Of course we would have to keep this a secret, but wasn’t that proof that sleeping together would cause more complications?
‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ he said gently, his fingers moving in my hair. The touch was dangerously soothing. ‘It was kind of inevitable, given how long I’ve been admiring you.’
Wow, I’d forgotten that bizarre part of the bizarre past half-hour. I rolled onto my side to stare at him. ‘You’re not serious.’
‘I’m not lying,’ he insisted.
‘But—’ It didn’t make any sense. ‘Why did you keep putting fake insects under my door?’
He shrugged. ‘Little boys and their crushes. It was better than you not looking at me at all. Hell, I tried something that wasn’t a prank to get your attention that last race and you didn’t even see me.’
I sat up, staring down at him, sprawled naked on my bed, the compass tattooed on his side pointing at his heart. ‘The sign really wasn’t a prank. There was nothing on the other side?’ I wasn’t sure if I was touched or disturbed that he’d tried to earnestly say goodbye to me and it had backfired so spectacularly.
He hesitated before answering my question and I didn’t know what to think any more. ‘It did have something on the other side,’ he admitted.
I gave him a shove. ‘That is possibly the most juvenile thing you’ve ever done, making a distraction out of yourself.’
‘More juvenile than when I told you before the Tour Down Under that Australians expect to be greeted with “g’day, mate” and you went around saying it to everyone?’
‘That was embarrassing.’
‘It was gold. But you can’t tell me my pranks didn’t work, when I’m lying here staring at your tits, fuck-drunk and mind-blown.’
He knew staying stuff like that got a rise out of me, but despite the renewed prickle over my skin, his words also made me question the wisdom of our actions afresh.
‘Colin, if you struggle at the Tour because of me…’ I remembered well last year, Lori’s chaotic season as she and Seb danced around each other. Not that this was headed in the same direction, but that made it worse.
Colin had a gruelling few weeks ahead of him. When I glanced at him, his expression was unexpectedly sober, which was something of a relief. The volatility in him worried me.
‘It was sex, Lees. Great sex, but I’m not going to lose my form because we screwed. You really are hung up about this.’
I suddenly felt cold – and naked. Of course I was hung up about this. He’d told me my overthinking didn’t bother him, although perhaps I shouldn’t have believed anything he said when we were nearly naked and groping each other. I’d even let his confession about having a crush on me mean something, when it obviously didn’t to him. I wasn’t the only person he’d been attracted to over the past six years and I certainly wouldn’t be the only one in future.
But some part of me was sad and hurt and small, a crash to earth after I’d surprised myself by soaring with him this afternoon.
I slipped my feet over the side of the bed and looked around for my underwear. ‘Okay, but from now on, you have to focus. The whole team is relying on you and my client is too. The content is great, but results speak louder than all of that.’
Glancing at him as I tugged my bralette over my head and tried to forget everything he’d done to me that afternoon, I found him staring grimly at the wooden ceiling.
‘All right, coach,’ he muttered.
‘Maybe now we’ve…’
‘Fucked,’ he supplied for me with a dry look.
‘Yeah, maybe now things will be easier. We’ve blown off the tension.’
‘We’ve blown something all right,’ he drawled, but he wasn’t smiling. ‘It’s going to take a bit more to get you out of my system, Kubicka,’ he continued with a deep sigh. ‘But don’t worry. I know what’s important and I won’t screw it up.’
Colin
She was in my head – my bloodstream. I’d thought it had been bad before, but after seeing her naked, feeling hereverywhere, I could no longer see anything else when she was in the room.
Breakfast the day after was tough. I kept imagining Dad was watching me, that he could tell I’d slept with her, since my heart seemed to beat differently this morning. I avoided him by sitting with Nellie and Amir, but that meant pretending to be interested in the latest photos of Nellie’s son. He’d already inflicted them on me, but Amir loved babies and wanted the full commentary.
I didn’t understand why Nellie’s wife kept sending him so many photos when we were going home soon and he’d see them in the flesh but, apparently, he didn’t want to miss any of the little milestones and he found it difficult to be away.
I was trying to think of something to say about the video of his wife playing with the baby’s toes, when the door opened and there she was and my vocabulary shrank to something similar to Rupert’s.
