Chapter 12: Sanctuary in the Storm
The morning in Nana Fraser’s back bedroom was a study in quiet. Dust motes danced in a single, solid beam of light cutting through the gap in the lace curtains, illuminating the faded roses on the carpet. Roz woke alone, the space beside her in the double bed still warm and dented. The house held a different silence than the cottage by the loch—older, deeper, woven through with the ghosts of decades of family life. She could hear the faint, rhythmic thud of something heavy hitting the floor in the living room below. Thud. Pause. Thud.
She pulled on Ally’s t-shirt from the night before and padded downstairs. The living room had been rearranged. Nana’s floral sofa was pushed against the bookshelf, creating a cleared space in the middle of the room. Ally, wearing only a pair of shorts, was doing one-armed push-ups, his left hand behind his back, his right pressing a thick, medical-grade resistance band into the carpet with each descent. His muscles corded and released with a fluid, terrifying power. Thud. His chest touched the band. Pause. He pushed up, a controlled explosion of force. Sweat traced the line of his spine.
He saw her in the doorway, didn’t break rhythm. “Morning.”
“Couldn’t sleep?”
“Could. Did. Woke up with energy to burn.” He finished the set, rolled onto his back, and sat up in one smooth motion, grabbing a towel from the sofa arm. “Coffee’s on. Kettle’s still whistling in the kitchen, actually.”
She went through to the small, warm kitchen. The kettle was indeed sighing steam. She made two mugs, the familiarity of the ritual soothing. When she returned, he was stretching his hamstrings, his forehead nearly to his knee. She handed him a mug. He took it, his breathing still deep.
“You’re training,” she said.
“Maintaining. Can’t let it slide, even for a hideout.” He sipped the coffee, watching her over the rim. “You look like you’re thinking again.”
“I’m always thinking.”
“I know. It’s one of my favourite things about you. And one of the most annoying.” He grinned. “What’s today’s theme?”
She leaned against the doorframe. “I want to paint. But my studio feels… contaminated.”
“So paint here.” He gestured vaguely at the room. “The light’s good in the bedroom. Quiet. No one’s here but us ghosts.”
The idea took root instantly. “Do you mind?”
“Why would I mind? I’ll be in your way. I’ve got a conditioning circuit to finish, then I need to actually look at my contract documents. My agent emailed them at midnight.” A shadow passed behind his eyes, gone as quickly as it came. “We can be miserable and productive together.”
She set up in the back bedroom, positioning the old, sturdy easel Nana Fraser apparently used for her occasional watercolour attempts by the window. The light was perfect, soft and diffuse. Roz unpacked her basics: a medium-sized primed canvas, a limited palette of oils, her brushes. The blank surface stared back at her, a white void that usually pulsed with both promise and threat.
Today, the threat felt louder. Paint what scares you, he’d said. Everything scared her right now. The scrutiny. The effect she was having on his life. The possibility that this, whatever this was, would become just another footnote in a tabloid sidebar.
She heard him come upstairs, his footsteps heavy on the creaking wood. He paused in the doorway, now in a t-shirt, a sheen of sweat still on his temples. He held a sheaf of printed papers.
“Don’t let me distract you,” he said, his voice quieter.
“You’re a professional distraction.”
He smiled faintly and settled on the edge of the bed, his back against the headboard, long legs stretched out. He began reading, a faint frown of concentration between his brows. The room settled into a new kind of silence, punctuated by the rustle of paper and the distant hum of a lawnmower.
Roz picked up a charcoal stick. She looked from the blank canvas to him. He was utterly absorbed, his finger tracing lines of text, his jaw working slightly. This was him, raw and unperformed. Not the player, not the son, not the lover. Just a man in a quiet room, dealing with the machinery of his life.
Her hand moved almost on its own.
She started not with his face, but with his hands. One held the papers, the other rested on his thigh, relaxed but inherently powerful. She sketched the broad shape, the blunt fingers, the specific crook of his thumb. She drew the papers, a chaotic stack of them, and the intense focus that seemed to radiate from his bowed head.
