Chapter 23: Spectator Sport
The training ground smelled of cut grass and damp earth, a clean, honest scent that cut through the chemical tang of the too-blue artificial pitch. Aurora huddled on the bottom bleacher, her laptop balanced on her knees, a massive grey cable-knit sweater swallowing her frame despite the mild afternoon. Her fingers flew over the keys, weaving sentences about a 19th-century botanist, but her eyes kept lifting, tracking the red flash of a jersey.
Callum moved differently here. It wasn’t the choreographed brilliance of a match, all sharp angles and explosive finishes. This was work. Repetitive, grinding, sweat-soaked work. He’d receive a pass, turn, dribble through a maze of cones, lay off a simple ball, and then do it again. His face was a mask of concentration, brows knit, mouth a firm line. This was the machinery behind the magic, and it was, in its way, more compelling.
She typed a sentence about soil acidity.
Her gaze snagged again. A scrimmage had started, shirts versus skins. Callum was in shirts, a deep red. He picked up the ball just past the halfway line, already turning into space before the pass from his teammate had even reached him. Two defenders closed in. He dropped a shoulder, feinted left, and pushed the ball right with the outside of his boot, bursting between them like they were standing still. The move was so fluid, so economically cruel, it stole the air from her lungs. Her fingers stilled on the keyboard.
“He’s showing off for you, you know.”
The voice, close and amused, made her jump. Jamie “Jax” Callahan, the team’s midfielder and, according to Callum, the biggest gossip in European football, plopped down on the bleacher beside her. He was grinning, his red hair plastered to his forehead with sweat.
“I doubt that,” Aurora said, snapping her laptop shut. “He’s working.”
“Nah. That last turn?Unnecessary. Efficient, but unnecessary. Pure flair. That’s for the stands.” Jax nodded toward the pitch. “Watch.”
As if on cue, Callum collected a loose ball near the touchline. A young defender, eager to impress, rushed him. Instead of playing a simple pass back inside, Callum flicked the ball up with his heel, over his own head and the defender’s, catching it on the instep of his other foot as he spun around the flailing player. A rainbow flick. On a wet Tuesday in training. It was absurd.Audacious.
Aurora choked on the swallow of coffee she’d just taken.
A coughing fit seized her. Jax pounded her on the back, his laughter booming across the empty stands. On the pitch, Callum had played a simple cross into the box for a finish. He was jogging backwards, his eyes not on the goal, but locked on the bleachers.On her. He wasn’t smiling with his mouth, but his eyes glittered with a familiar, wicked light.
The whistle blew for a water break.
Aurora was still wiping tears from her eyes when the tidal wave of humanity hit the bleachers. It started with Jax, who didn’t leave, but was quickly joined by three others. Big men, smelling of grass and effort and aggressive sport wash, their curiosity a palpable force.
“So you’re the writer,” said Liam, a centre-back built like a brick wall.
“Aurora, right?” asked Diego, the nimble winger. “Saw the pictures from Lisbon. Nice pool.”
“Callum says you’re vicious with feedback,” Jax added, winking. “Told us about the ninety-eighth percentile rant.”
They were all talking over each other, a jumble of accents and questions. They weren’t hostile.They were fascinated. A new specimen in their ecosystem. Their voices were loud, their bodies taking up space, their energy overwhelming the quiet bubble she’d built. She felt herself shrinking into her sweater, a prickling heat climbing her neck. Her manuscript, her botanist, her orderly fictional world felt a million miles away.
“Alright, fuck off. The lot of you.”
Callum’s voice cut through the chatter, not loud, but flat and absolute. He stood at the foot of the bleachers, glowering up at his teammates. Water dripped from his hair onto his temples. He had a bottle in one hand, the other resting on his hip. “Give her some air. Don’t you have stretching to ignore?”
The men grumbled, but they began to disperse, shooting her apologetic grins and mock-scowls at Callum. Jax was the last to go, clapping Callum on the shoulder as he passed. “Just being friendly, mate. Someone has to be.”
