Chapter 32
Leesa
I wanted to go home – back to the States, back to my parents’ place. Anywhere but here, seeing Colin everywhere I looked. My head was such a mess I was very glad I wasn’t the one lining up for a stage of the Tour de France and I felt wobbly every time I thought of him getting out on the road.
But I was also so mad at him I was worried it would start to show in my work. How dare he suggest his feelings for me went beyond sex and then calmly ask me to leave the room! Talk about some weird back-handed compliment. He was a silver-tongued, juvenile heartbreaker.
And he was going to break my heart.
Lori saw it in me when she said goodbye the next morning – I was certain. But she didn’t say anything, she just wrapped me in a hug and told me Colin was an idiot. Maybe he was, but I kind of wanted him to be my idiot.
There was a passionate part of me that wanted to hang over the barriers and holler for him, wear a talisman for luck – get another tattoo.
God, if he knew about that, he’d grow an even bigger head.
But I’d lived ten years of sacrifice and failure in my own career.
My brain pulled me up and told me I’d hate myself when I was 30-whatever with nothing to show for myself but an unhealthy obsession with Colin Gallagher – who might well have passed me over by then, no matter what he’d not quite said last night.
I’d noticed the major glaring omission from our discussion: any hint of a future relationship. He’d been all selfish and needy about his feelings, but he’d put me in an impossible position. It would be so much easier if I could convince myself he was a jerk who’d led me on.
I avoided him – or he avoided me – for the rest day on Monday.
It was bad enough I had to look at his face – with and without the moustache – all day every day for my job.
I wasn’t ready to see him in real life after whatever we’d tried to say to each other in his room.
Even on the morning of the next stage, an epic day in the mountains, I went down to breakfast late so I wouldn’t have to see him.
I must have looked as bad as I felt when I finally emerged from the hotel with my suitcase, because Wil steered me away from the bus to a team car driven by Chris, one of the swannies.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ she asked out of the side of her mouth after we’d taken our seats in the back.
‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ I mumbled, hiding behind my work phone – legitimately, honest. I’d scheduled the next PowerFuel video to go out in the early engagement window and I had to double-check everything had worked as planned.
It wouldn’t be the first time a post got swallowed up by Mark Zuckerberg’s pet shark.
But the video was there, Colin’s big, gorgeous face filling the little screen – and every last one of my obsessive thoughts. I knew how his throat bobbed when he spoke lazily in his deep voice, how his wry smile covered up the times he was secretly being earnest.
I could say his words in the video along with him, hear them in his slow voice: ‘You want some motivational crap, right?’ I didn’t need to watch it again, but something made me do it anyway. Masochism probably.
I knew what came next. I’d asked him what kept him going when it hurt and he’d answered: ‘Stubbornness. Pride.’
Morgan’s suggestion of a close-up camera had been ingenious and I had two angles of his face, a permanent record of the few minutes before he changed the way I thought about myself. I should never have given him that power.
‘Is it going to be a problem? For you at work?’ Wil asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I answered with a grimace. I thought of my shiny new contract and the fact that Bill Weekes might find out that I’d slept with the talent. I hadn’t even signed it yet and Colin had tarnished even that achievement, the inspirational bastard.
He’d cut me in two and I didn’t know how to put myself back together. I almost wished he’d been a bad influence and asked me to stay. At least then I could have thrown away my life for love.
Ohhh, shit. I did not just think that.
Now was not the time to remember his rasping tone as he’d insisted my departure was going to kill him.
Such melodramatic hyperbole. But he hadn’t even given me the option of staying, which showed that under all the stuff I’d started to fall in love with, he was still an emotionally illiterate dickhead.
A dickhead who was letting this tension between us affect his performance.
When we arrived at the windswept mountaintop where today’s stage would finish, I was confronted by the more immediate problem: Colin still had the rest of the Tour to survive – and so did I.
Colin
All my life, I’d found distractions – more often created them – to keep my mind off the blinding pressure of expectations everyone had for my sporting career.
I’d never imagined that racing the Tour de France could be a decent distraction for something else that was upsetting me even more than the prospect of failure.
I would never have imagined there’d be a day when I wouldn’t want to see Leesa Kubicka.
Dad’s dressing-down after the ill-fated breakaway hadn’t been as awful as I’d expected, probably because I’d only been half-listening as the rest of my brain tried to process the fact that Leesa was able to blissfully anticipate moving on from me.
He’d told me all the usual stuff: the lead rider had to stick to strategy; save your strength; hold your nerve; blah blah blah. I knew what he truly wanted to say: don’t be such a bloody idiot. He didn’t need to say it, since I had that bit covered. No one wanted me to be a hero.
I had the legs of a 70-year-old when we lined up for the first mountain stage on the winding roads of the Pyrenees, a thought that amused me, considering I apparently had the brain of a 12-year-old.
