physio, Sebastien, is just setting up in the sitting room. Sorry, I’m a bit behind schedule this morning. I was having a good run and snuck in a couple of extra miles,” Darius explained.

Jamie’s eyes were nearly spinning in his sockets, unable to decide where to look, the curve of Darius’s arse as he walked ahead of him or the opulent surroundings.

He focused on the surroundings as best he could.

His cock was stirring from the view in front of him, and he wanted to spare everyone the awkwardness of showing up to physio hard.

Original artwork hung on the walls, a surprisingly eclectic mix of landscapes and abstracts.

They passed a front room with a baby grand piano and massive crystal chandelier as they made their way down the corridor, which opened into a modern kitchen and living space.

There, a man who looked to be roughly their age, with brown curly hair and green eyes behind large, round glasses, was setting up a massage table.

“You must be Jamie,” he said as he straightened, offering a hand for Jamie to shake. “Great to meet you. I’m Sebastien.”

“Good to meet you, too,” Jamie replied. Sebastien’s grip was firm, and he shook Jamie’s hand enthusiastically before turning his attention back to the massage table.

“Seb’s the best physio in London,” Darius announced.

“I don’t know about that, but I’m definitely the only one who’ll put up with this idiot’s inability to follow a recovery plan. You’d think a rest day would kill you with the way he carries on.”

Jamie rounded on Darius. “You’ve given me so much shit about not resting.”

Darius shrugged. “Do as I say, not as I do.”

Sebastien laughed and beckoned Jamie over. “Hop up and I’ll take a look.”

Jamie clambered up onto the table in a manner that was embarrassingly lacking in grace, but hopping up wasn’t quite an option given how his knee was feeling.

“I think it’s his IT band,” Darius started. “He had pain in his hip as well as his knee, and—“

“Darius, maybe put some clothes on and then go make us a cuppa?” Sebastien asked pointedly.

Darius nodded tightly, likely recognising the dismissal for what it was and dashed off.

Once they were alone, Sebastien turned to Jamie. “He told me about the ridiculous plan you two have concocted. It’s interesting, though,” Sebastien mused. “It’s been a while since I’ve seen Darius like this.”

“Like what?”

“Flustered, happy. Interested .”

Jamie rolled his eyes. God, he was picking that trait up from Darius, wasn’t he? “He’s not interested in me. Why would he be interested in me? It’s just pretend.”

Sebastien arched a brow at him. Maybe Jamie was being overly critical of himself; he knew he was nice to look at.

He just didn’t think he had much more to offer.

People being attracted to him wasn’t exactly a new experience, but Darius had everything going for him.

He could have anyone he wanted. Why would he bother going for a washed-up dancer with an argumentative streak, questionable ethics and the attention span of a particularly skittish puppy?

“Let’s take a look at what’s going on with your knee.”

Jamie willed himself to stop thinking of Darius and any potential interest he may or may not have. A difficult feat when sitting in his townhouse, with the man himself just a few metres away, taking an absurdly long time to get dressed and make a few cups of tea.

Sebastien had Jamie flex and bend his knee, then pressed on a couple of spots and asked him to rate the pain.

“I hate to say it, but it looks like Darius was right,” he said after checking Jamie’s hip. “It’s IT band stress, but nothing too serious. We’ll do a bit of massage today if you’re comfortable with that. Your calves and shins have been compensating for your knees and are really tight.”

Jamie nodded, and Sebastien continued. “I’m happy for you to get back to light training, but you should focus on maintaining good form. I can show you how to tape your knee to support it as well. But no hill runs and no acrobatics.”

“Hear that, Darius?” Jamie shouted. “No hill runs.”

Darius’s laugh echoed from the kitchen. He seemed to take that as his cue to carry their cups of tea over to a side table near Jamie and Sebastien, before jogging back to fetch his own.

Sebastien had Jamie stretch out on his front and used a small metal tool to massage his calves before having him turn over and doing the same on his shins.

It was an odd feeling, ticklish in some places and excruciatingly painful in others.

They didn’t speak much while Sebastien worked, just the occasional check-in on pain levels.