She mixed colours. The grey of the t-shirt. The warm, organic umber of the wooden bedframe. The cool shadow beneath his jaw. She worked quickly, intuitively, laying in big shapes, forgetting about the portrait that had made her name, forgetting about gold leaf and myth-making. This was just a record. A moment. Him, here, now.
Time dissolved. The only sounds were the scrape of her brush, the turn of a page.
“This clause is a fucking nightmare,” he muttered, not looking up.
“What does it say?”
“It says they can own my likeness in perpetuity, even for products I don’t endorse, if they can argue it’s ‘associated with club heritage.’ Meaning if I sign this, they could put my face on a bottle of cheap whisky in twenty years and I’d get nothing.”
“Can you change it?”
“I can try.” He flipped a page. “It’s all leverage. They think they have it right now.”
She added a touch of titanium white to the paper in his hand, making it glow against the darker room. “Do they?”
He looked up then, meeting her eyes for the first time in an hour. The intensity in his gaze was startling. “No.” He said it simply. “They don’t.”
He went back to his reading. She painted the way his hair fell over his forehead, the slight tension in his shoulders. She was capturing his quiet battle, and it felt more important than any grand, heroic pose.
After a while, he set the papers aside with a definitive sigh. “Need a break. My eyes are crossing.” He stood, stretching, his shoulders popping. He came to stand behind her, looking at the canvas. He didn’t speak for a full minute.
Roz’s heart hammered against her ribs. This felt more exposing than anything they’d done physically.
“It’s not finished,” she said quickly, a default apology.
“I can see that.” His voice was soft. “It’s… different.”
“It’s just a study. It’s not—”
“It’s better,” he interrupted. He pointed a finger near the canvas, not touching it. “That’s how I hold a pen. When I’m thinking. You got it.” He leaned closer, his warmth against her back. “You painted me worrying.”
“Is that okay?”
He turned her gently to face him. His hands were stained with newsprint. Hers were stained with paint. “It’s the most okay thing anyone’s ever done.” He kissed her, a slow, coffee-tinged kiss that tasted of concentration and shared solitude. “It’s real.”
The doorbell rang.
They froze. The domestic bubble shattered. The sound was alien, an intrusion from a world they’d been ignoring.
Ally’s body went rigid. “Don’t move.” He moved to the window, peering sideways through the lace curtain down to the front path. His shoulders relaxed, but only a fraction. “It’s Moira.”
“My Moira?” Roz’s stomach dropped.
“Aye. Carrying a massive bag and looking like she’s on a mission.” He shot her a look. “Did you tell her you were here?”
“No! I haven’t spoken to her since… since before the loch.”
He nodded, thinking. “Right. Well, she’s here. Can’t leave her on the doorstep.” He headed for the stairs. “Might as well get this over with.”
Roz followed, anxiety coiling tight in her gut. By the time she reached the tiny hallway, Ally was already opening the front door.
Moira stood there, impeccable in a tailored coat despite the mild day. Her sharp eyes took in Ally, shirtless and in shorts, then Roz behind him in his t-shirt, both of them marked with the evidence of their morning. A flicker of something—triumph?—crossed her face before it was smoothed into professional concern.
“Roz, darling. There you are. I’ve been worried sick.” She hefted the bag. “I brought you some things from your studio. Your proper brushes. Some more pigments. I thought you might need them.”
“How did you find me?” Roz’s voice was thin.
Moira gave a light, dismissive wave. “Oh, darling, please. I’ve been in this business thirty years. You mentioned his grandmother lived in Battlefield once, months ago, when you were first researching him. A process of elimination.” She stepped inside without being invited, her gaze sweeping the cozy, cluttered living room. “Charming. Very safe.”
Ally crossed his arms. His tone was polite but icy. “Can we help you with something specific, Moira? We’re a bit busy.”
“I’m sure.” Moira set the bag down and turned to Roz, her manner shifting to one of confidential urgency. “Listen, the frenzy is dying down. They’ve moved on to a MP’s affair. It’s the perfect time to strike.”
“Strike?” Roz echoed.
