Chapter 59: Bidding War
The alcove was a pocket of shadow and silence, the gala’s hum reduced to a distant, glittering murmur. Callum’s hands weren’t gentle. They framed her face, his thumbs pressing into the hinges of her jaw, forcing her to look up at him. The bowtie hung loose around his neck, a dark slash against his white shirt.
“What the hell was that?” His voice was low, a rough scrape against the marble stillness.
Aurora’s heart hammered against her ribs, but she held his fiery gaze. The daring she’d felt on the auction floor crystallized into something sharper now, a defiant thrill. “It was for charity. Very philanthropic of me.”
“Philanthropic.” He repeated the word as if it were in a foreign language. “You were bidding on a fucking date with Jamie.”
“I was driving up the price for your foundation. He went for twelve thousand. You should be thanking me.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. He leaned in closer, the heat of his body enveloping her. She could smell the clean scent of his soap beneath the notes of his cologne, a familiar anchor in the surreal opulence. “You had your paddle in the air for three minutes. You looked like you were enjoying it.”
“I was.” She let a smile touch her lips. “He’s got a very nice smile. And I hear he’s a terrific dancer.”
Callum’s eyes darkened. One hand left her face, sliding down to her waist, fingers splaying possessively over the sleek silk of her gown. He pulled her flush against him. “You’re a terrible liar.”
“I’m an excellent liar. You just know me too well.”
“I do.” His mouth was a breath from hers. “And I know you did that to get a reaction.So? You got one.”
He kissed her then, not with the slow burn of the morning, but with a conquering hunger that tasted of champagne and stark possession. It was a kiss meant to obliterate the room, the bids, the watching eyes. It claimed. Aurora melted into it, her own hands coming up to clutch at the crisp fabric of his tuxedo jacket, her earlier bravado dissolving into pure, wanton response. When he finally broke away, they were both breathing heavily.
“You’re fucking dead, sweetheart,” he murmured again, but the growl had softened into a promise, his forehead resting against hers.
“Promises, promises,” she whispered back.
He laughed, a short, breathless sound. The tension bled from his shoulders. He looked down at her, his gaze tracing the lines of her face, the elaborate twist of her hair, the way the emerald silk of the borrowed dress—a last-minute panic from a boutique downtown—hugged curves he knew intimately. “You look… devastating. I haven’t been able to think straight all night.”
The admission, raw and unguarded, punctured her remaining armor. “You clean up pretty okay yourself.” She fiddled with his loosened collar. “This is weird, though.All of it. The cameras. The people looking at you. At… me, next to you.”
“I know.” He sighed, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. “It’s the part I hate.The performance. Tonight, with you here… it felt different. Worse and better at the same time.”
“Worse?”
“Because every time someone looked at you, I wanted to put my fist through a wall.” He said it simply, a fact. “Better because you were there. A real thing in a room full of plastic.”
She understood. It was the core of him, the conflict she’d seen glimpses of since the beginning: the man who thrived on the pitch craving the silence of a shared loft. “I might have bid on Jamie,” she said quietly, “but I only see you.”
The words hung between them, more intimate than any kiss. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. For a second, he looked impossibly young, not a global icon but the boy who missed his own privacy.
A burst of laughter echoed from the main room, shattering the moment. Callum’s public mask slid back into place, though it was softer now, tempered. “We should get back. Or they’ll send a search party.”
“One more minute,” she pleaded, tangling her fingers with his.
He gave her that minute, holding her in the dark, his lips brushing her temple. Then, with a resigned sigh, he retied his bowtie with swift, practiced motions. He offered her his arm. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Good. Me either.”
They stepped back into the light.
The rest of the evening passed in a shimmering, exhausting blur. Aurora stuck by his side, her hand often tucked in the crook of his elbow. She met teammates who eyed her with open curiosity, sponsors who shook her hand with polished disinterest, and a few WAGs who assessed her dress with laser precision. She smiled until her face ached, sipped champagne she didn’t taste, and let Callum’s low voice in her ear guide her through the minefield.
“Ignore him, he’s a vulture.”
“She’s nice, actually. Talks about books.”
“This one’s about to tell a story I’ve heard twelve times. Nod and think about the loft.”
She did. She thought about the slant of the ceiling, the trophy by the bed, the messy stacks of her manuscript. It was her talisman.
The car ride home was quiet. The city lights streaked past the tinted windows. Callum held her hand, his thumb rubbing absent circles on her palm.He looked drained.
“You survived,” he said as the car pulled up their quiet, dark street.
“Barely. I think my smile is permanently stuck.”
He helped her out, his hand warm on the small of her back as they walked to their neighboring doors. Instead of turning to his own, he followed her up her steps. “I’m not done with you yet,” he said, and the weariness in his voice was replaced by a low heat.
Inside, he kicked the door shut and backed her against it. The formalities of the night were shed like a skin. His kisses were slower now, deep and searching, as his hands found the zipper of her gown. The emerald silk pooled at her feet like spilled water. His tuxedo jacket followed, then his shirt, until they were just them again in the dim hallway. He lifted her, her legs wrapping around his waist, and carried her to the bedroom that was becoming theirs.
Later, tangled in her sheets, the only light from a streetlamp outside, he traced the line of her spine. “Did you mean it?” he asked into the darkness.
“Mean what?”
“That you only see me.”
She turned to face him. His features were soft in the gloom. “Callum, I’ve seen you since the day you moved in and tried to haul that horrific modern sofa through your front door while swearing in three different languages. I see you when you’re reading the sports section with your glasses on. I see you when you’re frustrated with a plot hole in my terrible draft. The guy on the stage tonight?” She shook her head, her hair whispering on the pillow. “That’s just a suit he wears.”
He didn’t speak for a long time. Then he pulled her close, tucking her head under his chin. His heartbeat was a steady drum against her ear. “The gala’s over,” he whispered. “Now it’s just us.”
In the morning, she woke alone to the smell of coffee. She pulled on one of his discarded t-shirts and padded into the kitchen. He was at the table, already in training gear, scrolling through his phone with a furrowed brow. Her journal was open beside his coffee mug.
He looked up. “You wrote about the auction.”
“I write about everything.” She poured a cup, leaning against the counter.
“You called Jamie ‘objectively pleasant but fundamentally uninteresting.’”
“He is.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips.It faded. “There’s a photo. Of us. In the alcove. Not clear, but… it’s obviously me. And it’s obviously you.”
The coffee turned acidic in her stomach. “What does it say?”
“Nothing yet. Just a grainy shot from some gossip site. The headline is just a question mark.” He put the phone down, screen-first. “They’ll dig now.”
The quiet street, the shared lofts, the anonymity—it felt like it was crumbling around the edges already. “Okay,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say.
“I have to go.” He stood, rounding the table to kiss her. It was a hard, quick press of his lips. “Don’t read the comments.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
He paused at the door, looking back at her—a woman in an oversized shirt, hair a mess, holding a mug with both hands. His expression was unreadable. “I’ll see you tonight.”
After he left, the silence in the house was absolute and heavy. She walked to the table and looked at her journal, open to her flowing script about chandeliers and the pressure of his hand on her back. Then she looked at his phone, still face-down.
She didn’t flip it over. Instead, she went to her laptop, opened her novel document, and began to type. The words came slowly at first, then faster, a different kind of escape. She wrote about light through a skylight, and the sound of a heartbeat in the dark, and the terrifying, exhilarating feeling of stepping out of the shadows and into a blinding, unknown glare.