Page 73 of Racing Hearts

His movements pick up and this time I can’t help it—I cry out from the pleasure that’s coursing through my body. If I’d known it was going to feel this fucking good I never would have had the willpower to resist him. I would have peeled off that unisuit and taken him on one of the ergs. Maybe I should regret all the days I spent not doing this. But I’m too full of incandescent pleasure for regrets.

My legs coil tighter around his torso, like I can physically hold him so close that I’ll never have to let him go.

“Adrian,” I say.

He traps my wrist with a hand and catches my eye. His eyes are as bright and beautiful as the day I met him. But this time every part of him is mine—open and strong and so fucking good—and maybe I’ve known I wanted him like this every moment since then.

“More?” he asks, breath hard around the word.

“There’s more than this?”

He laughs as he presses kisses up my neck. “A bit, yeah.”

“Yes,” I say. When I’m with Adrian it feels like the answer is always the same. “Please. More.”

Impossibly, he sinks deeper. A gasp falls out of my lips. He’s been holding back. I have to force out a breath to relax again.

“Okay?” he asks, smoothing his thumb against my forehead, slightly sticky with my sweat.

“Not regular good,” I pant. “So good I could scream.”

He laughs again and then he’s gliding slow and purposeful. I shiver in the wake of each movement, loosing little breathless gasps. My fingernails dig into the expanse of muscle across his back. He pushes and pulls, punctuating each movement with his lips against my throat. My chest rises to meet his, spasms of ecstasy vibrating through us both.

“Adrian,” I say again, and this time I’m not asking for what I want right now—I’m pleading to drain every drop from him, to wring ourselves dry with every kiss, every breath.

He picks up the pace, and all I can do is hang on to him, lock my hands into the muscles at the back of his arms, hug myself tight to his shoulders.

I’m coming undone, unwinding, thread by aching thread. I want this. Not just now, not just today. I want this feeling again and again and again. Like I could never have enough of it. Like I could never have enough of him.

He lets his forehead fall against mine. I can feel tremors racing across his arms as I squeeze myself closer to him. He moans, low, and with such intense pleasure and desire that my body seizes. I’m unraveling, uncoupling, snapping loose from every one of my threads. I feel myself contract around him, arch my back, and it’s enough to loosen him, too. He pulses into me as we both ride the wave, cresting and breaking apart.

Tremors descend over my spine, my limbs, as the feeling ebbs and recedes. Adrian breaks away from me slowly, warms my neck with another kiss. His lips come away moist with my sweat.

“Holy shit,” I whisper.

It’s the only thing I can say. But what my brain—still in a liquid haze of confusion—really means is: I want to do this forever.

Twenty-Three

38 Days Until Pan Ams

I’m not ready to say whether or not Adrian’s method works, but I’ve found it surprisingly easy to shift to an entirely new gear.

Last Thursday, I left his office with a lingering kiss and a promise to see him after I finished my solo cross-training session. And then, I did. We spent that evening cross-legged in front of a giant set of Connect Four before tucking into meatballs that Adrian simmered in red sauce for a solid hour. Afterward, I stretched and foam rolled while he attacked his training programs, notes and books strewn across his coffee table in a manic pile. Then he ripped off my pants with the same fervor.

On Saturday, after morning practice, we rented matching green cruiser bikes and rode over the Golden Gate Bridge, whips of hair assaulting our foreheads. That afternoon, when I pushed my fingertips off the dock, I realized my cheeks were still sore from smiling.

Instead of going straight back to the bays after practice the other day, Adrian and I spent an hour sitting on the dock, watching Rohan’s TikTok videos as we kicked our feet through the water, stirring up eddies behind our knees. Some—like the ones where the kids keep shouting the same few lines (song lyrics?) before pushing one another off the dock—felt like inside jokes I didn’t understand. But others, like the ones where the kids answer “common questions about rowing,” were hilarious. My favorites, though, were of Rohan talking directly to the camera with surprisingly personal reflections on our sport. Like when he describes the agony of erg tests and early-morning practices. Or complains about the banal torture of unloading a trailer. Or when he explains why, despite it all, rowing gives him life.

When I kicked off my shoes by the door a couple of hours later, Mom smiled knowingly and asked if I’d be “spending the night away” again.

“Does it bother you that I’m not around much?” I asked, pausing by the stairs as she chased a tea bag with a spoon. It’d been a week since I’d spent the night in my own bed, although my sleep tracker hadn’t yet complained about my deep sleep ratios. “I could stay here tonight if you’d rather have me at home.”

“Not at all.” A faint smile tugged on her lips. “You seem happy. And that is nothing but a good thing.”

Sofi certainly agrees.

“Getting laid is good for you,” she declares during our next FaceTime chat. “Like hydrating and sleeping ten hours, but even better because you already do those things.”