“Control the narrative. I’ve set up an interview. The Herald magazine. Culture section, not sports. A joint profile. ‘The Artist and the Athlete: A Modern Muse.’ They want it intimate. Here, or at your studio. They want process, they want the story behind the portrait, they want… this.” She gestured between the two of them. “It’s classy. It’s definitive. It ends the speculation on your terms and it’s fantastic for both your profiles.”
Roz felt the walls of the safe house closing in. This was exactly what Ally’s agent had suggested. The machinery was here, in Nana’s living room, with its doilies and smell of polish.
“No,” Ally said.
Moira didn’t even look at him. She kept her eyes locked on Roz. “This is a pivotal moment, Roz. You are not just a painter. You are a story. Stories need to be told, or other people tell them for you. This,” she tapped the bag of supplies, “is the next step. You leverage this attention into a solo show. I have the space held for November. But we need this interview to frame it.”
The temptation was a cold, slick thing. A solo show. Framing the story herself. It was everything she’d wanted before the world went mad. But it came with a price tag. Their privacy. This fragile, real thing they were building in the quiet.
“She said no,” Ally repeated, his voice harder.
Moira finally turned her hawk-like gaze on him. “Ally, with respect, this is Roz’s career. This is about her legacy. A few well-chosen words and a photograph in a respectable magazine safeguards that. It makes the paps look cheap. It elevates her.” She switched back to Roz, her tone softening into something almost maternal. “Think about it, darling. You’re an artist. You observe life. But now life is observing you back. You can either flinch, or you can paint on a bigger canvas.”
The metaphor was calculated, and it hit its mark. Roz felt torn in two. The artist in her saw the brutal logic. The woman in her wanted to throw Moira out and bolt the door.
“I need to think,” Roz said quietly.
“Of course.” Moira’s smile was victorious. She’d planted the seed. “I’ll let you two… decompress. The features editor is expecting my call tomorrow.” She handed Roz a card from her pocket. “Direct line. She’s lovely. She’ll let you approve the quotes.”
With a final, appraising glance around the room, Moira let herself out. The click of the door latch was deafening.
The silence in her wake was thick and toxic. Ally was staring at the floor, his jaw clenched.
“She’s not entirely wrong,” Roz said, the words feeling like ash in her mouth.
His head snapped up. “You’re considering it.”
“I’m considering not being a victim of this! I’m considering actually using it for something I want. A solo show, Ally. That’s the dream. That’s what all of this was supposed to be for.”
“And what’s the cost? Letting them dissect us? Putting a value on what’s happening in this house? Making it a feature?” He spat the word. “It turns it into content. It makes last night, this morning, you painting me… it makes it all part of the brand. Is that what you want?”
“Of course not!”
“Then what? Where does it stop, Roz? You do the Herald, then it’s Vogue, then it’s a fucking reality show. That’s the machine. It never gets enough. You either feed it or you walk away.”
“Walk away to where?” Her voice rose. “Back to my studio where they’re probably camped outside? Hide here forever? I have to work. I have to have a career that isn’t just defined by hiding!”
They were facing each other in the small space, the gulf between their realities suddenly vast and terrifying. He saw a threat to be defied. She saw a tool, dangerous but sharp, that could cut a path forward.
He ran both hands through his hair, frustration rolling off him in waves. “I told my agent no. For you.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that!”
“I know you didn’t! I did it because it was the right thing to do. Because what we have isn’t for sale.” He looked at her, really looked at her, and the hurt in his eyes was worse than any anger. “But maybe you see it differently.”
He turned and walked back upstairs. A moment later, she heard the soft thud of the resistance band again, harder this time. Punishing.
Roz stood alone in Nana Fraser’s living room. The bag of her own supplies sat at her feet like an accusation. On the sideboard, the photo of Ally’s grandfather in his rugby jersey seemed to watch her, judging her potential betrayal. She felt unmoored, pulled between two loves: the one for her craft, which demanded engagement with the world, and the one for the man upstairs, which demanded a fortress.
She climbed the stairs slowly. He was in the bedroom, but not training. He stood in front of the easel, staring at the unfinished painting of himself. The raw, worried man she’d captured.
