Page 15 of Head Over Wheels

‘I was terrified he’d hear you. I knew you were laughing in there. Andyoutold him we’d been making out like teenagers. It’s not funny,’ I insisted when she snorted with renewed laughter. ‘Your family will want to kill me.’

She looked up and grinned at me and it took all my restraintnot to kiss her again. ‘It was pretty funny. “You don’t have any balls left.”’ she quoted with a snort.

I had unfortunately chosen that moment for my desperate attempt to rearrange the seam of my boxers to ease the pressure.

‘Seb, do you have a hard-on?’ she asked, her mouth swinging open.

‘Not any more,’ I said emphatically.

‘Did you have one while you were talking to my dad?’

‘Only… half. And not for long.’

Clapping a hand over her mouth, she shook with laughter. ‘You seriously had to talk to my dad at half-mast?’

Throwing up my hands, I said through gritted teeth, ‘I didn’t choose to! After a kiss like that, I can’t just say, “Down boy, no more of that.” My mind was blown!’

Leaving Lori speechless was my new favourite feeling.

But she pulled herself together disappointingly quickly. She raised her eyebrows and asked, ‘Have you really raced the Paris-Roubaix twelve times?’ changing the subject abruptly.

‘Four times I didn’t finish,’ I explained.

‘You mean, “I finished the Hell of the North eight times,”’ she prompted, giving me a shove. ‘I have no idea how you got this far with that attitude.’

‘Not to the podium, that’s for sure,’ I quipped.

‘I love the Paris-Roubaix,’ she said wistfully, the way normal people talk about their beach holiday. Her hair was swept off her face in a no-nonsense ponytail and she wasn’t wearing any make-up, showing all of the pale freckles that dotted hernose and cheeks, but she had such a sweet face when she smiled like that. Her blue eyes glinted with silver. She had a generous bottom lip that would star in my fantasies for years to come. An angular face with a strong, elegant jaw.

It struck me again that this was Folklore standing in front of me, my eyes tracing her cheekbones. Her throat bobbed and my lungs started playing up again.

‘I saw you— your finish,’ I said, clearing my throat, ‘last year.’

‘When I came third?’ she clarified with a huff.

I crossed my arms and drew myself up. I would never be a big brutish type, even if I were allowed to eat cheese and pizza all the time, but I’d caught her checking me out and I could hit some serious functional threshold power stats with these muscles.

‘Tell me that wasn’t the best third place of your life, though. I saw the highlights, how you pushed through the mud and carried your bike past the melee after that crash. It was lucky I didn’t know who you were on Zpeed or I would have been too much of a fanboy and you would have dropped me faster.’

She glanced away with a smile. ‘It was my best result in that race, but I still didn’t win it.’

‘Why do you like it so much? I already know you’re a masochist on the training bike but who actually likes the torture of the cobblestones?’

‘I do,’ she said lightly. ‘It’s do or die. Nothing else exists for those three-and-a-half hours except me and the road and the fight. It’s where I belong.’

‘The opposite of the training bike,’ I murmured as flashes of our conversations came back to me: when she’d casually explained that she had ADHD, how her mum had always expected more than Lori could deliver – both in the classroom and in sport.

She nodded her agreement, then froze and her gaze flew to mine. ‘You won’t tell anyone, will you? The stuff we… talked about?’

‘Of course not!’ I grumbled, snatching my arm away when she clutched at it. ‘You trusted LoonieDunes and you can trust me.’ For a second, the quiver of her brow made me wonder if I should have been more gentle with her, but then she lifted her chin, pride restored. Lori didn’t want gentle.

‘Okay, I’m sorry, fanboy. But even the girls on the team don’t know about… you know. They only joke about how I lose everything all the time. If you find a pair of socks somewhere, they’re probably mine.’

My skin felt tight again and this time it had nothing to do with the embarrassing situation in my underwear. This was the Folklore I remembered: a big mouth and a soft heart – and a broken body. I wanted to grab her and give her a hug.

‘I’ve got to go,’ she said suddenly and, for a second, I was worried I’d spoken my thoughts aloud.

‘Okay, sure. I’ll… see you round then.’

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