Leesa
‘Can I come in?’
Just when I’d almost convinced myself I’d been hallucinating on the day of the crash, his voice from the other side of my door gave me enough of a shock that I knocked over the little pot of hospital-issue yoghurt.
‘Uh, yeah?’ I hurried to right the yoghurt, only belatedly wondering how bad my hair looked after days in bed.
He seemed hesitant, running a hand through his already wild mop of hair. That was new, but I supposed even Colin Gallagher was capable of feeling pity.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘That’s what you said last time you saw me. My sister is on your team, remember?’
‘But she’s not in this hospital room,’ I answered doubtfully. ‘How did they even let you in?’
‘I told them I was your boyfriend,’ he explained with a shrug. ‘I, uh, brought you something.’
What fresh hallucination was this? He thrust a gold-foil cardboard box in my direction. Reaching up with both hands, I grimaced when I moved the fingers of my left hand, where the cast came halfway along my palm.
‘Hey, easy.’ He set the box on the table next to the glob of spilled yoghurt and settled my arm back at my side. ‘Go on, have a look,’ he said as he rummaged in his pocket.
‘Is it going to squirt cream in my face?’
He raised an eyebrow at me and I could have pulled out my own tongue when I listened back to what I’d just said – in front of a known juvenile wannabe comedian with a dirty sense of humour. With a sigh, I carelessly opened the lid to find a little cake. There was cream, but in pretty rosettes with chocolate shavings – not the sort usually used in pranks, unless he was going to shove this in my face.
‘Uh, thanks.’
‘I heard you like slagroomtaart,’ he said as he produced a felt-tip pen and reached for my left arm. He exaggerated the pronunciation of the Dutch cream cake atrociously.
Before I could come out of my stunned stupor to work out whether to stop him, he’d scrawled ‘Get Well Soon’, and something that was probably supposed to be his name on the purple soft cast. Waiting for the punchline of a joke I hadn’t understood yet, I studied him for long enough to notice how much sharper the lines of his face were at 24. He was kind of grown up.
‘What?’ he asked, making me glance away momentarily with a gulp.
‘I’m waiting for the prank. It must be here somewhere.’
‘No prank,’ he assured me, his gaze steady on mine. ‘I just wanted to see how you were before we fly out to Quebec.’
Not sure how else to respond, I waved around the room with my cast arm. ‘Not sure what you wanted to see.’
‘Anything – everything,’ he said. ‘You.’ The last word seemed to surprise him as well. ‘And I wanted to say sorry. I think it’s my fault you broke your arm.’
Chapter 4
Leesa
Tony wrapped me in a wiry, mint-scented hug the minute I walked into the meeting room the following morning. I hoped he hadn’t noticed the enormous bags under my eyes. After rolling around for three hours from 4 a.m. – the unfortunate fault of jetlag – I’d then overslept and missed breakfast. I needed coffee like a… well, like a cyclist halfway through a Sunday ride, but the drive for punctuality my parents had drilled into me was still stronger than the call of caffeine, so I arrived for our meeting a semi-conscious wreck.
My old team manager was a spindly, weathered type with a perpetual salesman’s smile and an excess of energy that made younger people look bad, so his hug was less like comforting squishiness and more like a cottonwood tree wrapping its branches around me. But I respected him. He was a real champion for women’s cycling – not least because his own daughter stood to gain – and I had missed his crooked pep talks and wonky sense of humour.
‘It’s a pleasure to see you back so soon!’
He meant it too, which made me feel like bursting into tears. I was supposed to be happy to have left all this behind, but grief and guilt were real. This had been my team, even though it had sometimes felt I’d given more than I’d received in return. I forced a smile I hoped didn’t look as watery as it felt, desperately hoping my professionalism would be strong enough for this.
It had used to bother me that my parents – especially my mom – had never taken the time to understand why I loved cycling but, right now, I was glad she couldn’t see me like this.
‘Sit down, sit down. Alan will be here in a minute – and Wil. I just wanted to say before we get started that I’m really glad you’re here. I wasn’t too sure about this arrangement with PowerFuel. Alan will go over the sensitive bits. Colin’s not as… solid as he looks and I wouldn’t have been able to trust anyone else. But you’re one of us.’
The renewed tears pricking my eyes disagreed with him. Quitters weren’t part of the team.