He didn’t turn. “You painted the truth,” he said, his voice rough. “Now you have to decide if you’re going to sell it.”
She came to stand beside him. The painting was good. It was alive. It was them, before Moira rang the bell.
“I’m not selling this,” she said. She picked up a clean brush, dipped it in a deep, rich black. In the lower corner of the canvas, where a signature would normally go, she painted not her name, but a small, simple date. The date they’d arrived at the safe house. A private marker. For them.
He watched her do it. The tension in his shoulders eased, just a little.
“I don’t know what to do,” she admitted, putting the brush down. “But I know I’m not doing anything today. Today, I just want to finish this. And I want you to stay in the room while I do.”
He was silent for a long time. Then he nodded, a single, curt dip of his head. He went back to the bed, picked up his contract papers, and sat down. He didn’t look at her. But he stayed.
Roz picked up her palette. The world outside, with its deals and its deadlines and its hungry lenses, could wait. For a few more hours, there was only this: the smell of turps and old wool, the sound of his breathing, and the slow, patient work of telling a true story, one careful brushstroke at a time. The interview, the show, the noise—it all hovered at the edges, a storm waiting to break. But in this room, they had a stillness. And
But in this room, they had a stillness. And for an hour, the only sounds were the whisper of bristles on linen and the occasional turn of a heavy page. Roz lost herself in the topography of his shoulder, the way the soft light from the window clung to the curve of his deltoid. She mixed a colour that was all shadow and warmth, the hue of old honey and peat smoke, and laid it in beside the stark white of the contract paper.
Ally finally put the documents down with a soft, definitive slap onto the quilt. He leaned his head back against the headboard, closing his eyes. “It’s a bad deal. Every version of it.”
“So you won’t sign?” She didn’t look up, focusing on the subtle gradation of a shadow.
“I didn’t say that.” He opened his eyes, staring at the ceiling rose. “I said it’s bad. But not signing has consequences too. It means a fight. It means headlines of a different kind. ‘Fraser in contract standoff.’ It means they might freeze me out, make me train alone.”
“Would they do that?”
“To make a point? Yeah. They would.” He rubbed his palms over his face. “It’s a power play. They think with everything else going on, I’ll be distracted. I’ll want it sorted quietly.”
Roz paused, her brush hovering. “Are you? Distracted?”
He looked at her then, a long, steady look that seemed to weigh everything. Her, the painting, the bag of supplies from Moira still sitting downstairs like a landmine. “I’m not distracted. I’m clear. For the first time in years, I’m absolutely fucking clear.” He stood up, restless, and walked to the window. He touched the edge of the lace curtain, not moving it, just feeling the fabric. “That’s the problem. They want the version of me that’s just a jersey. The one who shows up, smiles for the sponsors, and doesn’t ask questions. That guy was easier. He didn’t have this.” He gestured back at the room, at her.
“Have what?” Her voice was small.
“Something real to lose.” The words hung there, simple and devastating.
He turned from the window. “Moira’s offer. The interview. Is that what you want? Really?”
Roz set her palette down on the little bedside table. She wiped her hands on a rag, the pigments staining the cloth a permanent, abstract blue. “I want my work to matter. I want to walk into a room and have it be about the art on the walls, not the… the gossip beside it.”
“But it’s all connected now, isn’t it?” There was no malice in his voice, just a tired acceptance. “The portrait, the gold leaf, us. You can’t unpick it.”
“I know.” She looked at her painting. It was truthful. It wouldn’t sell magazines. “Maybe doing one smart interview is the price of getting back to the work. To control the story, just enough, so it stops swallowing everything else.”
“And where do I fit in that story?” He asked it quietly, leaning against the windowsill. “Am I the muse? The boyfriend? The rugby star who provides the ‘colour’?”
“You’re Ally.” It was all she had.
“Am I?” He pushed off the sill and came to stand before the easel again. He studied the worried man in the paint. “Or am I just another part of the Roz MacDonald brand now? The interesting textural element. The human interest.”
“That’s not fair.” Heat flushed up her neck.