Jamie found himself curious about what Sebastien was doing, his thoughts moving on from his Darius obsession for the first time since he’d walked in the door.

After, whilst Jamie sipped his tea and Sebastien showed both him and Darius how to stabilise Jamie’s knee with bright blue physio tape, Jamie worked up the courage to ask a question.

“Can you tell me more about it?” he flushed, embarrassed by his interest. “I mean like, how you know what to look for, that kind of thing.” Jamie had always had an interest in body mechanics through dance, but something about Sebastien’s approach to it had sparked a long-abandoned curiosity.

Sebastien raised an eyebrow, his grin softening into something more thoughtful. “Curious, huh?” he teased gently. He leaned against the edge of the massage table, crossing his arms as he regarded Jamie. “Alright, let me give you the crash course.”

Jamie hopped down from the table, knee taped up, sitting next to Sebastien on Darius’s ridiculously pristine white sofa.

He felt out of his depth, but his curiosity was genuine.

He’d been to physio before, but this was the first time he’d had a physio who seemed to really take an interest in helping him understand how to manage his recovery.

“So,” Sebastien began, gesturing to Jamie’s leg, “physiotherapy is all about understanding how the body moves and what happens when something goes wrong. With your injury, it wasn’t just about the running—it’s how running affected the mechanics of a body trained for something completely different.”

Jamie frowned. “You mean dance, but I thought it would help me with running?”

“It probably has, in the sense that you’d have a good cardio base,” Sebastien said, nodding.

“But your muscles and joints are conditioned for flexibility and explosive movement—turns, leaps, quick changes of direction. Distance running uses a completely different set of demands. It’s repetitive, sustained movement, which can strain areas that aren’t used to it.

With all the training you’ve been doing, you’ve overloaded certain muscle groups.

That imbalance puts extra stress on your knee, plus most amateur runners don’t really consider form, so that can exacerbate it. ”

Jamie blinked, taking it all in. “So basically, I overtrained and had bad form?”

“You just didn’t have the base for it, and you pushed too hard, too fast. And yeah, looks like you may have been overstriding.”

Jamie couldn’t look at Darius. He knew he’d be smug about that one.

Sebastien continued. “It happens all the time. But we’re getting things back on track, so your body can handle both dancing and running—make sure you’re ready for your marathon.”

Darius interjected. “He’ll be ok to run it?”

“He’ll be fine,” Sebastien nodded. “What we’ll do now—stretching, strengthening, addressing those weak points—it’s all to get you safely to race day and prevent this from happening again, no matter what activity you’re doing.”

Jamie nodded, a flicker of understanding lighting in his eyes. “So, it’s not just the knee. You’re looking at the whole picture.”

“Exactly,” Sebastien snapped his fingers, pleased. “The knee is where the pain showed up, but the root of the problem was higher up, in your hips and core. That’s why we’ll work on your alignment and movement patterns, too. Treat the cause, not just the symptoms.”

Jamie tilted his head, intrigued despite himself. “It’s like solving a puzzle…but how do you know what to look for? Like, how did you figure out it wasn’t just my knee?”

Sebastien leaned forward, his tone growing more earnest. “It’s a mix of training and experience.

You learn the mechanics of the body, how everything works together.

Then you spend years seeing how it breaks down.

You look for patterns: how someone stands, how they move, where their pain is.

All of that tells a story about what’s going on underneath.

The more you do it, the more you learn to spot the subtle stuff. ”

Jamie nodded slowly, looking down at his knee. “It sounds... rewarding.”

“It is,” Sebastien said. He grinned. “You thinking about a career change?”

Jamie laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t know. It’s just interesting. I’ve never thought about it before.”

Jamie was very conscious of Darius’s gaze on him. He felt exposed, but he knew Darius wouldn’t make fun of him, not for this.

“Well,” Sebastien said, clapping him on the shoulder, “if you ever want to learn more, let me know. You’ve got the right mindset for it. Dancers understand their bodies better than most people. I bet you’d be great at it.”

Jamie chuckled, but something about the idea stayed with him as Sebastien gestured for Darius to hop up on the table.