Page 86 of Head Over Wheels

I crossed nine minutes after the stage winner in 26th place – a decent result for me, nothing special. But there was Lori standing behind the barriers, her hair in a high ponytail. To look at her face, you would have thought I’dwon the thing. I didn’t believe I’d stolen her luck any more, but I’d certainly chased away Top Gun Gallagher right when Lori should have been back at full strength. Light-headed – not only from the exertion – I indulged the thing between us even as the clock ticked, letting her kiss me, brushing her cheeks and giddy with the view of her face after too many hours.

Cameras flashed, one close enough to make her flinch. And I couldn’t ignore the question that rose in my mind:how long until you’re gone from my life again?

Tony clapped me on the shoulder when I dragged myself into the team bus. ‘Nice work, Frankie. You didn’t leave enough for yourself today?’

I ignored the question. ‘How did Colin do?’

‘Fifth,’ Tony told me. ‘He’s only thirty seconds down. It was a good result – a real team effort and I’m proud of y’guys!’

The Tour was a marathon – a hellish three-week marathon – and wasn’t won or lost in a day. We’d stuck to our strategy and brought Colin in with a good time. We’d been saving our strength, not going for a win.

But I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the beginning of the end, perhaps because my agent had the contract from Harper-Stacked sitting on his desk, waiting for me to formally refuse it – along with two other offers I’d never wanted. Or maybe my luck was just running out now.

There were too many eyes on me at dinner, where I sat with Amir and Nelson, keeping my gaze off her. I was onlyallowed to eat, sleep and race during the Tour. She knew that. I was lucky Colin wouldn’t say anything to the DS about last night.

It pricked me to think that the night with her truly had been the beginning of the end.

Discipline was important at the beginning of a stage race, so I summoned all of mine and I didn’t even text her when I rolled over to go to sleep that night, Colin and I ignoring each other because we were both struggling in our own heads.

I woke up to a message that read:Everything okay? I miss you.You’re doing great.I took a second to wonder at the earnest words that didn’t sound much like the prickly Folklore I knew, but I didn’t have time to answer as we ate an early breakfast and then set off for the starting point of the race, in the Julian Alps in Slovenia.

Conditions were miserable. The climbs needed all of us around Colin to keep the pace, taking turns to punch it at the front. As the day wore on and other teams pushed the pace, the guys gradually had to drop back. I held on as long as I could, but I was dropped eventually, slipping out of the peloton and joining the struggling gruppetto.

Although the sun came out as we crossed back into Italy, the day had taken a lot out of us and we had 19 stages to go. I wouldn’t be able to face Lori’s pride.

But she could read me too well. Seeing her in the crowd, I glanced around for the cameras as I unclipped a foot and pushed the bike towards her, my back aching – my ballsaching, and not in a fun way. I didn’t want a congratulatory kiss. I wanted to rest my head on her shoulder and why would she want that?

When I raised my head to kiss her, I wasn’t expecting anything, which was why it caught me in the gut when she grasped my face.

‘Seb,’ she said, her hands torturing my cheeks. ‘I have to go the day after tomorrow.’

‘I know. You have to focus on your training.’ I met her gaze, reading confusion there. God, I was going to miss her eyes, the way she could look at me and strip away the nonsense. Lifting a hand to the back of her neck, I said, ‘It’s your time, Lore.’

Tony called and I only had time for a quick peck on her lips before I had to get back to the bus. There were eight hours of driving ahead of us before tomorrow’s third stage – not quite far enough away to warrant the packing and inconvenience of a flight, but long enough for all the riders to suffer in the coach.

Lori didn’t drive with us and her mother was absent too, an observation that made my concerns flare up. She should just go, get away from her mum – away from me.

She sent me another message asking if I was suffering much, but I ignored that one on purpose. I had to let her go.

Stage three was flatter, with the sprint teams vying for position in the peloton. The pace in the final kilometre would likely be too high for the riders aiming for the general classification – the coveted maillot jaune, the yellow jersey. ButI got in a good rhythm, blocking everything out as I pulled Colin with me, even the fuzzy tiredness from sitting in a coach until past midnight.

It was only later in the afternoon that the looming disaster I’d sensed finally struck. At a roundabout on the outskirts of Nice, I was riding on the inside of a curve and clipped a barrier with my foot. A stupid mistake, a split-second lapse in concentration. A moment of weightlessness felt like a year of my life and then the asphalt greeted me with a crunch and a white-hot shock slammed through me.

I couldn’t make any sense of the words over my radio for several seconds as only my heartbeat and the blinding throb of pain registered. But the adrenaline in my blood was working hard and I hauled myself up, looking around for my bike in a panic.

Amir was down as well, a graveyard of bikes strewn across the road between us. And up ahead, there was Colin, pushing his bike at a run to try to get started again.

‘If anyone can get to Colin, do it!’ came the DS’s voice over the radio and I snapped into action, throwing my leg over my bike and pushing hard to catch up.

By the time I’d paced him back to the peloton, my shoulder was screaming – my legs stung, my eyes were as dry as burned toast, since I’d broken my sunglasses in the crash, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to get through another 18 days of this.

It didn’t help to tell myself I felt this way every single year I was named in the team for the Tour, or that I’d been expectingthis irrational dip in confidence. It was like my relationship with Lori: I’d seen the end coming, but I still didn’t know how to stop it hurting.

Luckily, she was leaving tomorrow and wouldn’t have to watch me screw up any more.

I limped over the line with a grimace, almost wishing I never had to finish, because Lori would see me like this and any hope I had of going out of her life as some kind of hero had fled.

Flicking sweat out of my eye, I glanced at my fingertips to see a smudge of red and realised it hadn’t been sweat at all.Shit. If I didn’t pass a physical exam, I’d have to pull out of the race and then I wouldn’t be of use to anyone any more.

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