Page 31 of Your Pace or Mine (Running for the Romance #1)

Jamie

T he more Jamie dreaded the approaching marathon, the faster time seemed to pass.

It was April, and with only a week until the Oliviers and three weeks until the marathon, he was exhausted all the time.

It almost made him happy he didn’t have any auditions lined up because he wasn’t sure he’d have the energy to drag himself to one if it came through.

His fast-diminishing current account and still incomplete fundraising target disagreed with that assessment of the situation, though.

He’d seen more of Darius since they’d spent the night together.

There was hardly ever a moment Jamie wasn’t over at the townhouse.

Paying an obscene amount of rent for a flat he had barely even entered in the past couple of weeks was starting to feel like a massive con.

Exhaustion and overpaying for unused accommodation aside, Jamie felt pretty good.

He and Darius had grown even closer in the past few weeks.

He knew it was a side-effect of spending so much time together, their conversations had grown more intimate, touches more frequent, and the guise of press coverage was never needed as an excuse to kiss or cuddle up together, or more— not since the night he’d stayed over.

Jamie was long past lying to himself about how he felt.

He still couldn’t bring himself to talk to Darius about it.

He couldn’t face the inevitable rejection, especially not when things finally seemed to be working out for both of them.

Despite no longer chasing it, they had both started to receive more positive press.

There was even mention of Jamie’s charity dance classes in a recent article, which had helped out his fundraising target a bit, though he still hadn’t seen much career movement from it.

Now wasn’t the time to rock the boat and risk Darius running scared.

Soon, he’d get another audition, then he would tell him how he felt, and see where the chips fell.

He’d just pray to anyone that would listen that they would fall in his favour.

For now, though, he’d enjoy whatever he could.

And enjoy it he did.

Jamie had never even imagined he could find someone so completely attuned to his needs.

It was the little things, like how Darius would always bring a coffee back for Jamie after his early morning runs, or how he’d helped him tape his knee before they walked over the Chelsea Bridge to meet up with the rest of the group in Battersea Park.

Jamie was honestly surprised they were still all showing up for these sessions.

The Tuesday clinics they’d all met at had ended when Coach Anders and the runners he trained had jetted off to Switzerland.

It had been nice to still have their little splinter group, but he knew today was going to be the last one.

Darius had explained they should all start tapering after a final long run that week to make sure they were running on fresh legs on marathon day.

Jamie planned to do his long run with Reg later in the week, but today was one final speed session, and he wanted to give it his all.

Just, his all was feeling distinctly slow and tired.

Walking across the bridge, Jamie relished the feeling of Darius next to him.

They walked side by side, brushing against each other on occasion, every touch felt electrified, making Jamie itch to pull him aside and tell him how he felt, but he had to keep quiet.

He couldn’t blow this up for them yet, at least not until after they got through the Oliviers—whatever that may bring.

As the first ones to arrive, they had a few moments alone once Darius opened the large wooden gate, and Jamie couldn’t help it; being that close to him and not touching him was like torture.

He shoved the gate shut and Darius up against it.

He kissed him hard as his hands found purchase on his shoulders, and he wedged a leg between his thighs.

Time seemed to slow, and all Jamie was focused on was the drag of Darius’s teeth against his lip, the feel of his muscles under his hands, the grind of hips and soft groans.

He was already hard and was just wondering if there was time to get his mouth around the answering hardness he could feel against his hip when they heard voices on the other side of the gate.

“Looks unlocked,” said Claire.

Darius released Jamie quickly, backing them away from the gate.

“Just give it a shove, maybe it’s stuck,” Adam this time.

They had only just managed to move out of the way when the gate swung open and the four other members of the running group stumbled through.

Jamie looked over at Darius, his eyes were blown wide in a strange combination of humour, horror, and lingering lust. His top was twisted around his body, and his hands were awkwardly positioned in a vain attempt to cover his erection.

It wasn’t likely that Jamie looked much better.

Claire eyed the two of them. “Gosh, I wonder what was wrong with the gate,” she said with a wink.

Though Jamie needed a few minutes to calm down before he could comfortably run, they got through the final training session with no further incidents.

After, they joined the group for a post-run brunch, a final send-off before they all moved into the tapering phase—though they planned to meet up at the expo, a two-day festival dedicated to all things running that would take place right before the marathon itself.

Jamie didn’t know what to expect from it, but he had other things to get through before that.

Jamie’s final long run was a 23 mile tour through London, hitting several of the main parts of the marathon route.

It was terrifying, to say the least, to think of how long he was going to be out there, and that it still wasn’t even the full distance.

The five-kilometre gap was as long as that first run he’d done months ago.

Looking back, it was hard for him to believe what it had felt like that day; now he regularly found himself thinking things like, ‘Oh, it’s only a ten-miler today.

