Chapter 2
Colin
‘If there’s no pounding in ya bollocks, it hasn’t been a good day! Keep going, boys! Feel that lactate in your blood!’
Tempted to rip out my radio, I filtered him out instead, the world narrowing to the strip of asphalt in front of me, the cool air flooding my lungs, the sting of power in my body as I hauled myself up the mountain.
I was pretty sure I had lactate up to my eyeballs, but it wasn’t exactly something to celebrate from where I was sitting – and occasionally standing – on my bike.
I could almost hear the screams as my cells demanded oxygen and my blood turned acidic.
I also didn’t need my dad to point that out to me.
Another five minutes and I’d be cooked. Dad probably knew that. Maybe he’d push me anyway.
‘Amir, good progress, son. Keep it up. Two hundred metres to go.’
‘Come on, magic mo!’ my teammate Amir grunted as he passed me.
I smirked in response, rubbing a thumb across the scruff of bristles on my top lip, soaked with sweat.
It had a little more ginger than the sandy blond on my head and it made me look like a baby gunslinger.
We’d been ribbing our youngest rider about not being able to grow a beard and this was the result, but at least it was a little thicker than Derek’s.
He looked like that kid from Sex Education – and twice as awkward.
Amir took the position at the front, ‘pulling’, as we called it. Although my legs were very aware that it was only slipstream and there wasn’t any actual pulling involved. I was still fighting gravity with everything I had.
‘Last curve. Great stuff, Derek.’
Up this high, there was still snow on the ground in June – piles of it, despite the daytime temperature hovering in the 20s.
At the beginning of my career, I’d gawk and simp at the sight of the brittle summer snow in the Alps but, like high taxes and cheap beer, I’d got used to the weird stuff about life in Europe, although the socks-and-Birkenstocks thing would always be a step too far.
We were at the iconic Passo dello Stelvio, with its endless switchbacks.
24 km of punishing gradients that Dad probably thought was character-building this early in our training camp.
Altitude stole my breath just as effectively as the astonishing views of stony summits and snow-covered rock debris.
But even the Stelvio came to an end eventually, the kiosks and the quaint hotel at the top of the pass swimming in my vision as the gradient finally eased.
Pressure lifting, my lungs opened up, my chest expanding as drops of sweat puddled on my handlebars and the numbers on the display of my bike computer finally began to drop.
‘Don’t ease off yet!’ Dad cried.
Fucking oath. My throat was raw, but I followed orders, pumping harder to pick up speed before the descent, whipping through the milling groups of other cyclists and motorbikers who’d been allowed to stop there for a rest.
With a strangled gulp, I swallowed down the burst of stomach acid making its way up my throat. Fuck.
The radio crackled and I bit back a grimace. But all Dad said was, ‘Watts are looking good, Colin.’
My bike computer had already told me that – without the passive-aggressive tone.
Sweeping through one more bend, the air rushed at me suddenly as we hurtled into the downhill, reinflating my lungs after the crush of the high-altitude climb, beginning to fly.
Dad was saying something, but I zoned him out as I tracked the hairpins, marked in my mind’s eye with angles and trajectories, accompanied by the rapid ticking of my wheel hub.
I zipped ahead of the others. It was my job to be faster, to push the limits. Dad had built the whole team around me, which was why he was such a hardarse. When I screwed up, I screwed up the whole team.
But jacking up the speed on a descent was something I was more than happy to do. It beat battling the asphalt on a climb. Tucking myself down, tight to the frame of my bike, my mind soared with my body.
Lime-green alpine meadows and ancient grey rock, jagged peaks with patches of snow – the world was enormous around me as I harnessed gravity instead of fighting it.
I always felt like Magneto on an epic descent – although that was kind of embarrassing to admit and the marketing people would hate that I identified with a villain, even a little.
But I certainly wasn’t a hero.
Gravity seemed to be on my side this year. Whipping around curve after curve, my knee a whisper from the road, I didn’t need to look at my computer to know I was killing it. I couldn’t look at my computer. I needed my eyes on the road, my brain and my instincts all in tune to master the bends.
I let the bike fly through the straights, hanging on for the ride.
