Chapter 6
Leesa
Angry. I was angry with him. Fuming. He’d humiliated me in front of the entire team.
It was so much worse than the time he’d replaced a painting in the hotel breakfast room with a photo of me and I hadn’t noticed for a week.
Or the time he’d somehow managed to put Bubble Wrap under the sheets on my bed.
Colin was an idiot. It wasn’t news. But this time not only had it hit harder – deeper, somehow – but he was still able to disarm me with a few jokes and that crooked smile.
Although it hadn’t been his smile. It was something in his eyes when he peered at me that I’d first noticed only last September, when I’d thought I’d never see him again.
I didn’t dare look at him at first, as we dawdled along the gravel path from the hotel across the vivid alpine meadow. As much as it pained me to admit Colin Gallagher was right about anything, a walk had been a good idea and the landscape was so beautiful it was painful.
One of the approaches of altitude training was ‘sleep high, train low’, so the hotel was nestled in a saddle at over 6,500 feet above sea level.
The rays of sunshine were so intense you could almost touch them.
Stony Dolomite peaks ranged up on all sides, protecting this isolated valley and the smattering of wooden cabins on the sloping meadows.
The absence of noise felt like a cocoon around my head.
‘I missed being in the mountains.’ I hadn’t meant to say those words aloud, but they were out now. Maybe in a second I’d be admitting I wasn’t any happier for quitting cycling, that I wasn’t sure I’d made the right decision, but it was too late now. Luckily, Colin stopped me.
‘Doesn’t America have mountains?’
The question was asked lightly, a reminder that he didn’t want to have a heartfelt conversation with me and I was being stupid imagining he might listen, simply because I caught shadows in his eyes sometimes.
I nodded in reply. ‘I grew up in Colorado. Oh yes, there are mountains. But I haven’t left LA in six months and now it feels weird to think I used to conquer gradients like these on a bike.’
‘Six months isn’t that long.’
‘It’s a lifetime,’ I mumbled. ‘A different me.’
‘You’re still Leesa Kubicka,’ he insisted.
‘And you’re still Colin Gallagher. Will I have to search my suitcase for a toy snake every night while I’m here? You’ve even managed to trick your impressionable teammate into growing an ugly moustache.’
‘I didn’t bring any toy snakes with me,’ was all he said at first. ‘But fair warning, I might trick you into going on a recovery ride with me.’
He said it with a shrug, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his tracksuit pants and I was annoyed that my stomach flipped as though he’d asked me out on a date, as though I couldn’t tell the difference between a date and a dare. I didn’t want either.
‘I’d be worried you’d leave me behind with only a bivouac bag and a can of beans,’ I responded drily. ‘I haven’t been on a bike outdoors since I broke my arm, so you won’t want to take me on a ride anyway. I’ll stick to the team car when I need footage.’
‘What? You mean you quit cycling altogether and not just pro? You don’t even ride a beater down to the shops?’
‘Did you miss the part where I moved to LA? I’d rather not be mowed down by a Mack truck before my thirtieth birthday.’ I paused to wince. ‘God, I sound like my mom.’
‘She worries about you?’
‘She disapproves of my hobby.’
He opened his mouth, but appeared to consider his words for once. ‘It wasn’t a hobby.’
‘Mom always treated it like one,’ I said with a shrug. ‘Plus, I needed to sell my bikes for the security deposit on my sublet. So, yeah, no more riding.’
He thumped a hand to his chest in mock horror. ‘Not your bikes!’ Possibly it was real horror.
‘They would have been stolen anyway if I’d been sleeping on the street,’ I pointed out with a straight face, enjoying his alarmed expression.
‘Don’t worry, I would have gone begging to my parents before I ended up on Skid Row and they probably would have helped me without a lecture for once, since I’ve finally done what they’ve been telling me to do for ten years now: I quit cycling.
I’m working on getting a real job, one that might actually pay the bills – one day.
No more self-indulgent failure-porn on two wheels. ’
It appeared I’d managed to shock Colin Gallagher into silence as he didn’t even drawl a teasing retort. I might have preferred one to the stormy look he was giving me.
It wasn’t enough to stop me speaking now that I was on a roll. ‘It just sucks that my first real job is… you.’
I forced a breath into my lungs, not sure if I felt better or worse for having blurted all of that out. Decidedly worse the longer Colin remained silent next to me. He swallowed audibly and, when I glanced at him, he was staring into the distance.
‘Yeah, I’m… sorry about that,’ he said slowly, his voice gravelly. ‘Rough gig.’
‘I don’t mean it personally,’ I clarified in a rush, but the doubtful look he shot me suggested he smelled the platitude.
‘It’s all right, Leesa. We all know the orange PowerFuel gels taste like cat piss. That should probably be the name of the flavour. And I know what you think of me.’