’ He hadn’t felt genuinely nervous before a run in weeks.

“Ready?” Reggie asked beside him. They’d agreed to do the final run together ages ago, and Jamie wasn’t about to back out of that plan.

He was finally running distances that Reg would consider, well, not long, but reasonable at least, and he wanted to show off a bit, or he had, before he thought through what distance running with Reggie would be like.

They kept up a steady stream of conversation for the first ten kilometres or so, mostly gossip about people back home and tales of Reggie’s niece’s antics.

It forced Jamie to keep his pace steady and able to converse, but by fifteen kilometres, he was giving one-word answers and grunts.

Reggie dropped the pace, and Jamie felt a little bubble of disappointment rise within him.

This was slower than he was planning to run the marathon—what if he really couldn’t do it?

“You okay there?”

Jamie huffed out a rough-sounding “surviving.” Fortunately, Reg didn’t comment on it.

They ran in silence for a few minutes before Reggie dropped the pace again.

Confused, Jamie looked over at him. Their route was taking them through Clerkenwell, with Hatton Garden, the diamond district, just ahead.

They’d planned to loop back East through the City and then along the river before heading back to Jamie’s.

“I think I’m going to propose to Kate,” Reggie announced, a grimace on his face.

Jamie slowed again to match his pace. “Erm, congratulations?”

“You think it’s proper daft,” Reggie sighed.

Jamie did think it was a daft idea. Not for people in general to propose to their long-time partners, that was, well. Whatever.

But Reggie marrying Kate was a terrible fucking idea. There was just no way for him to voice that without sounding like a total arsehole.

“That what you want?” he asked slowly.

Reggie sighed loudly, turning down into the diamond district, a strange look on his face as they ran past displays of engagement rings and sparkling jewels.

“It’s definitely what she wants,” he finally replied.

“She’s been dropping hints all over, like.

And, well, I guess there’s a point, isn’t there?

Where, if you’ve been with someone for so long, you’re just a bit of a knob if you don’t propose? ”

“Plenty of couples never get married, Reg.”

“I know, I know. But she wants to. And I guess, well, I’ve no reason not to.”

Jamie snorted. “So romantic. That’s definitely what I want my future husband to think when he’s proposing, ‘well, I’ve no reason not to.’” That got Reggie to smile again, at least. “You know I’ll support you, whatever you decide, La. But maybe don’t make this decision based only on what she wants?”

Reggie nodded solemnly. Seconds later, he was turning to Jamie with a smirk on his face as he quickened his turnover. “So, your future husband , eh?”

“Shut up.”

“Things going well with Darius, then?”

“You know it isn’t real.”

“I also know you want it to be.”

He did. Of course he did. Darius was everything he never knew he wanted, but it felt too risky. “Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

Reg whistled lowly. “You gonna tell him, like?”

“I think so. I mean, I was planning to wait until after the marathon, or when my career’s more on track, but I just need to know. So I was thinking, maybe the night of the Oliviers.”

“This Friday?”

That made it feel so real, but a plan was forming in Jamie’s head.

They’d be all dressed up, and he could take Darius out, somewhere private and romantic and tell him how he felt, how this hadn’t been pretend to him for a long time.

So much of Jamie’s life had been about pretending, and he knew this wasn’t; that it never really had been.

Jamie would love to have been able to say that the deep conversation had made the miles disappear unnoticed, but the pain in his legs and his laboured breathing in the last ten kilometres said otherwise.

Back in his flat, Jamie whipped up a post-run smoothie while he casually scrolled through his email.

He’d planned to spend the day with Reggie, but he’d darted off after an emergency text from Kate that Jamie had worked very hard not to comment on.

He was going to be mature about this. It was fine if his best mate wanted to marry a woman who hated him. He’d deal.

An email from Jonathan caught his eye. A new audition, his first in ages, and it was huge—a lead in a brand-new, touring production, though there wasn’t much information about the team behind it. Jamie smirked. It looked like all that publicity had pushed the needle in his favour, after all.

Jamie knew he should have been excited about it, this could be what got his career back on track.

He needed the money. His heart wasn’t really in it, though, and his mind kept drifting to the conversations he’d had with Sebastien during his physio sessions.

He’d learned more about movement in those sessions than in his entire career so far, and it was fascinating looking at the body from that perspective.

Thinking about it again now, Jamie found himself wondering if he really could do something else with his life.

It was probably a stupid thought. Jamie had a lot of those.

Everyone had always made it pretty clear what he had to offer the world, and that was not his great brain.

Setting thoughts of long-shot new career paths aside, Jamie reviewed the sparse details he had about the audition and got back to his plans for the Oliviers.

He was going to impress the hell out of everyone at the awards on Friday, get his career back on track, then sweep Darius off his callused feet.