When they were gone, the silence felt sharp. Callum climbed the two steps and sat beside her, his thigh pressing against hers through the thin plastic. He took a long pull from his water bottle. “Sorry about that. They’re like overgrown puppies.”
“It’s fine,” she said, her voice tighter than she intended. She opened her laptop again, a pointless shield. “They’re just curious.”
He watched her, his gaze heavy. “You’re shaking.”
“I’m not.” But she was. A fine, constant tremor in her hands. It was the abruptness of it.The scrutiny. The Lisbon photos had been a distant storm on a horizon. This was the first raindrop hitting her skin.
He said nothing for a minute, just let the sounds of the training ground fill the space: the thud of a ball, a coach’s distant shout, the groan of the water cooler. “You see anything out there?” he asked finally, nodding toward the pitch.
It was an olive branch. A return to their language. She swallowed, focusing. “Your movement’s good. The link-up with Diego on the right is sharper than with Marco on the left. Marco’s holding the ball a fraction too long, it’s disrupting the rhythm.”
A slow smile touched his lips.“Yeah. Noticed that. What else?”
She took a breath, the analytical part of her brain engaging, calming the tremor. “The high press is leaving the left channel exposed. They’re exploiting it. But also…” She hesitated.
“Go on.”
“You’re playing everyone onside.”
He went perfectly still. “What?”
“That last sequence before the break.The quick counter. You were a full step behind the defensive line, watching the ball carrier. You kept everyone on. Kostas was screaming at you. If this were a match, the flag goes up, the move dies. It’s a habit when you’re tired. You stop checking your shoulder.”
She said it quietly, factually. She’d watched it for weeks, in matches and now here. A tiny, costly fracture in his otherwise impeccable spatial awareness.
Callum stared at her. The playful glint was gone, replaced by a look of intense, searching focus. No one spoke. She could hear Jax, not twenty feet away, exaggerating a stretch, his head tilted toward them.
Then Callum laughed. It was a short, surprised burst of sound. He dragged a hand through his sweat-damp hair, shaking his head. “You are fucking unbelievable.”
He didn’t say it loudly, but in the lull of the break, it carried. Heads turned. Kostas, the veteran defender, paused in his stretching. Jax’s eyebrows shot up.
Callum leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a rough whisper meant only for her. The scent of him—sweat, grass, clean salt—wrapped around her. His green eyes were dark, pupils wide. “You sit there, hiding in that gigantic sweater, typing about goddamn flowers, and you see that?”
He wasn’t angry. He was something else entirely. A current of pure, electric energy hummed between them, there on the groaning bleacher. It was the same charge as in the dark pool, but distilled, sharper. This wasn't about skin or secrecy. This was about her seeing him—not the footballer, not the celebrity, but the flaw in the machine, and naming it.Calmly. Precisely.
His gaze dropped to her mouth, then back to her eyes. The air between them grew thick, warm. The training ground, his watching teammates, the city beyond it, all of it blurred at the edges, muted by the pounding of her own heart.
“You’re wrong about one thing, though,” he murmured, his knee pressing more firmly against hers.
“What?” The word was a breath.
“I’m not tired.”
He held her look for one more second, a promise and a challenge, before standing up. He drained his water bottle, crushed it in one hand, and tossed it toward a bin. It went in with a rattle.
“Kostas!” he called out, his voice echoing across the pitch, back to its public, commanding register. “Let’s run that left-side drill again. And someone tell Marco to release the bloody ball.” He jogged back onto the grass, not looking back.
But Aurora felt the imprint of his look on her skin, like a brand. She looked down at her laptop screen, at the blinking cursor in the middle of a sentence about Victorian greenhouse cultivation. The words were just shapes. All she could see was the perfect, offside line she’d drawn in her mind, and the fierce, hungry look in his eyes when she’d shown it to him.
She saved her document, shut the laptop, and didn’t open it again. She just watched him work, every movement now laden with a new, intimate weight.