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I stood up. It was a terrible idea. The room tilted, the benches went white at the edges and I went down like a felled tree.
Kat caught me. She hooked an arm round my waist, dragged my weight over her shoulder and kicked the sauna door open, and then we were both naked in the cold of the changing area, steam pouring out behind us.
“Sit,” she said. “Head down. Breathe.”
She wrapped a towel round my shoulders and put a cold flannel on the back of my neck. Her hands were gentle. Her face, crouching in front of me, was nothing like her sneer: frightened, cross, utterly tender.
“You stubborn idiot,” she said. “You could’ve just said you were done.”
“I didn’t want you to win.”
“I wasn’t trying to win. I was trying to…” She stopped. She stroked wet hair off my forehead. “I was trying to make you look at me.”
I looked at her. She was kneeling naked between my knees, her fingers on my face, her mouth right there. I leaned in. So did she. Our lips were a breath apart.
“Everything all right in here?” said Gareth.
He was standing in the doorway with a clipboard and a lanyard that said First Aider, looking at the floor with enormous concentration. “Wellness check,” he said. “Compulsory.”
Kat grabbed a towel. I grabbed another. “She overheated,” Kat said, in her work voice.
Gareth nodded, scribbled, and fled. Kat looked at me. Her eyes were bright, her lips parted.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered. “Don’t you dare faint.”
I didn’t. But I thought about it for a very long time.
Ending 6 of 16: Wellness Check. Go back and try a different choice for the full happy ending.