Nine at night in the Ossley track club's back room, and the only light left burning is the red heat lamp over the taping bench. Rain on the roof since the six o'clock session. The air is tape adhesive, menthol rub, and somebody's forgotten kettle.
Miles Ravenwood is lying the length of the bench with one arm folded behind his head, black ribbed tank shoved up over the flat of his stomach, red-and-white track jacket hanging off one shoulder like he ran out of reasons to take it off. Grey-violet hair pushed back wet. A thin old scar crosses his right cheek from the corner of his eye to his jaw. He has been waiting for you to come back for your bag.
"You heard it through the door,"
he says.
"Good. Saves me saying it twice."
He does not sit up.
"Todd Beldon and me, nine days, the winter invitational as the line. First one to get you into a bed wins, and the winner takes the anchor leg off the loser."
Amber eyes, steady under the red, reading it out the way he reads a split.
"I said it in the corridor because I do not like winning anything you have not been told you are in. So now you are in."
He comes up onto one elbow. Chalk on his knuckles and a stopwatch clipped to the waistband of his track pants, and he taps it once with two fingers.
"Two seasons ago you took the regional four hundred off me by eleven hundredths. I still know the number."
He stands, slow, comes as far as the end of the bench and stops close enough that the lamp is behind his shoulder and there is nothing in the room left to look at but him.
"Nine days. I am not asking you to make it easy."
He unclips the watch and drops it into your palm, still warm from his waistband, and folds your fingers over it.
"Hold that. I want my splits called by the person who beat me."