Chapter 70: The Proposal Play
The silence of Callum’s house had become a companion over the past four days. Aurora had taken him at his word, moving between their two homes with a strange, dual sense of belonging and trespassing. She wrote at her own desk, surrounded by her books and her chaos, but she slept in his bed, wrapped in the scent of him that faded a little more each night.
She wore his jersey sometimes, over her leggings, the hem falling to her mid-thigh. It was soft from countless washes, the number 10 on the back slightly cracked. She’d stare at the blank document on her screen, fingers hovering over the keys, and feel the ghost of his fingertips on her spine. I think I’m in trouble.
Her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter as she was pouring her third coffee of the afternoon. Callum’s name flashed. A different kind of warmth spread through her.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in a team meeting?” she answered, leaning against his sad lettuce fridge.
“Break in the schedule.” His voice was a low hum, layered with a background echo that sounded like a vast, empty space. “I’m at the stadium. They’ve all left for the day.”
“Haunting the empty halls?”
“Something like that.” He paused. “What are you doing?”
“Staring at a cursor. It’s winning. Also, I’m wearing your jersey. It’s objectively better than mine.”
She could hear his smile. “Is it now?”
“The fit is slouchier. More authentic.”
A longer pause. She could almost hear him thinking. “Come here,” he said suddenly.
“To Germany?”
“No. To the stadium. Now. It’s… it’s empty. Completely. I’ve got security to let you in the side gate. I want you to see it.”
Her heart did a slow, nervous roll. “Callum, I can’t just—”
“You can. It’s a ten-minute drive. You’re not writing anyway, you said so.” His tone shifted, losing its playfulness, turning earnest. “Please. I want to show you something. Without… without anyone else.”
That did it. The ‘without anyone else.’ It was the same man who’d whispered on her skin.
“Okay,” she heard herself say. “Okay.”
She pulled on a pair of sneakers over her mismatched socks, grabbed her keys, and didn’t change out of the jersey.
The stadium, up close, was a fortress of concrete and steel. It loomed against the late afternoon sky, hulking and silent. A bored-looking security guard at a nondescript side entrance checked a tablet, nodded, and waved her through a heavy personnel door. The echo of her footsteps in the concrete tunnel was immense, swallowing sound. It smelled of damp, cleaning fluid, and deep, ingrained earth.
Then the tunnel opened up, and she stepped out.
The pitch was a shocking, vivid emerald sea under the harsh, clinical glare of a few maintenance floodlights. The stands soared upwards, tens of thousands of empty seats stacked like terraced cliffs, casting deep, geometric shadows. The silence was a physical thing here, thick and watchful. She’d only ever seen it roaring, vibrating with sound and color on her TV screen. This was its skeleton.
And there, in the very center of the vast green, was a single figure.
Callum stood on the halfway line, a solitary silhouette in training gear. He was bouncing a ball lightly on his foot, knee to knee, a mesmerizing, steady rhythm. He saw her and stopped, the ball settling obediently at his feet.
Aurora walked onto the turf. The grass was perfectly manicured, springy under her soles. It felt like walking on a giant’s carpet. As she neared him, the scale of the place only grew, making him seem both tiny and monumentally significant.
“Hi,” he said. His voice carried easily in the quiet.
“This is… eerie,” she said, stopping a few feet away, hugging herself. “It’s so quiet.”
“That’s the point.” He toed the ball gently towards her. It rolled to a stop against her sneaker. “This is what I hear. Before they all come in. Just me, the grass, and the ghosts.”
She looked around at the hollow bowl of the stadium. “What do the ghosts say?”
“They remember every mistake.” He said it simply, without self-pity. “The shot I skied over the bar. The pass I didn’t make. The penalty.” He looked at her. “The one you saw me choke on.”
She smiled faintly. “It was a bad call.”
He took a few steps closer, closing the gap between them. Up close, she could see the faint shadows under his eyes, the weariness of travel and relentless focus. “I wanted you to see it like this,” he said, his gaze holding hers. “Before you see it on TV again. This is the canvas. This is the quiet before the noise. My quiet.”
Her throat felt tight. He was giving her a piece of his world, stripped bare. It was a vulnerability that felt bigger than any physical intimacy.
“It’s beautiful,” she whispered. And it was, in a stark, terrifying way.
He nodded, seemingly satisfied. Then he gestured to the ball at her feet. “Kick it.”
“What? No.”
“Come on. Just once. I want to see you do it.”
