Page 9 of Head Over Wheels

‘Has anyone ever told you, you have a weird sense of humour?’

Folklore had…

She pushed up into a high plank, her hair tumbling over her shoulder, her body taut and strong and so beautiful my eyes hurt. ‘Have you forgotten how to do mountain climbers?’ she asked, her tone irritated.

I knew that tone. I’d heard it so often through my headphones as she baited me and teased me and made me fight. Holy shit,could shebe Folklore in more than just my imagination?

I scrambled to get going again, my head spinning and my eyes drawn down her body, as though looking could give me answers to the desperate questions swimming in my mind.

Lori moved seamlessly back onto her elbows and my gaze snagged on her lower back, to the jagged, puckered scar tissue, and I froze in alarm. Folklore had occasionally been in pain while we trained, but she hadn’t talked in detail about her injury. It hit me then that Lori had broken her back – I’d seen that crash on replay.

Rocketing down a mountain like a bullet, she must have hit a hidden seam, because one minute she’d been coolly burning the competition, and the next she’d sailed over her handlebars, her bike flipping and flying after her as she landed heavily on her helmet and skidded over the edge.

She was lucky she could walk – lucky to be alive. If something like that had happened to Folklore…

My arms crumpled and I hit the mat with an ‘oof’, my heart pounding. How much pain did she still have?

Glancing at me uneasily, Lori relaxed her body and sat up. ‘Do you want to do burpees? See who can do the most in three minutes?’

‘For fuck’s sake, Lori!’ Colin called out. ‘You always have to play with the boys.’

‘Sure,’ I answered her, ignoring Colin. ‘I know you’re in great shape— Erm…’ I sucked in a panicky breath through my nose as I felt Colin’s eyes burning the back of my neck. ‘I mean, you’re… competitive. It’s a compliment!’

Competitive like Folklore –impulsivelike Folklore.‘Okay,’ she said doubtfully. ‘Were you listening to music?’ she asked, gesturing to where I’d set my phone down. ‘Let’s use a song as the timer.’

I was such a mess of shock and excitement that my brain froze and I couldn’t work out whether I should hide the music I’d been listening to and just put on David Guetta or something. The decision was taken out of my hands when I disconnected the Bluetooth and Taylor’s ‘Paper Rings’ rang out suddenly in the quiet room.

Fumbling with my phone, I tapped the screen to move onto the next song in the queue, but it wasn’t any better: ‘Hysteria’ by Muse – decidedly dystopian. I couldn’t bring myself to meet her gaze, afraid to see if she’d put the two songs together and get FolkyDunes – my imaginary friendship that obviously hadn’t meant as much to Folklore as it had to me. Even worse, she might not react at all and the similarities really were all in my head.

She said nothing until the moment felt like a rubber bandpulled taut. Then it pinged back and she dropped to the floor as the dirty bass at the beginning of the song got going. ‘One!’ she barked at me as she completed her first burpee and I lurched into action.

I waited until she started to puff, the skin under her freckles glowing pink, before I slowed down. Iwasstruggling – burpees were right up there with cleaning the toilet or waiting for the bus, in my books – but not quite as much as I led her to believe. She was intense – energetic and strong – but I had the completely unfair advantage of being male.

When the guitar solo at the end of the song finished with a crash of cymbals, I sat back on my haunches, heaving in deep breaths. She’d completed eight more than I had.

Colin clapped slowly from behind us. ‘Beaten by a girl, Frankie?’

‘Not just any girl,’ I muttered, hauling myself to my feet. ‘I… thanks for the contest.’ Holding a hand out to her, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to shake hers or help her up. I would have told her what an honour it was to meet her in burpee battle if I hadn’t known it was coming on far too strong and I would have sounded like the idiot I was.

But she batted away my hand, eyes blazing. ‘You let me win!’ she accused icily.

‘It was a lot of burpees. I hate burpees,’ I insisted.

Shaking her head, she seethed, ‘There’s no point in winning unless I earned it. And why are you trying to be nice to me anyway?’ Her eyes narrowed.

Because if youareFolklore, talking to you online was the highlightof my off-season. Because I know what your voice sounds like when you’re in pain, but still pushing yourself. I know that beneath the surface, you have feelings like everyone else.

I said nothing out loud. She didn’t want those words. I didn’t know if I could handle the truth, whichever way it went.

But in true Folklore style, she faced the issue head-on. Dropping her chin, she groaned, long and loud. ‘It’s from “Walloon”, isn’t it?’ she said under her breath. ‘The French-speaking people from Belgium. I should have realised.’

Chapter 4

Lori

‘Which one is Franck’s room?’ I asked Colin when I reached the corridor on the third floor of the hotel after the day’s training ride was over. It was the late afternoon rest hour, the most important part of the day, according to my dad. But I couldn’t rest until I’d seen LoonieDunes –Sébastien Franck– and talked through the situation that was rubbing at the back of my mind like the worst itch and stopping me from focusing.

‘Number 315,’ my brother replied. ‘But, ah, I wouldn’t go in there right now, if I were you.’ He pouted his lips, looking more like a fish than a blow-up doll, but I understood his meaning even before he added the crude hand gesture. My gaze flew to the ceiling.

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