Goal

Chapter 18: Manuscript Interrupted

The words were a fever. Aurora typed with a frantic energy, her glasses slipping down her nose, the clack of the keys the only sound in the sun-warmed attic. The scene unfolded on the screen—vivid, visceral, dripping with the scent of sweat and stolen glances. She wrote about the pull of muscles, the fracture in a smirk, the devastating evidence of want. She wrote until the world outside her window dissolved into a blur.

The crash of her front door downstairs was like a gunshot.

Heavy footsteps, two at a time, pounded up the stairs. Her heart catapulted into her throat. Before she could even stand, her attic door flew open.

Callum stood there, breathing hard. He was in grey sweatpants and a plain black tee, his hair damp and chaotic from a recent shower. A single drop of water traced a path from his temple down the cord of his neck. He smelled of clean soap and simmering anger.

“You,” he said, the word a low charge in the quiet room.

Aurora instinctively slammed her laptop shut. The sound was final, like a verdict. “I didn’t hear you knock.”

“I didn’t.” He stalked into the room, his presence making the cozy space feel dangerously small. His eyes locked onto the closed laptop. “Open it.”

“No.”

“Open it, Aurora.” He was in front of her now, looming over the chaise where she sat. “You used me for your research. I want to see the results.”

“It’s not a lab report,” she shot back, her own temper flaring to meet his. “It’s private.”

A harsh, humorless laugh escaped him. “Nothing about that was private. You watched.You touched. You walked away. Now I want to read.” He leaned down, bracing his hands on the arms of the chaise, caging her in. “Or are you only brave from a distance?”

The challenge hung between them, acrid and electric. His proximity was a physical shock. She could see the faint stubble along his jaw, the flecks of gold in his green eyes, the pulse beating hard in his throat.

“Fine,” she whispered.

She opened the laptop. The document glowed, accusingly bright. Before she could react, he reached down, snapped it closed, and plucked it from her grasp. He tossed it onto her reading chair across the room. It landed with a soft thud.

Then his hands were on her. Strong, sure. One slid behind her back, the other under her knees. He lifted her as if she weighed nothing, shifted his own body, and lowered her back down onto the chaise—with him now straddling her hips, his weight sinking into the cushions, pinning her in place.

Her breath left in a rush. The worn velvet of the chaise was soft against her back. The hard lines of him were everywhere else.

“Tell me,” he demanded, his voice rough. His knees pressed against the outsides of her thighs. The evidence of his arousal, even through their clothes, was a firm, undeniable heat against her. It wasn’t the casual arrogance from the gym. This was raw, focused intensity. “Say the words you wrote.”

All her cleverness, all her defiant bravado, shriveled. Here, in the intimate light of her attic, with the full, heavy reality of him on top of her, the fiction felt obscenely personal. “Callum…”

“Say it.” He dipped his head, his lips a breath from hers. The clean, shower-damp scent of him enveloped her. “You wanted to study tension? This is tension. Now read me my part.”

She swallowed, her throat dry. Her fingers, trapped between their bodies, curled into the soft cotton of his shirt. She could feel the hard plane of his stomach beneath.

She closed her eyes, seeking the darkness behind her lids, and found the words she’d typed.

“He was…” she began, her voice trembling. She cleared it, forced it steady. “He was a study in controlled violence. Every muscle in his back a separate instrument, playing a symphony of strain.” She opened her eyes. He was watching her, utterly still, his gaze a tangible weight. “Sweat made a path down the ladder of his spine, disappearing into the waistband of his shorts. He moved with a brutal, efficient grace. It wasn’t fitness. It was function. It was power, resting on a knife’s edge of control.”

Callum’s breath fanned across her lips. His hips shifted minutely, pressing down. A soft sound escaped her.

“Keep going,” he murmured, his voice gravel.

“When he turned… his chest was heaving. The smirking mask was there, the one he shows the cameras. ‘See something you like, sweetheart?’” She imitated his tone, the faint, cocky lift. It sounded hollow now, a parody. “But his eyes… they were different. They were asking a real question.”

“What was the question?” His voice was so low it vibrated through her.

“I don’t know,” she breathed. “That’s what I couldn’t write. I could describe the sweat.The muscles. The… the effect I had on him.” She felt him harden further against her at the words, a stark confirmation. “But his eyes… I didn’t know the answer.”

He was silent for a long moment, just looking at her, his body a heavy, warm prison. The cockiness had bled away, leaving something stark and unguarded. “You walked away.”

“I walked away.”

“Why?”

“Because I was scared,” she admitted, the truth torn from her.

“Of me?”

“Of that.” She freed a hand, gestured weakly between them. “Of this. It’s too much. You’re… you. And I’m just in my attic, making things up.”

He shook his head slowly, a dark curl falling across his forehead. “You’re not just anything.” He leaned closer, until his forehead rested against hers. The contact was shockingly intimate. “You have no idea, do you? What it’s like. Everyone wants a piece. The fans, the press, the brands. They want the smile, the soundbite, the body. They don’t want…” He exhaled, a ragged thing. “They don’t want the guy who forgets to buy milk. Who hates watching his own goals. Who lies awake at night wondering if any of it means anything.”

He pulled back just enough to look at her. The loneliness she sometimes glimpsed was now front and center, vast and heartbreaking. “Then you. You watch from your window. You call it research. You trace a line down my chest and call it character development. You see me. And then you walk away. That’s the most real thing that’s happened to me in years. And you used it for a fucking paragraph.”

The guilt was instantaneous and crushing. “Callum, I…”

“I don’t care about the paragraph,” he interrupted, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. “I care that you walked away from this.” He pressed his hips down again, a deliberate, grinding roll that made her gasp. “This is real. This isn’t research. Tell me this isn’t research.”

Her mind was static. Her body was alight. “It’s not research.”

“What is it?”

Her hands came up to frame his face, her thumbs smoothing over the tension in his jaw. “It’s a mistake,” she whispered. “A terrible, wonderful mistake.”

A genuine smile, small and weary, touched his lips for the first time.“Finally. Something we agree on.”

He didn’t kiss her. He just held her there, a breath apart, the world narrowing to the point where their bodies met, to the confessions hanging in the dusty attic air. The momentum had shifted, hurtling them past flirtation and games into something perilously fragile and raw.

Outside, a car door slammed. A dog barked. Normal life.

In here, a soccer star buried his face in the curve of her neck, his breath hot against her skin, simply holding on, as if she were the only solid thing in a world that constantly spun too fast. And the writer, who had orchestrated it all with words, found herself utterly, hopelessly, wordless.