His words caught me in the chest. I wasn’t so certain myself these days. When he walked so pensively beside me, the wind in his hair, I wasn’t thinking of him as my young, inane teammate from six years of training camps.
‘I didn’t want to get involved with the clients in cycling at all,’ I explained, not sure if I wanted to reassure him or simply defend myself. ‘But my boss made it pretty clear: this is my only chance to be offered a proper job at the firm.’
His face twitched with a grimace. ‘You used to make great stuff for your own social feed.’
I gave a snort, trying not to dwell on the fact that Colin must have looked at my socials. I’d been tempted to take the posts down so many times.
‘Why don’t you want to keep doing that for cycling teams? You’d be brilliant. You know what I think?’ he said suddenly, his combative tone lifting the pressure off my chest. ‘I think you’re scared you’ll want to get back on the bike.’
‘Of course I’m scared of that!’
‘Then just get back on the bike. You were a work of fucking art on a bike.’
It was his turn to shut me up. He shot me a glance that ricocheted down my body and quickly away again.
‘Although that dress you had on this morning was nice too.’
A rush of prickles to my hairline felt like some kind of warning. ‘Don’t overdo it, Colin,’ I drawled. ‘I kept my stationary bike and tapered training, but my metabolism still hates me and I would not dare to wear a jersey and bib shorts any more.’
He had the guts to look me up and down more thoroughly. ‘Maybe you’re a little squishier in places.’
‘Colin!’ I spluttered, flinging my hands up.
He grasped my arm, more gently than I would have expected. ‘It’s a good thing,’ he insisted. ‘You were always hot and…’
My brain insisted he was pulling my leg, but my body responded with a full-on flare-up, his words dragging over my skin.
The brush of his thumb over my forearm was almost unbearable.
His mouth moved as he searched for more words and all I could think about was what he’d do if I lurched in and took the silly moustache for a ride.
‘… you still look good enough to… eat.’ The sentence went up at the end, punctuated by a wince and everything wound up inside me seemed to burst like heated glass.
‘What did you say?’
His Adam’s apple bobbed. ‘Forget it.’
‘Did you say I look good enough to eat?’ I rolled my eyes and poked him for emphasis.
He stared at his feet as he chuckled. ‘Yeah. You only have to ask.’
My nerves must have short-circuited because I tripped on a rock.
Instead of landing heavily on the ground that was rushing up at me, a wrench on my arm and pressure around my middle halted my fall.
He eased me upright, one hand splayed at my waist, his thumb brushing my ribcage, and I couldn’t get enough air.
This is bad. He’s the talent. You want a job.
Trying to give myself a pep talk couldn’t quite erase the memory of him apparently offering oral sex. Or perhaps I’d lost the plot entirely and that wasn’t what he’d meant. I should not be having sensual thoughts about my talent, the golden boy – emphasis on the boy – of my old team.
Then he swallowed heavily and his hand shifted, exerting just enough pressure to turn my insides to liquid. An inch higher and his thumb would stroke the underside of my breast. His jaw clenched tight, he looked as though he was pouring all his energy into resisting exactly that move.
‘Christ, you feel good, Lees,’ he said, his voice as jagged as cobblestones under a bike wheel. His chest rose and fell with uneven breaths and I was no longer sure what planet I was on, where Colin seemed to be all undone – for me.
He straightened all of a sudden, lifting one hand. For a heartbeat I thought he was going to touch my face, a tender action I would never have expected from him, except he hesitated and said, ‘You… Uh, there’s a bug in your hair.’
My lungs deflated like a hot-air balloon at the end of the day. This was a familiar routine from Colin, the prankster. ‘There is not.’
‘I’m serious. Do you want me to get it out?’
‘And then what? Don’t you dare put slime in my hair. If you had any idea how much work these curls are—’
‘It’s worth it,’ he cut me off with an echo of the soft words that had tied me into a pretzel a few minutes ago.
But he was failing to stifle a wobbly smile that was unfortunately every bit as charming as Wil had warned me he could be.
‘I’m not going to put slime in your hair,’ he continued smoothly.
‘I’m telling you, there’s a grasshopper heading for your ear. ’
Just the word ‘grasshopper’ was enough to induce a full-body shudder.
‘I promise I’m not shitting you. I know you don’t like insects.’
‘Which is why you put a fake beetle in the light fitting of the women’s toilets that time in Milan!’
He stifled a snort of laughter. ‘That was when I found out you don’t like insects.’
‘And you proceeded to order a bulk batch of clear insect stickers for every time you saw me afterwards.’ I took a deep breath. ‘There’s no grasshopper. I’ll never belie—’
Something skittered near my ear and I shrieked.