Page 19 of Don't Brake My Heart
‘What about non-gratuitous flirting?’ I asked with a straight face.
‘All flirting is gratuitous,’ she insisted.
‘I beg to differ, but okay. You didn’t say anything about off camera, so I’m fine with that. What are your other conditions?’
She hesitated for a moment and then said, ‘Don’t push me. I’ll think before I say no, but if I say it, I mean it.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ I said, so damn impressed by how she calmly and fairly set her boundaries.
‘Secondly, you can’t use me as an excuse for screwing up your training. Stick to the rules.’
Okay, that wasn’t what I’d expected. ‘That’s no fun,’ I pouted. ‘You won’t screw up my training because I don’t have a lot of choice in that, but my free time? What’s the harm in a little rule-bending.’
‘Then you’re on your own. You can’t count on me to join in.’
She must have had no idea her words were like a red cape to a bull. ‘Fair enough. I won’t promise not to try to convince you, though.’
‘I suppose I’ve been warned,’ she muttered. ‘And, more importantly—’ She drew herself up. It seemed I wasn’t the only one who could deliver a dramatic pause and she was prettier while she did it. ‘No more making fun of my middle name. It’s my saint’s name and my grandmother would hurt her knees praying for your soul if she knew.’
‘Darn, I was going to start calling you Magda, but for the sake of your grandma’s knees, I will refrain. A long, complicated name suits you.’
‘You should have stopped before that last sentence,’ she muttered.
‘Not that you’re long or… complicated. Maybe a bit complicated. Okay, another sentence too much. But I know what it’s like to have an interesting middle name. I suppose I thought it was something we had in common.’
She fought with herself for a whole minute while I tried not to smile. ‘You… have an interesting middle name?’
I simply flashed my eyebrows at her. ‘You can google it and laugh in private.’
‘I’m not going to laugh at your name, especially since that would make me a hypocrite.’
It might have been pushing things, but I slung an arm over her shoulders and leaned on her. She went still, but she didn’t tell me to get lost, which I counted as a win. ‘You just remember you said that when you laugh. And don’t forget to linger over the photo of me winning Nationals two years ago with my jersey ripped to shreds.’
‘Why am I not surprised you google yourself?’
‘Now I’ve got you to do that for me.’
She rolled her eyes and shimmied out from under my arm.
‘You do know, right,’ I began slowly, ‘that we’re friends now?’ I let that sink in for a moment, but I didn’t give her time to reply. ‘Come on. We should get back. It must be your jetlag bedtime.’
9 September, the year before
Leesa
‘Is this some kind of joke? Not everything is about you.’
‘You’re good at reminding me of that,’ he said with a chuckle that was a total mismatch with the look on his face.
I couldn’t imagine why he thought he’d caused half of the peloton to come down during my last race.
‘I was there,’ he said, which explained nothing. ‘With the spectators. You didn’t see me. I think I distracted some of the others.’
‘You think your face is such a distraction?’ Oops, maybe he’d think I was flirting with him, from that quip. My throat was a little thick with the realisation that I did understand why people thought he was hot, no matter how much I wished I didn’t.
‘Look, I just wanted to say sorry and… goodbye – you know?’
I wondered if I was still under the influence of the painkillers, because this Colin seemed way too serious for the guy who’d squeezed my energy gel until it squirted me in the face more than once.