“Callum, I’m wearing your jersey and my dad’s old socks. I’m not kicking a ball on a professional pitch.”
“Why not? No one’s here. The ghosts won’t judge.” A familiar, cocky grin touched his lips. “Or are you scared?”
She was. Terribly. It felt like trespassing on sacred ground. But the challenge in his eyes, the playful intimacy of it, broke through her fear. She huffed, pushed her glasses up her nose, and gave the ball a firm, ungraceful punt.
It skidded maybe ten yards along the grass before wobbling to a stop.
He burst out laughing, the sound bouncing joyfully around the empty stands. “Oh, wow. That was tragic. My ten-year-old niece has a better technique.”
“Shut up,” she said, but she was laughing too, her face hot.
He jogged after the ball, brought it back, and placed it carefully at her feet again. “Okay. Lesson one. You don’t kick it with your toe.” He moved behind her, his chest close to her back. “Here.” He guided her hip with one hand, nudging her standing foot with his own. “Plant this one next to the ball. Now, use the inside of your foot, right here.” He tapped her anklebone. “Follow through. It’s about control, not power.”
His voice was low in her ear, practical and warm. She focused, tried to mimic his instructions, and kicked. The ball traveled a straighter, cleaner line this time.
“See?” he said, his hand still resting on her hip. “You’re a natural.”
“I’m a novelist.”
“You’re both.” He turned her to face him. The floodlights cast his face in sharp relief, highlighting the green of his eyes. The emptiness around them seemed to press in, a private universe. “This is where I live,” he said quietly, the humor gone. “This grass, these lines. The noise is just… decoration. This is the real part. And I wanted you in it.”
Aurora felt the weight of the moment, of the confession. She reached up, her fingers brushing his jaw, rough with a day’s stubble. “I’m in it,” she said.
His eyes searched hers, and for a second, he looked terrified. It was the same look he’d had when he asked if his world changed anything for her. Then he took a deep breath, took a step back, and dropped to one knee.
Her heart stopped. The vast, silent stadium seemed to tilt.
But he wasn’t reaching for a ring. He was looking up at her, his expression utterly serious. “Aurora Bellweather,” he said, his voice clear in the hollow air. “The next home game. Will you sit in the family section?”
The air rushed back into her lungs. Not a proposal. Something else. Something arguably more significant in his world.
“What?” was all she could manage.
“The seats behind the dugout. Where the wives and girlfriends sit. It’s… it’s a thing. It means something. To the club, to the fans, to… to me.” He ran a hand through his hair, the gesture more nervous than cocky. “It’s putting you on the map. In my world. It’s saying ‘she’s with me.’ No more secret watching. Everyone will see. Everyone will know.” He swallowed. “Will you?”
She saw it then. The risk for him. The playboy, the loner, publicly claiming someone. Making her a fixed point. It was the opposite of his quiet, hidden life here.
It was a run-on sentence written for everyone to read.
Before she could answer, a sudden, metallic clunk echoed from the stands, followed by a low hiss. Around the perimeter of the pitch, hidden sprinkler heads emerged from the grass and erupted. A curtain of water, glimmering like diamonds in the floodlights, rose in a perfect circle around them.
Aurora yelped as a fine mist caught her. Callum looked over his shoulder, stunned, then started laughing. “Timed irrigation!” he shouted over the sudden hiss. “I forgot!”
They were in the center, dry for the moment, but the wall of water was closing in, the fine spray dusting their skin. The stadium was no longer silent; it was filled with the roar of a hundred fountains.
Aurora looked down at him, kneeling on the sacred grass, water sparkling in his hair, asking her to step into the spotlight with him. The crazy, beautiful, terrifying reality of it all crashed over her. This wasn’t a novel. This was messier. This was better.
She reached out her hand.
“Yes,” she said. The word was lost in the sound of the water, but he saw it on her lips.
His face broke into a relief so profound it made her chest ache. He took her hand, stood, and then he was kissing her, his mouth warm and insistent against hers, while the shimmering wall of the sprinklers advanced, promising to soak them to the bone. She didn’t care. Let the ghosts see. Let them all see.
When they broke apart, breathless, the first cool drops were finally reaching them, spotting the fabric of his jersey on her shoulders. He kept her hand tightly in his, lacing their fingers together.
“Come on,” he yelled, grinning. “We’re about to get drowned.”
He pulled her, and they ran, laughing, through the rainbows caught in the spray, across the empty, glorious pitch, towards the tunnel and the real world waiting beyond.