Chapter 16
Leesa
This was a terrible idea. It had been nine months since I’d been at peak and I was taking off after one of the biggest stars of the men’s elite.
My lungs were burning just on the flat, trying to keep up, and knowing this was only a recovery ride for him – and he was most definitely going slow for me – was enough to devastate my pride.
I’d felt strong on a bike at one point, playing with speed, manipulating gravity – or defying it.
Today there were tears in my eyes and I only felt my weakness.
The mountains were too big to even dream of conquering.
I didn’t belong up here in the wild landscape that was too powerful to tame with roads and machinery.
It was only a small consolation that the bike still felt like an extension of my body, working to multiply the force of my legs moving the pedals and reacting to every minute adjustment I made to the handlebars – which was lucky, because cycling on alpine roads was not for the faint-hearted.
Our hotel was high up, near the pass, so we were soon heading downhill and I could catch my breath.
The road wiggled through meadows in a thousand shades of green, swallowed occasionally by patches of pine forest. Swinging around the switchbacks and technical curves was a dance I hadn’t forgotten, using my weight and gravity to keep the bike stable.
Fifteen miles disappeared in what felt like a heartbeat – or 25 km, as I’d learned to call it – leaving behind the sleepy resort town of Luson.
Before I knew it, we were catching glimpses of Bressanone, way down below, and the fracturing mountain road had become a divided highway.
When Colin pulled to the side to gulp down some water, I could barely believe how far we’d come – and how quickly.
Most unbelievable was how much I wanted to keep going.
My first sip of water turned into a guzzle, as I realised how thirsty I was. The front of my lovely new jersey was dark with sweat down the middle.
‘How are you doing?’ Colin asked.
I answered him the only way I could – with a shrug.
‘We… Now we have to get back.’
He meant ‘up’. We had to get back up.
‘You gonna make it?’
Another question I couldn’t answer. Cursing inwardly, over and over, I was angry with myself for losing fitness, for using the end of my career as an opportunity to wallow. I would always be a hard worker, but I’d lost sight of everything I might want to work for. Now the world was too big for me.
Tucking his bottle back in the holder, Colin gripped his handlebars once more, ready to push off. He sent one more glance in my direction. ‘Stay close behind me.’
He meant he’d draft me, use his slipstream to help me get up the hill. It seemed he wasn’t even going to tease me. I was too much an object of pity for that, even if it turned out I could still rock the curves on a descent.
The PowerFuel logo stamped on his butt was a familiar sight after the week I’d spent filming him, but feeling his slipstream was so much more powerful than just the sight. He didn’t set a high pace and I guessed the climb was long.
That turned out to be an understatement. It was relentless.
With tears in my eyes, it was only stubbornness that kept me going as we rounded the mountain range to the east of Bressanone and headed back up into the high meadows. My lungs burned and I adjusted the gears right down, crawling up the hill.
As we crept higher and higher, the landscape was so awe-inspiring it triggered a splatter of emotions I hadn’t allowed myself to feel in nine long months.
The climb broke me. Surprisingly, it wasn’t my body that went first, as I had put in some hours on a stationary bike to taper safely. It was my heart.
I loved this. All of it. The torture of the climb.
The utter silence of the looming mountains, the neon meadows and the stoic pines, rays of sunshine sending a glimmer over everything.
The strain on my body and the relief of a flat stretch of road.
The cool, clear air to feed my empty lungs and racing metabolism.
All I needed was oxygen, sugar and water. My purpose was to go – to move. I loved this so much and Colin had known this would happen. He was a fucking bastard for making me confront it when there was no way I could go back.
The computer on my bike ticked up with the altitude. It wasn’t fast, or pretty, but I did it. I made it. Just me and the bike – and a little help from Colin Gallagher.
Colin
I didn’t even need to say ‘I told you so’ when we pulled off the road for a break in a clearing surrounded by deep green pines with Dolomite peaks ranging above. Her face was the age of the mountains and just as austerely beautiful. She still felt it. I could tell.
‘It’s beautiful from a car, but it’s different when you’re out here, part of the landscape,’ I commented softly, watching her take it all in, waiting for her to say something as she leaned her bike against a pile of stacked-up firewood.
I didn’t expect her to stalk right up to me and give me a shove hard enough to make me stumble backwards.
