Page 10 of Your Pace or Mine
“You’re fucking with me, right?” Selena asked.
Darius laughed. “Of course I am. Stop crushing on my best friend, it’s weird.” Jackson was too old for Selena. Her crush on him was doubly weird with how intimately acquainted he and Darius had once been, not that Selena was aware of that.
Still, he did not like his baby sister thinking about Jax that way.
“I can’t help that he’s fit,” she complained. Darius rolled his eyes. He loved his sister really.
“I’m sorry about Anders.” Her tone shifted as tentatively she asked, “You going to talk to Dad about it?”
“No, Lena. I want to make things better with Anders, not worse. He’s clearly got an issue with our family—“
Selena interrupted with a laugh. “Who doesn’t?”
“Fair, but you know Dad, he’d go in all heavy-handed, throwing money around, or accusing him of racism, and it would just get Anders to double down.”
“Are you sure it’s not?”
“I’m sure,” Darius sighed. And he was, Anders had made it clear what his issue with the Hewitts was. It was the same one Darius had, the same reason coming out felt so much more loaded for him than it should need to.
“Well, keep up the work at the clinic, I guess?”
Darius was quiet for a moment, staring out the window at the passing cars. “And if it doesn’t work?”
“Then at least you’ll have tried something different,” Selena said firmly. “Look, Darius, I know you hate this stuff, but it’s part of the game now. You can do this.”
He sighed, the weight of everything pressing down on him. “Thanks, Lena,” he grumbled.
“Anytime,” she replied. Darius hung up, a small smile tugging at his lips. Maybe she was right, he’d give it his all either way. Everything was going to be fine. He wouldn’t let this evening’s events derail him. The discipline he’d built as a marathon runner would see him through this blip in the plan. Success isn’t a sprint after all.
The rest of the ride went by without incident. But not long after he’d arrived home, settling in for the evening with a book and a cup of chamomile tea, he had a text from Selena.
Selena
Looks like you’re going to have to go bigger to fix this, big bro.
He wasn’t sure what she was referring to; they’d only just spoken, but suddenly, Darius’s phone started buzzing incessantly. He hadn’t had quite so many notifications on his phone before, as far as he could recall, anyway.
He knew instinctively that it couldn’t possibly mean anything good.
A link came through, sent by his agent with an angry accompanying message about keeping his head down. The headline hit harder than he’d expected:
Team GB Marathon Upset: Will Hewitt’s politics keep him out of the Olympics
The insinuations were thinly veiled. There was a particularly cutting interview with someone who had apparently been participating in the clinic he’d just left. They’d moved quickly on this one. The interview was all about his supposed treatment of LGBTQ+ athletes, and that cut particularly deep. It specifically referenced his pushing Jackson away and supposedly leaving a gay man ‘languishing in pain on the pavement’ after causing him to fall. The damn thing couldn’t have cherry-picked worse moments.
It wasn’t fair. But…
Was this what people saw?
He’d spent his entire career trying to prove he belonged in the sport on his own merit. Not by genetic fluke or status. He worked harder than anyone to shed the shadow of his privilege, wanting his victories to belong to him, not the name or heritage he carried, but now it felt like none of it mattered. Of all the things to be accused of.
Darius threw his phone onto the couch, his jaw clenched.
It wasn’t fucking fair.
Chapter 4
Jamie
