It wasn’t too long before I ran the trail down into the gully. I’d timed my breathing perfectly to my pace, my lungs working at the optimal level for conditioning.

At some point, footsteps thudded dully behind me, but I didn’t pay much attention, focusing on staying in the perfect training zone.

“Hey!”

My heart lurched as Theodore ran past. I was in danger of tripping over my own feet as he spun around, jogging backward and smiling at me. He had the energy of an unruly dog, and I thought of my parents’ rambunctious sheepadoodle.

Albeit an unruly dog wearing just shorts and a white T-shirt despite the wet chill. The cotton clung translucently to his firm chest.

“This is a great path!” He faced front again, now running ahead of me. “I hate running, but Manon and Bill are making me.”

All that extra energy from not doing his spins was clearly coming in handy. As I chased him, I wanted to demand who’d told him about my running trail. But now my heart was pounding and my breath came raggedly, my optimal coordination vanished.

And he was winning.

Not that it was an official race, but we were running, and he’d passed me. So yes, it was definitely a race. Core tight, I sucked in air and powered forward, overtaking him. He said something else, but I wasn’t listening. He was behind me again, and that was all that mattered.

“What do you do for fun around here?” he asked as he pulled up next to me, his strides matching mine.

I increased my speed, lactic acid flaring in my quads as the trail turned upward. Why did he insist on talking so much? Particularly to me. His persistent friendliness wouldn’t affect my hate for him.

Whether it was fair or not, I’d hated him successfully for years. I wasn’t going to be fooled into thinking Theodore Sullivan had any genuine interest in me. That saying about “fool me once” was most definitely accurate.

At my heels, he was still talking. “Ivan said—”

Concentrating on the blood rushing in my ears, I ignored him, blocking out everything but winning. We took turns overtaking, and I was calculating the distance remaining as the trail looped back toward the starting point so I could expend the correct amount of energy to win when he disappeared from my peripheral vision.

If he’d made a noise when he tripped, I hadn’t heard it over the roar of my pulse. Still running, I turned to find him sprawled on his stomach in the wet dirt. I was on higher ground, and my shoes slipped in the mud, adrenaline spiking as I threw out my arms to stay balanced.

Stopped now, I watched and waited. Not moving, he’d surely knocked the wind out of his lungs. I didn’t see how he could have hit his head, but after a few seconds, adrenaline spiked again. I took a step closer.

He wasn’t really hurt.