Racing to You: Racing Love, Book 1 (17 page)

“Don’t worry.” His voice gentles; he knows why I’m hesitating. “You can ride me any way you like, okay?”

I smile, thinking of that first time I straddled him in bed. “Tomorrow,” I say.

“Tomorrow.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

I get to his team flat the next day and something is wrong.

Terrence lies on the couch, his legs elevated, and he stares at the TV with a vacant expression.

I walk to him. “Are you okay?”

“What…?” He stares at me blankly like he doesn’t know why I’m here.

“You asked me to come over.”

His head falls back, his eyes close. “I forgot.”

My spine locks. “You forgot?” Getting to see him was all I could think of today, and he forgot. It lodges like a knife in my gut. Last night, on the phone, I thought he wanted me. So stupid. We’re just a fling. A fling that will soon be over, whether it’s from him breaking it off or from me going home. The end is near.

I knew it was coming. It shouldn’t hurt.

He glimpses my face, which I’m sure is nakedly pained. My feelings are too strong to hide.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” His expression crisscrosses with misery.

I forgot
holds no ambiguity for me.

“I’m sorry, Lia.” He holds his hand out to me. “Come here. I can’t get up.”

His leg is wrapped in ice packs. I walk closer. “What’s wrong?”

“Crash was worse than I thought. I woke up and my thigh hurt so bad I could barely sit.”

I kneel beside him on the floor. “You’re in a lot of pain.”

He turns to me. “I didn’t forget you. I just—” He stares at the ceiling. “Coach and the doctor have poked at me all day, making me do exercises that kill, trying to decide if I should go to the hospital.”

I’ve never seen him like this, despondent with all the pressure of the previous weeks crashing around him.

His mouth puckers and his breath catches. “If this doesn’t heal by Sunday, I’m fucked.”

I caress his arm. “What’s Sunday?”

He looks away and grits, “San Remo.”

“Oh, right.” Then I see the red rims around his eyes. He’s been crying. “Terrence?”

“What am I going to do?” he whispers. “The team hasn’t been performing well enough. I have to race on Sunday. Or we might not get a spot in the Tour.”

I kneel closer. “That’s crazy talk. Of course you’ll be in the Tour. You were last year.”

He lifts his head. “We’re a wild-card team. We’re not guaranteed in. I can’t afford this. It could wreck the team’s whole season.”

Tears lick the corners of his eyes, and he lays his arm over them to hide it. Anger rises in my belly. This is too much pressure for a twenty-three-year-old. They’re supposed to be a team, not solely dependent on one person.

I place a hand on his chest. “Very likely you’ll feel better tomorrow. If not, surely they can get by without you for one race.”

He scowls and brushes my hand away. “No. They can’t.”

I sit back, startled. He’s even more upset than I thought.

“Milan-San Remo isn’t just a race to Sergio.” His words are breathless and fierce. “Half the reason why he funds this team is because he wants to win it. He’s a lifelong cycling fan. An Italian living in France. He wanted the win in Nice, which I got. The next is San Remo across the border.”

“It’s not your problem. If you’re hurt, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

“You don’t understand. He’s the money. He signs our paychecks, and I promised him last year I would win it.”

“It’s not your fault you got injured.”

“It is my fault. They wanted me to sit out Paris-Roubaix. Now I’m laid up and I screwed everyone over.” His lip curls. “Sergio threatened to cut my salary on Twitter.”

“What?”

“His tweet was, ‘I’m paying Braker to win and he’s broken his contract.’ Hashtag loser.”

I screech. “That’s barbaric!”

“It’s been deleted, but every cycling blogger saw it.” He shakes his head. “I had four reporters ask me about it yesterday.”

The urge to go homicidal on this Sergio monster heats my blood.

The front door opens and Gary walks in, sweaty in his team kit. “How’s the leg, lazy?” He dumps his helmet and gloves on the table.

“Ha. Lazy. Funny,” Terrence drawls, but his tone lightens. I’ll never understand guy humor, but apparently it requires insulting each other.

“You’re such a fucking faker. You just wanted a day off. Feeling sorry for yourself after getting your pretty face dirty in the cobbles. Pussy.”

“Yeah, well. Now I’m ugly as you.”

When Terrence isn’t looking, Gary waves a finger at me to follow him into the kitchen.

“I’m going to get some water,” I say to Terrence, then follow Gary.

Gary asks me in a low voice, “How is he?”