There would be no winner of this training ride, no pressure to fight.
There were no obstacles on the road – I was going too fast to see them if there were.
The pulling sensation on my skin and the tenor of the vibrations in the handlebars made me think I’d cracked 90 km an hour.
The wind sluicing over my slick body – slick from sweat and from the slippery Lycra of my jersey and bib shorts – drowned out every other sound.
It was a shame to slow down as the road flattened out, but there was another set of bends ahead and, at this speed, I’d shoot right off the edge.
Deceleration was like popping out of a wind tunnel as I finessed the brakes.
Racing since I was nine years old, I felt ageless, immortal, on these familiar descents – part of the landscape and beyond the reach of the laws of physics.
Maybe life would have been easier if I had been.
The crackle of Dad’s voice in my earpiece greeted my return to the real world. ‘Thank the fucking saints, Colin. That’s 20 years of my life I’ll never get back. There’s no fucking reason to hit 95 ks an hour on a fucking training ride.’
I eased around the first bend, my skin suddenly cold. Did he know how many years of my life I’d never get back? But he’d made his point. Only a helmet and a thin layer of material separated me from the cruel road and I’d seen what a crash could do to someone in a split second.
My older sister, Lori, had never been the same after she’d broken her back.
She’d recovered physically – because she was such a stubborn shit – but mentally?
She wasn’t as tough as before. To top it off, she’d got together with Seb Franck, the spineless wonder whose only special talent was mooning over her.
Except I kind of missed that bugger, now he’d retired.
We were heading straight down the valley to Bormio, through the gallerie, half-tunnels that protected the road from the steep hillside above.
The gradient felt like going over the handlebars, but I knew exactly where my front wheel needed to be.
I felt the updraughts and the force of gravity, heard the whistle of the rocks whooshing past, close enough to touch.
I was soaring, ignoring the mumbling in the background over the radio. Then came Dad’s voice. ‘Did you hear that? It’s Leesa Kubicka!’
Whoosh, I went straight down. A split second’s misjudgement and I overcorrected, hitting the deck with a metallic clatter and a rip of clothing – and skin.
Gravity no longer bowed to me as it scraped me down the road for long enough that the pain kicked in, but I came to a stop eventually, my feet pointing up the hill and my helmet caught in some weeds.
‘Farking hell, Colin!’
Chest heaving, I stared up at the sky, fluffy little clouds taunting me as the world seemed to be at the wrong angle, trees growing down and physics pulling me up. Blood rushed in my ears and the aftershocks of adrenaline zapped in my arms.
That was the effect Leesa Kubicka had on me.
I slammed my eyes shut and I could picture her, caked in sweat, a smile on her lips and her curly hair rioting when she took off her helmet.
Bright, sharp eyes. A divot in her chin – a face I thought I’d never see again, punching the breath out of me when I’d watched her go down in her last race, back in September.
Hearing the screech of car brakes and then footsteps, I wrenched my eyes open to find Dad bending over me.
He reached out a hand, but I hauled myself into a sitting position before he could begin his examination.
My skin pulled over my elbow and my thigh stung – no big deal. Everything moved as it should.
‘Look at the state of your paintwork!’ Dad cried, clapping me on the back as though I were a toddler with wind.
It smarted – both the wallop between the shoulder blades and his words.
After nearly 20 years of training with him, I knew when he said ‘paintwork’ he meant ‘skin’, but it got to me more than usual.
Everything seemed to be getting to me, which didn’t bode well for the Tour starting in four weeks.
‘What was that?’ he prompted.
‘I got distracted,’ I mumbled back.
‘No joke! This isn’t what I meant when I said we should hurry back to meet your new content manager.’
Whipping off my reflective sports glasses, I squinted up at my dad, slowly putting two and two together.
She’d been about to start an internship at a sports marketing agency after acing her studies.
Wilhelmina, our team marketing guru, had told me something (I’d mostly ignored) about a partnership with PowerFuel. If Leesa was here…
Leesa was here?
Heat rushed up the back of my neck and I swiped a hand over the stupid moustache.
‘Let me give you a hand.’