“Isn’t it?” He finally turned to face her fully, his blue eyes dark with a frustration that had been simmering since Moira left. “You’re talking about leveraging ‘this’. That’s the word you used. Leveraging. What is ‘this’, Roz? Is it us? Because I’m not a fucking marketing angle.”
The air left the room. She felt his words like a physical push. “You think that’s what I’m doing?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing! You’re painting this,” he jabbed a finger toward the canvas, “which feels like the most honest thing anyone’s ever done for me. And downstairs you’re talking about trading access to our life for a solo show. So yeah, I’m confused. And I’m pissed off. Because I feel like I’m in a tug-of-war and the rope is you.”
She stood up, the stool scraping loudly on the wooden floor. “You don’t get it. You have a platform. You’ve always had one. People listen to you because you throw a ball. I’ve spent my life trying to get people to look at a wall for more than three seconds. Now they are looking. And it’s messy and horrible and it’s because of you, but it’s also a chance. The only one I might ever get!”
“So take it!” he shouted, the sound raw in the quiet cottage. “Just fucking take it, then! Do the interview. Pose with me. Give them the soundbites. But don’t ask me to smile for it. Don’t ask me to pretend it’s not turning something precious into a transaction.”
Tears blurred her vision, making the painting run into a watery mess. “You’d rather I just hide? Paint in secret and hope no one finds me? That’s not a career. That’s a hobby.”
“I’d rather you were free!” He took a step toward her, his voice dropping but losing none of its intensity. “I’d rather you were the woman who painted that portrait in my flat, who looked at me and saw something worth gilding. Not the woman who’s calculating how to use our first real fight to sell tickets to a gallery.”
She flinched. The accuracy of the blow was breathtaking.
He saw it. His expression crumpled, the anger bleeding out into something more pained. He ran a hand through his hair, gripping it. “Jesus. Roz.”
He turned away, his broad shoulders hunched. For a long minute, he just stood there, breathing heavily. The clock on the mantel ticked. A car passed outside on the distant road.
When he spoke again, his voice was scraped hollow. “Roz,” he said, eventually. “Sweetheart, I’m not trying to control you.”
He turned back to face her. His eyes were bright, too bright. “I want the world to see you for who you are. Not some silly thing hanging off the arm of a rugby player like an accessory. I’ve met those girls. Fucking hell, I dated them, as my mother reminded me last night. But you, sweetheart? I want a life with you. Whatever that looks like, however it unfolds.”
He took a shaky breath, his gaze locked on hers, pleading for understanding. “I know I can be a bit much, and I’m sorry. You’re so small, Roz. It makes me want to protect you. I know you don’t really need it. You managed fine without me. Thing is, I love you.”
The words didn’t soar. They fell into the space between them, heavy and real and simple as stones.
Roz felt the fight drain out of her, leaving a vast, trembling emptiness. A single tear traced a hot path through the dust on her cheek. She looked past him, at the painting. At the man she’d seen, the worry, the quiet strength, the focus. She saw now what she’d missed. The fear in his eyes wasn’t about contracts or headlines. It was about her. About losing this.
She didn’t move toward him. She looked down at her stained hands, at the pigments ground into her cuticles. The colours of him.
“I love you, too,” she said, the words barely audible. “And I’m scared. I’m scared that if I don’t find a way to steer this ship, it’ll wreck us both. And I’m scared that if I try to steer it, I’ll become someone you don’t recognize.”
He closed the distance then. He didn’t kiss her. He took her paint-stained hands in his own, his thumbs sweeping over her knuckles. His touch was warm, solid.
“Then we steer it together,” he said quietly. “But not onto the rocks Moira’s charting. We find our own way.”
She nodded, a jerky, helpless movement, and let her forehead fall against his chest. He smelled of sweat and clean cotton and the faint, sharp scent of the linseed oil from her palette. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tightly, as if she might fragment.
Outside, the world kept turning. The contract was still bad. Moira would still call. The press still waited. But in the quiet of the back bedroom, with the unfinished painting watching, they held onto the only thing that felt like true north: each other, flawed and frightened and real.