“Depressed. Talking like his career is over. I just got here though.”

Gary snorts. “That about covers it.”

“Is it really that bad? He said if he doesn’t race on Sunday you guys could be knocked out of the Tour. And something about Sergio threatening his contract on Twitter.”

Gary sighs and scratches the back of his neck. “He’s always like this on days when he can’t ride. He turns into a fucking baby.”

“So it’s not really that bad?”

“That Sergio crap was just him being a dick trying to get Terr to man up and do his job.” He shakes his head. “Ass backward in my opinion. Makes it worse. But the Tour thing…” He glances at Terrence. “It doesn’t help for us to worry about it.”

“He said the doctor and coach have been here multiple times.”

“Fuck.” He rubs his forehead. “This is all my fault. I never should have let him race the cobbles with me.”

“You couldn’t have stopped him, Gary. He wanted to ride for you.”

“I should’ve stayed with him this morning. He can handle the coach and doctor when he has it together, but when he feels like this—those assholes pound on him like he’s a machine. They’ll break him, not make it better.”

“Can I help?” The more Gary talks the more worried I get, but his concern for Terrence is intense. Gary will help him, even if I can’t.

He gives me a sympathetic look. “You know, Aurelia, he’s going to be a prick the rest of the day. Best if you go. He needs to sleep.”

If it were anyone else, I’d say he’s trying to get rid of me, but Gary’s number one is what’s best for Terrence.

“I’m in the way, aren’t I? He’s losing focus because of me.”

“That’s not it, Aurelia. Don’t listen to the rest of them. I’ll have him call you later, okay?”

My chin falls. “Okay.”

Terrence won’t call me later. He doesn’t need me. He has too much going on to bother with me—his temporary fling.

My stomach twists with an intrusive fear: will he want to see me again? I don’t have much time left in France. I don’t want this to be goodbye. It will be a permanent one soon.

I look back at him before I leave. He’s so miserable, his expression so agitated. He doesn’t notice when I walk out the door.

* * * * *

He texts me, asking if I’ll come over again. I’m wary that it’s a pity text because he feels bad about earlier. I go anyway. Even if he doesn’t need me, I need to see him. Twenty minutes this afternoon wasn’t enough. It’s been days without him, and I’m tired of reading books I’ve read before.

Maybe I can distract him from his injuries.

Maybe he’s going to break up with me.

My stomach revolts, and I shove the thought away. I can’t think about it.

I stop at the chocolatier to pick up some ultra-dark chocolate, the kind with no milk or sugar, the kind Terrence can eat on his cycling diet. The gourmet French kind that licks my taste buds to life from just smelling it through the wrapper.

I find him in his room in bed with ice packing his leg, and he’s searching for funny YouTube videos on his laptop.

Without looking at me, he laughs. “Have you seen this one?”

I perch next to him.

It’s a music video, with song lyrics of cycling jargon, and cyclists in outdated hipster clothes. The backup singers are girls wearing spandex shorts, pumping up bike tires. Their butts prop out each time they push down the bike pump, making it look sexy.

I laugh. “You want me to pump up your tires like that?”

“Hell yeah, baby.” He pats my hand. “This video came out when Gary and I were still in high school, racing in Trexlertown. Before Europe, before going pro, before the Olympics. I miss those days. Gary’s dad was a loser just like mine. The bikes were freedom, you know? To get away. We’d spend all day riding as fast as we could, for as long as we could, because it was fun.”

He still hasn’t met my eyes. He’s rambling, trying to distract me.

At least he’s smiling and his doomsday mood is gone. I sit on the bed, gingerly avoiding his leg. “I brought you a present.” I set the chocolate bar on his reclining stomach and hope he doesn’t notice my fingers are shaking.

“You know me too well, Lia.” He rewards me with a kiss, then rips off the wrapper and breaks off a piece. He looks at my mouth. “Open.”

“First piece for me?” It was supposed to be for him, to make him feel better, though he hardly needs it now.

“I know you want some, Lia.” He slides the cocoa between my lips, his fingers trailing behind.

I groan and close my eyes. The flavor scintillates my tongue and zings pleasure sensors in my brain. French chocolate—I’ll be sneaking some home in my suitcase when I leave.

“Good?” He watches my face and takes a bite for himself.

“Mm-mm. Hit me again,” I say, just like he did when I fed him ziti in the car after the Paris-Nice party. This could be the last time I sit here with him like this, on his bed, smiling and playing.

