Don’t Brake My Heart

Chapter 1

Leesa

I went out flat on my back, in throbbing pain under a grey sky, a stone windmill at the edge of my vision, the striped sails rotating listlessly in a half-hearted salute to my lacklustre career in road cycling. An anticlimax was all I’d earned in ten years of racing.

No records broken – just a bone, I was pretty sure. My left wrist had that stabby pain, my nerves screaming that something was very wrong. The usual twisty pain flared through the rest of me, sharp enough that I didn’t want to move, even to check if my arm was still on the correct angle.

Mud spatter had made it inside my mouth, tasting of rotten life forms, moss and iron.

Or maybe the iron was blood. Supporters wildly waving cardboard signs at the side of the road had caused a split-second lapse in concentration from the rider in front of me and we’d all gone down.

‘Wheel contact’ it was called, although ‘asphalt contact’ felt more appropriate to the burning scrape on my hip.

So this was it. The end. I wouldn’t even be able to finish my last race from this position halfway down an irrigation ditch, with only one functioning arm. My final result: ‘did not finish’. I could imagine those words on my tombstone.

The sails of the windmill flickered and went blurry and for a second I wanted to pass out, to get through this next part unconscious.

It was easier than accepting that I’d failed.

A cool drip at my temple revealed why my vision was blurred and that was worse.

I couldn’t cry about a stupid sporting career.

I had my whole life ahead of me: graduation, internship, a good job with a decent salary.

This sport had chewed me up and spat me out, a muddy, bloody mess in a ditch on the last day of my last race.

I never wanted to touch a bike again – didn’t want to see the faces of my teammates.

Crap, now I was thinking about the others – Bonnie and Doortje, Lori – my vision wasn’t just blurry, but swimming. I was letting them down.

‘Leesa!’

Urgh, that voice. I didn’t want to hear it in my moment of self-pity, even if his tone was genuinely alarmed, rather than the usual mocking drawl.

‘Leesa!’ It was louder now, shocking me into lifting my head.

Bad idea. I couldn’t pretend I was unconscious any more and it hurt like hell.

That, and I made the mistake of looking at him, the golden boy of the men’s team, who played juvenile pranks and screwed up spectacularly on occasion but still managed to be universally popular.

Lori’s little brother.

His face was closer now, hovering above me. ‘The medics are coming. Stay still, ay? We’ve got you.’

Fingertips under my chin released the helmet strap and I could breathe a little easier. Was this one of his sick jokes? Or was I truly unconscious and my brain was tormenting me with images of the guy who’d once slipped blue food dye into my oatmeal.

‘Hang in there, sweetheart.’

Sweetheart? I couldn’t be entirely conscious. Surely I was imagining him – the gentle fingers at least?

‘Colin… Gallagher?’

‘That’s me,’ he said, his voice smooth. ‘Shhh.’

This was a prank gone wrong – surely, like the time he’d hidden a Bluetooth speaker in the room I was sharing with Bonnie and played ‘Baby Shark’ in the middle of the night. He thought this was funny, right? Showing up just when I was crashing out of my life?

‘What the hell are you doing here?’