I batted Dad’s arm away and rose to my feet, stumbling as I found my balance on the steep slope. I had my bike upright and one leg halfway over the saddle when Dad stopped me.
‘Come back in the car. You should get those scratches looked at.’
I hesitated, my hair standing on end as I hoped he couldn’t see this restlessness that shadowed me more and more often these days.
‘Be a hero another day, Colin.’
Dad was unfortunately right. There was no reason to finish the descent under my own steam, even on the off chance that she’d see me riding in.
It was no use trying to impress her. I’d tried that once and it had ended in disaster.
Besides, Leesa was too smart – too everything – for me and she’d unfortunately seen all the stupid stuff I’d pulled over the years.
Stupid stuff like growing a moustache to rub a teammate’s face in his junior position. But, damn it, my heart was pounding and my knees were bouncing in the car as we headed for the hotel. I should have descended on the bike. It would have been quicker.
As well as the power to bend gravity, I had apparently developed a sixth sense as well – my Leesa sense.
I heard her voice as soon as I entered the lobby of the hotel.
Despite the blood-smeared elbow, the rip in my jersey at the ribs, a day’s worth of stale sweat and an idiotic moustache, I still swerved helplessly in her direction.
I was under no illusions about my own attractiveness right now, to say nothing of the fact that she’d always seen through me, but I wanted to see her, even if it was only to work out exactly how much she resented me now, after everything I’d done in September.
She was sitting with Wilhelmina in the dining room.
Her back was to me, drawing my eyes to the curve of her neck, an earlobe with a simple gold hoop.
Her hair fell to just below her shoulders.
A woman’s hair had never registered with me before, but Leesa’s was something else: springy curls in tight loops, somehow neat and wild at the same time.
And perfect. She was fucking perfect.
Leaning heavily on the wall just outside the dining room, I took long, controlled breaths and tried to talk my stirring body out of its extreme reaction.
‘I’m so glad it’s you they’ve sent,’ Wil was saying. I gave that statement a hard agree until she continued. ‘You remember what he’s like.’
Leesa chuckled – a throaty laugh that would have shivered over my skin, if she hadn’t been laughing at me. Actually, I still felt that dry laugh in a few places that weren’t very comfortable in my bib shorts.
‘That’s what worried me about taking this assignment,’ she said. ‘How on earth could I accept responsibility for making Colin Gallagher into a sympathetic protagonist? I don’t think PowerFuel would approve of the pranks and relentless jokes.’
My shoulders slowly sank.
‘But I remember you enjoy a challenge.’
She tucked her hair behind her neck and straightened. ‘I sure do.’
‘Just don’t let him guess that he’s your challenge.’
‘Oh, God, no! He’d never let up. I’d find lizards in my breakfast and frogs in my bed.’
At least I could inwardly scoff at her lack of imagination.
Lizards and frogs? How old did she think I was?
Nine? I might have been a green youth with bum fluff on my chin when I’d first met her nearly six years ago, but the age gap between us had closed further every season since.
Besides, when I was nine, I’d already graduated to putting food colouring into my sister’s toothpaste.
‘There are so many star-struck women working in marketing,’ Wil continued. ‘If they’d sent anyone else, I might have got worried Colin would turn on the charm and end up AWOL in the evening.’
I straightened with a grimace. One time that had happened. It had been a nice invitation, and who could blame me when I had to share a twin room with Amir or Nelson for months of the year in shitty hotel rooms without much space between the beds?
My ears were hot, picturing Leesa taking my hand and steering me down the corridor to her room as my heart vaulted in my chest. Wil couldn’t know about last year, that I’d come back early to watch her last race and nearly made a fool of myself.
But then Leesa replied, ‘There is absolutely no danger of that.’ Her tone was steady – amused, even. ‘Colin is not the person I picture when I hear the word “charming”.’
The urge to prove her wrong flickered in my chest.
‘That’s one pitfall we don’t need to worry about. It’s so important to safeguard your professionalism in this industry – especially as a woman in sports,’ Wil continued, giving Leesa’s forearm a squeeze.
My intentions deflated again. She was here to do a job and that was all – to make me look good, which drew a smirk to my lips. There was no need to react personally to anything she said.
But that didn’t mean I had to play along.