He moans with me, and this time chases the chocolate with a kiss. His lips heat my mouth and make the chocolate melt faster on my tongue. His lips, my God, I’ll miss them.

“I’ve been a pain lately,” he says. “I should bring
you
chocolate.”

“Your cycling is important. If I were in graduate school, I’d be putting my studies first, too.” It’s true. This time last year, cramming for finals, finishing research papers, I was living in the library, as distant or more than he’s been this week. I wouldn’t have had time for a relationship either.

He pops a bite of chocolate in my mouth and another in his. “Tell me about your weekend. What’ve you been doing?”

“I went to Easter morning Mass.”

His eyes lighten. “I forgot about Easter. You went to church? Wait.” His eyes scrunch. “I didn’t know Filipinos were Catholic.”

“It’s the Spanish influence, like how my last name, Santos, is Spanish? My parents speak that too, along with Tagalog.”

“Tagalog?”

“One of the Filipino languages.”

“One of…”

“There are many.”

He tilts his head. “I wish I’d been here. I would’ve gone to church with you.”

“You would’ve?” A warmth spreads in my chest. I would have liked that. Going alone is hard.

“I was a good church boy when I was a kid. We weren’t Catholic, but my mom made me go to Sunday school.” His lip quirks. “When I wasn’t off riding bikes with Gary somewhere.”

He probably hasn’t been to church since he turned pro. Him ever joining me on Easter is likely a “never” kind of possibility.

He shows me more YouTube videos, and I watch, helping to finish our chocolate bar. It’s too simple though, too easy, like he’s entertaining me. Maybe he’s waiting for
me
to break it off with him, and he’s wasting time until I leave. He keeps space between us, not touching me with more than his elbow.

He hasn’t mentioned his leg or San Remo. He hasn’t mentioned the doping scandal with Grabe or the troubles with his press interviews. He’s just watching his computer, hardly looking at me.

“Terrence, stop.” I pause his hand on the laptop mouse.

“What’s wrong?”

“Why did you invite me over?”

“Why did—?”

“You don’t need me.”

“Need you? What do you mean, ‘need you’?” He tries to adjust himself on the bed and cringes when the movement hurts his leg.

I slide away from him, not wanting to hurt him. He needs more space than I’m giving him.

“Lia, don’t go.” He reaches for me when I move off the bed. The gesture is a comfort. Maybe he will miss me, a little.

“You have your cycling, and you’re busy racing, and I’m just—and you don’t—” I wring my hands. I don’t want to have to say it.

“What, Lia? I don’t know what you mean.” He leans on his elbow toward me, his face adamant and begging for me to speak.

“The coach and Ralph. They’re right.” I whisper, “I’m in your way.”

He squints and shakes his head, his mouth opening and closing, no words coming out.

It’s true, and he doesn’t want to have to say it either. “I get it.” I stand. “You don’t have time for me anymore.” I’d rather believe it’s because of time than because he’s tired of me.

“Stop it.” His face cements. “Why are you leaving me?”

“Leaving you?”

“Is it because of my leg? I’m sorry I’m no good for sex stuff, but I thought you liked spending time with me.”

“That’s not—”

“My mistake.” He refocuses on his laptop. “Go, if you want.”

I’m not certain what’s going on. He thinks I’m only here for sex? “Why would you think that? I haven’t even had the courage to have sex with you.”

“It’s all I’m good for, right? I’m a stupid jock who can’t read. I can’t even speak French.”

“You are smart. And you do understand French.”

“But you shouldn’t be spending time with me. I’m a waste. You’re better off with some French guy.”

I think of Paul, asking me to coffee. “I could spend more time with boring French guys, but—” I don’t know if he’s pushing me away because he wants me to go, or because he’s so insecure that he doesn’t know the truth. “I like spending time with you.” I fidget and stare at my hands. “But you were entertaining me with YouTube videos because you would rather I go.”

“No. It’s because I—I thought that you— Urgh!” He grabs at his hair. “I thought you’d leave if I didn’t entertain you somehow. Obviously, the real reason why you’re here isn’t happening.”

“I didn’t come to see you because I want sex. I came because I—” I don’t want to admit how much I missed him over the weekend, how boring my life is without him. “Why do you want me here when you have so many more important things to worry about?”

“Because I hate the worrying. And I—” His face is open, vulnerable, as exposed as I’ve ever seen him, except in orgasm. “I do need you.”