Tony and Alan had slipped into the room and Colin glanced at them before beckoning me even closer and lifting his hand, holding it a foot above the bed.
‘Jellyfish,’ was all he said at first, shaking his hand at me.
While I wasn’t certain about the metaphor, it was clear what he wanted. I opened my fingers and pressed my palm to his.
His rough, warm hand closed around mine, strong fingers, thick knuckles, a callus or two. After a few heartbeats where he studied our hands as intently as I did, he jimmied his fingers between mine.
My breath stalled as the raw intimacy of the gesture crept over me. Even when he’d held me and got in my head during sex, I hadn’t felt this close to him.
Feeling his eyes on me, I met his gaze for a quick smile and then he shifted, taking a deep breath and clearing his throat to catch Tony’s attention. His dad’s eyes fell immediately to our joined hands, but his only reaction was a quick lift of his brow.
‘I appreciate your concerns, but this is my Tour and I want to start tomorrow. I have no interest in running myself into the ground. I’ll abandon if and when I need to. But I’m lining up tomorrow morning – and hopefully every morning until Paris. We’re not done yet.’
Chapter 37
Colin
A little bit of pressure – from myself – was a good motivator. I had half of the Tour still ahead of me, if I was lucky and my injuries didn’t fight back. Ten stages until Paris – to show Leesa I would do anything to keep her in my life and try to make up for all the weird stunts I’d pulled before I started believing we could really be together.
It should have felt like a distraction, planning ways to convince Leesa we had to stay together after the Tour, but my two goals coalesced seamlessly into everything I was fighting for. Both would show her what I was made of, that I was serious about my life and her place in it, regardless of whether I brought home any silverware.
Although it would be a fuck of a lot easier if I did win something. I reckoned she’d like it too.
I had to improvise on the first morning. My body creaked and groaned as I hauled myself out of bed, but the compression bandage on my arm appeared to have done a good job and I didn’t notice any swelling. My reflection in the mirror startled me. I was black and blue as though I’d been in a bar brawl – not just my face, but all over my torso dark spots were coming up. But I had too much to achieve that day to linger, so I slung on tracksuit pants and a loose T-shirt and padded down to the breakfast room in my slides.
Thankfully I’d beaten almost everyone else up, so all I had to do was take aside a member of hotel staff to enact the first stage of my plan.
When Leesa emerged through the doors an hour later, I stood and approached her with a smile, slipping my hand into hers. She peered questioningly up at me, but I was determined to do all of this perfectly, so she’d have no doubts left by the time I told her everything.
‘I’m sorry for the sock thing,’ I said softly into her hair as I pressed a whisper of a kiss there.
She scowled. ‘That is the worst kind of prank: a prank that’s not actually a prank.’ Of course I hadn’t put anything in her socks, but I knew just mentioning the possibility would have had her checking every pair.
I let go of her hand. ‘Enjoy your breakfast.’
Still glancing warily at me, she headed for the buffet and I held my breath, waiting to see if my plan would actually work. When she went straight for the little container of cornflakes, a stubborn look on her face, I couldn’t stifle my grin.
I saw the exact moment the little object plopped into her bowl. It would have been impossible to miss, because she yelped, dropping the container to the table with a thud. A hand on her chest, she peered at me again with narrowed eyes.
But when she picked through the flakes to fish out the object, she studied it curiously. It was a wrapped local chocolate – les Pyrénéens, little bite-sized bars of filled dark chocolate – with six legs, two feelers and some beetle wings drawn onto it with permanent marker.
My first goal of the day – making Leesa smile at me – achieved, I went to find the chief mechanic to bend him into my service for the most important part of my plan, which would take some time – hopefully not so much that I missed my shot and she left for America before I could sort it out. I also called our cleaner back home in Lourdes and requested a favour. There was an embarrassing object in the back of my cupboard I needed her to post to our hotel in Paris in preparation for the moment I would place my pride on the line for a chance to make it all real with Leesa.
Only then did I turn my attention to the mammoth climbs that awaited me on stage 12. It was a miserable stage – not the weather, because the July sun was still sending its cruel rays to peel up the back of my neck, but the relentless pace of the peloton made no allowances for my recovery.
I was two minutes down on the white jersey, back in 16th place overall. It was a miracle it wasn’t more, but two minutes was probably insurmountable at this point, unless I had great luck – or the others had rotten luck.
The aim for the day was just to survive. Amir and Nellie stayed close in support, but I’d insisted we send Derek out and the kid had a great time in the breakaway, although he was caught again with 10 k to go. Staying with the peloton to the end lost me another 30 seconds on GC and I had to spend another hour letting Angie test everything under the sun, but I was cleared to continue, which was enough for now.
One day at a time…
I got some supplies shipped to the hotel in Gap for the rest day that I was holding out for, so I had to improvise again on the morning of stage 13. Waiting until Leesa was in the breakfast room, I prepared my prank and then strode in, stretching out my time at the buffet as long as I could without arousing suspicion and then sashaying past where she was sitting with Wil.
I was afraid for a moment she wouldn’t bite, but then Wil called after me, ‘Uh, you’ve got a… something on your back.’ She stood and plucked off the sticky note, inclining her head to read it. ‘It says: “Hug me”. I didn’t know you needed a hug. Come here!’
With an inward groan, I submitted to a hug from Wil, but Leesa laughed at me over her coffee cup as I leaned down to squeeze our diminutive marketing officer. Mission sort of accomplished.
Two hilly stages and a flat one rounded off the time until the rest day, with views of the fantasy-castle city of Carcassonne and glimpses of the Med. I still didn’t trust my body very far, but the strange thing about endurance was that the harder the race got, the stronger I felt. The grazes were healing and I imagined they would heal up tougher than before – kind of like my heart.