‘Are you satisfied?’
‘I was until you shoved me,’ I responded cautiously. ‘You had fun, right?’
‘Huh.’
I straightened when I caught the sheen of moisture in her eyes.
‘It’s not about fun. I used to live for this. The past nine months have been so hard and now I’m right back where I started – because you decided to toy with me!’ She tugged off her helmet and ran a gloved hand over her head, turning her mess of curls into a riot.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Of course you don’t! You’re the star! You don’t have to choose between cycling and life.’
I cleared my throat pointedly. ‘Only because I don’t have a choice – and I don’t have a life,’ I said drily.
That took some of the steam out of her. ‘I don’t understand why you quit!
’ I continued. ‘I know it’s shit how little you got paid, but you could have taken another job in the winter like Doortje does, if you’re so sad about it. ’
She flinched and the guilt shot through me as though I’d hit her. I opened my mouth to blurt out something unconsidered in an attempt to make things better, but she spoke before I had a chance.
‘I was always planning on getting another job – a career,’ she said, her voice shaking.
‘It was only a matter of time. I should have quit earlier, then I might not have been a nearly 30-year-old intern in a shitty job market. I’m not like you.
I never had what it takes and now being back, this assignment – it’s a nightmare.
I should have just become a damn doctor. ’
Her meaning was clear enough: I was the nightmare. And I’d rubbed her face in it today. If I needed further proof of how wrong I was for her, I had it.
She plonked down on the grass, as though punctuating her statement, then flopped onto her back, staring up at the sky.
I lowered myself warily down next to her. ‘I screwed up, right?’ I’d made getting under her skin an art form, but I’d never reached her in the way I truly wanted to.
‘Get over yourself, Gallagher,’ she murmured. ‘Yeah, you screwed up, but the problem was here already and it doesn’t have anything to do with you.’
‘But I—’ I considered my words. She was right. Her life was none of my business – and that was the fact that had always frustrated me.
And it was inconveniently sexy, hearing her call me ‘Gallagher’ and put me in my place. I stretched out next to her, close enough that the ends of my hair brushed hers. Even being this close felt like a miracle.
‘I know you gotta eat, but can’t you work and ride?’
She glanced at me, her face close with a handful of blades of grass between us. ‘You make it sound simple,’ she said. ‘Try telling that to my parents.’
‘They’re doctors, right?’
She seemed surprised I knew that. ‘Yeah, two young Polish doctors who came to America to embrace running their own practice. But maybe they didn’t imagine their American daughter would follow her heart instead of her head and achieve precisely nothing with their academic genes.’
Her tone was bitter, but her words grabbed hold of me somewhere in my chest and pulled.
These were different expectations from anything I suffered under – so much harder because she didn’t have a finish line, no podium places to aim for.
Only a vague definition of success. I would have buckled a long time ago, under those conditions.
‘I… like that you followed your heart.’ Otherwise, I might never have met her. ‘I know you’re wildly clever, but your brain isn’t the only amazing part of you.’
When I risked a glance at her, she was watching me doubtfully. Fair enough, given the history of our relationship.
‘Are you mocking me?’
‘No!’ I couldn’t help laughing, which somewhat undermined my point. ‘But there’s no law that says you’re smart, so you have to get a high-powered job. What if that’s not what you want?’
‘I spent ten years ruining my psyche with this sport. I have no idea what I want.’ She lifted a hand for emphasis, but let it drop again, perilously close to mine.
‘I get that.’
I heard the movement of her head on the grass and knew she was watching me. ‘Do you? What would you do if you weren’t required to bust your balls for three weeks in the hot summer sun?’
Her dry tone made me smile and I took another glance at her, bracing myself for the whump when I caught sight of her, eyes glinting with humour. ‘It’s not a good idea for me to even think about it.’
‘Fucking on a picnic blanket?’
I was so startled, I shot up into sitting position, spluttering some nonsense in my defence.
I could unfortunately picture it: Leesa in one of her flowery dresses, up around her waist— I took a deep breath to clear that one before it sharpened into focus.
Shaking myself, I managed to drawl, ‘With you, sweetheart? I can’t say no. ’
She rolled her eyes and gave an unconvinced ‘pfft’. It was probably for the best.