Page 83 of Head Over Wheels

‘Is it your mum?’ I asked quietly.

‘No. Yes,’ she admitted with a groan. ‘I accused her of only loving me when I achieve something.’

I couldn’t quite stifle my amused huff. ‘Wow. That’s wisdombeyond your years. I bet you gave her something to think about.’

She slapped me on the arm. ‘She messes with my head. I don’t know if the problem is me or her. She keeps saying I have to reach my potential and I probably wouldn’t be here right now if she hadn’t been hard on me, but she makes me so scared I’m not good enough.’

Her tone took me back to last year, Lori talking to me in her cracked voice as she battled back to fitness.

‘After the season I’ve had—’

I shook my head to cut her off. ‘You showed your greatest strength this year. You kept going. They don’t call road cycling an endurance sport for nothing.’

‘Because I don’t have a choice,’ she said, her face curling up with an expression I’d never seen before. Unable to stop myself, I hauled her into my lap and pressed her cheek into my chest, grateful she let me. ‘I can’t just retire and eat cheese.’

‘And you don’t have to. You’ve got your best years ahead of you.’

‘It’s not that,’ she insisted. ‘If I give up – even when I lose – then she’s right. Mum’sright, I’m not good enough. If I stop trying… I don’t know what else there is. I always just fight. I don’t know what to do except fight.’

Leaning my head on hers, I clutched her and just breathed. ‘You don’t have to fight right now’ were the words that eventually tumbled out. ‘You can just hurt, if it hurts. Be happy, if I can make you. Regroup today and fight tomorrow.’

‘Mum had to quit competing when I came along,’ she said, her voice impassive. ‘It was a difficult birth – we both nearly died. I suppose she should be happy I only ended her career and not her life.’

Imagining something similar happening to Denise made me nauseous. Adding a spike of anger at Paola Gallagher for making Lori feel guilty for something that wasn’t her fault, I was swimming in feelings.

But I managed to speak the most urgent words. ‘I’m just… gladyousurvived.’

She was in my arms – unusually motionless for Lori – her forehead nestled against my neck, and I felt as though I’d come to Trieste for this moment. Not tomorrow, when some race was starting. This was bigger.

‘I survived to be your fake girlfriend,’ she joked, her tone gentle. ‘It fits, I suppose. I’m pretty sure my parents are separating. Gallaghers only know how to win and relationships have losers.’

Even those bleak words didn’t detract from the power of the moment. It was only a moment, after all. ‘I thought you’d started to doubt that?’

She drew back to study me and I regretted saying anything. She’d been drunk and I shouldn’t have held onto anything she’d said that night. ‘There’s no way that both ofuscan win, right?’

‘I suppose not.’

Licking her lips, she drifted closer and said, ‘Except in bed.’

Except in this room, right now. ‘We both win in bed,’ I agreed huskily, tipping up her chin. Holding her still, I let the seconds stretch, waiting for my opportunity. I sensed it coming. I would give her everything in me and then hopefully she’d see that she was worth all that and more. It no longer mattered what would be left of me after it all ended.

Perhaps it was a family curse to fall hard – for the wrong person.

Lori

The air was too heavy in the room. I couldn’t catch my breath with the way Seb was regarding me so fiercely, his knuckle firm but gentle under my chin.

I’d wanted him to help me forget the turmoil of Mum’s arrival and the reopening of a season’s worth of wounds, but whatever this was, it was better.

I didn’t think I’d ever forget the way he’d said, ‘Talk, then I’ll fuck you.’ The memory of his voice, smooth and a little bit cocky, shivered up my spine and I had to get closer. I dipped my head, my mouth at the base of his throat.

‘Did you trim your beard for me?’ I mumbled as I kissed his skin.

‘Yes,’ he admitted through soughing breaths. ‘Do you like it?’

‘Mmm-hmm,’ I said, pressing a soft, teasing kiss to his throat, making him swallow heavily. ‘Are we up to the fucking yet?’

He plonked me onto the bed more roughly than I’d expected, settling his hands on either side of me and peering into my face. ‘Are we the only two people in the room now? I don’t want to share you.’

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