Page 69 of Fallen Crown

“I’ve been rising for you for a while now.” His lips are tipped up in amusement. “I didn’t want to disappoint you a second time.”

Pinpricks race across my skin at the notion my opinion matters to him. Instead of saying anything, I draw him into another kiss, and he slides his hands under my damp shirt. At least beneath the tree’s canopy, the rain isn’t hitting us as hard.

In the distance, an engine rumbles, and Brice releases a sigh.

“I can’t decide if Iris is saving me or extending my torture.” He steps back, and he bends at the waist, taking a few deep breaths with his hands on his knees. “Might need a minute.”

“You going to see how fast you can be after all? A little solo trip to the finish line?” I say with a small smile before I plant a kiss on his temple. When I try to step away, he snakes an arm around my waist and draws me against him. I lean into him, but I’m aware there’s a chance Iris is filming. “I need to go. Or you need to go. One of us needs to meet her.”

He scrapes his teeth along my earlobe, and then he lets me go so I can leave the trees to return to the bikes. As soon as I step out from the canopy, the rain hits me with force. Brice was smart to guide us under the cover of the dense foliage.

“I’ll think of you the whole time,” he calls.

“I hope it’s good.”

“It always is.”

When I glance back, he’s got the cheeky grin I’ve come to expect, and he’s standing upright now while rain sheets around me.

“Where’s the prince?” Iris asks when the SUV is close enough.

“Bathroom break.” I gather the tools Brice dropped in the mud, flick them as clean as I can, and slot them into my emergency repair kit. When I do, I notice that blood has seeped through my bandage, and that reminds me of the last time I was on a course. Blood never used to bother me. Earlier I was too focused on the bike tire, and then on Brice, to really absorb my sliced finger. A chill streaks through me, and I shiver.

Brice emerges from the tree line, and his presence pushes out the cold edging over me, but guilt pinches me at what we just did. I sent the separation paperwork, and Caitlin confirmed that Enzo received it. Coming to Fiji as a competitor was as good as dooming us, anyway. But after so many years with Enzo, it’s hard to believe we’ve truly reached the end of our marriage, that what I just did with Brice wasn’t a betrayal.

Who am I kidding? I’ve been betraying Enzo for months. Whether I was actually kissing Brice or not, there’s been an undeniable connection between us. Perhaps all the hate was never hate at all. The thought, like so many lately, makes me both happy and sad.

I lift my bike out of the mud where it fell. Brice must sense my mood because he comes over to me and rubs a hand along my back before leaning in close enough for me to feel his breath on my neck.

“You okay?” he calls above the rain.

“I’m good,” I say, keenly aware of the camera over his shoulder. “Thanks for circling back to help me fix my tire.”

“Did you know,” he says as he gets on his bike, “that it gets more expensive to buy a tire pump with every year that passes?”

He’s setting himself up; I can feel it. But the casualness with which he always presents his terrible jokes does amuse me. “Oh,” I say, playing along. “Why’s that?”

“It’s all that inflation.”

I grin and shake my head. Not for the first time, I’m grateful for him. He’s gotten so good at reading my moods, and a lot of the time, he seems to understand what I need to be drawn back to the present. The here and now is the best place for me to live. Nothing in the past can be changed, and if I keep looking back, I might miss what’s right in front of me.

We both get on our bikes, and we begin the hard pedal through thick mud that will get us back to Riker and Wren. Hopefully, we haven’t lost too much time.

That night at dusk, when we roll into our checkpoint where we’ll crash for a few hours after white water rafting and rappelling down a cliff face, I’m not as tired as I expected. Part of it is what I know still lies ahead on the course, but the other part is what happened with Brice and me earlier. The memory is enough to light my body up again, but I also have this lingering guilt I can’t quite get rid of.

Once we’re settled, Iris says she needs some individual interviews with Wren and Riker. In response, Brice claims he’s headed to the bathrooms, and he raises his eyebrows at me before leaving.

“I’m going to talk to a few other teams. See how the race is with all this rain,” I say. Perfectly plausible. I know a lot of the competitors, but Jag’s eyes narrow slightly. The guy doesn’t miss much.

There are tents and other shelters dotted along the field being used as this checkpoint and base camp for racers. Brice is ahead of me, and a few people call out to him to congratulate him on our great standing. Top ten is okay, but we’re capable of so much better. Likely, the other experienced racers are surprised he isn’t just a pretty face and a dead weight. Makes me a bit proud to realize he’s proven me and them wrong at almost every turn since we started training.

Brice disappears into the portable bank of bathrooms, and I wonder whether I misinterpreted him. I was sure we were headed for the bushes behind here.

When another racer I’ve known for years from Australia hobbles over, we fall into a discussion about the mud and the amount of rain. None of us expected an easy course during the rainy season, but it seems like an unusually high amount of precipitation, even for that. Without our phones, we don’t have a search engine at our fingertips, so it’s all speculation. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that it’s impossible to keep any kit we wear dry for long. Despite changing socks and shoes as often as we can, we’re all on the lookout for the start of trench foot.

Brice comes out of the washrooms, and he stands on the little platform for a beat. Our gazes connect, and then he slips behind the unit. I make my excuses to my friend, and I go around the building. As soon as I’m past the edge, he sweeps me into his arms and pins me against the wall. His nose brushes against mine, but he doesn’t kiss me. There’s a soft glow from the bathroom windows, which lights the area around us.

“What is this sorcery?” Brice mutters.