Nellie certainly babysat me in the peloton as though I were five.
He probably regretted listening to me when I told him to go for the breakaway.
It wasn’t the first terrible idea I’d had.
As the day wore on, I thought of just following my front wheel off into the distance so I’d never have to cross the finish line and walk past her, feeling the furtive glances she thought I didn’t notice. I noticed everything. She should have known that by now.
I didn’t even know what I should do to defuse the situation, when I’d probably say the wrong thing and set it all on fire again.
I should stay well away from her, even when I was pulled in two, part of me wanting to talk everything through with her and part of me hurting too much to contemplate it, when she’d be gone again in a few short weeks.
My disappointment about her contract didn’t make sense.
I’d never expected anything different. But then I’d never expected her to want to be close to me at all.
I should have quit while I was ahead, even though that ‘Q’ word gave me hives.
Too many years of sports psychology and I was imagining I could train enough to make her stay.
There was something in that sports psychology idea though.
I couldn’t quite put my finger on it – probably something to do with the haze in my brain as my muscles produced some serious watts on a hardcore climb.
Everything hurt; my recovery had been insufficient.
But I didn’t mind the pain. It numbed everything else.
I heaved myself up the summit finish at Hautacam to the blur of colourful supporters and the taste of sweat, and crossed the line in sixth place – somehow my best finish of the Tour, although far from impressive.
Looking at the guys around me, I suspected I’d made up a bit of time for the General Classification and the white jersey.
Fine. It would make Dad happy.
I had a camera shoved in my face with the logo of an Australian TV channel. Surely they were sick of me drawling nothing in particular in the aftermath of a lukewarm performance. The highest-placed Australian and I couldn’t inspire a toddler on a balance bike right now.
To think I’d had the guts to try to inspire Leesa. I didn’t have a bloody thing to offer her.
I almost wished I’d raced poorly that day rather than having to accept the back-slapping and cheers from my teammates for the rest of the evening. Turned out I was top ten after that punishing climb. I just wished I knew what Leesa was feeling.
Which was why I found myself swerving away from the others the next morning at breakfast to plonk into the seat opposite Wil.
‘Is she okay?’ I blurted out.
Wil gave me a doubtful look. ‘If you have to ask me that, I’m guessing you did something you need to make up for.’
I ignored her comment. ‘Did she sign the contract?’ It wouldn’t make much difference, since I would force her to pick up the pen myself if she didn’t sign, but my brain was snagging on thoughts about crossing the finish line of our relationship. We weren’t there yet.
‘Shouldn’t you be asking her this?’
‘I don’t think she wants to see me. I was a bit too… blunt when she told me about the contract.’
‘You mean you made this all about you instead of about her?’ Wil patted me on the hand in a motherly gesture. ‘I’m keeping an eye on her, don’t worry. You need to focus.’
‘If one more person tells me to focus, I’m going to—’ I wisely cut myself off. ‘I’m well aware prioritising anything other than the Tour de France right now would make me a bloody idiot.’
A low cough behind me made me jump and I turned and jumped again when I saw her. Christ, she was too beautiful to sneak up on me like that, wearing the kit I’d bought for her at the training camp, looking like every wet dream I’d had when I was 19.
I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak, as though I had verbal constipation.
The way my belly was churning did make me wonder if loving someone was a bit like a stomach bug.
With heartburn. Or maybe I just needed to see the team doctor and take a bit of everything to get me through this one moment of looking at Leesa and not telling her how she made me feel.
‘Um, I was hoping to talk to Wil, if you’re done.’
I reared up to standing, stumbling because my nervous system wasn’t responding adequately to my commands. It had been like this since the moment I’d first seen her, only it seemed to be getting worse.
I fucking love you, Kubicka.
The words stayed down, but they dug an enormous hole in my psyche and I wasn’t sure I’d ever get them out again.
‘Going for a ride?’ I asked.
She nodded warily. ‘You know these mountains… Old times’ sake. Just an hour or— Before today’s stage.’
Full sentences were not on the menu for either of us.
A wolf whistle from the other side of the room was the only thing that could tear my gaze from her.
‘Lookin’ hawt, Leesa!’ Derek called out, with Amir giving her two thumbs up.
I snapped into action, ushering Leesa into my seat with light pressure on her shoulder. Even that small touch lit a fire in me as I purposefully obscured her from their view. ‘Don’t let Derek get a crush on you,’ I mumbled through clenched teeth.
I deserved the spiky look she gave me. I had to let her go live her best life without me. It might be easier if she thought I was a jerk.
Snatching my coffee cup off the table, I gave her a mock salute with it, ignoring the drop of espresso that smeared on my forehead, and stalked away from the table.