Chapter 3: Whispered Invitation
The rain began just as they stepped out of the café, a sudden, insistent drizzle that misted the cobblestones and darkened the stone of the bridges spanning the Water of Leith. Ally shrugged out of his jacket, a simple, weathered waxed-cotton thing, and held it over both their heads.
“Improvised shelter,” he said, his voice a low rumble close to her ear.
They walked quickly, huddled under the makeshift canopy. The world shrunk to the sound of their footsteps on wet stone and the shared warmth trapped beneath the fabric. Roz was acutely aware of the solid line of his body beside hers, the scent of his cologne and the coffee on his breath mingling with the petrichor rising from the ground.
“Your shoulder,” she said, glancing at the arm he held aloft. “This can’t be good for it.”
“It’s fine. A little rain never hurt anyone.” But she saw the faint tension around his eyes, the subtle way he favoured it.
They reached her street too quickly. The green door of her tenement stood fifty yards away, a dry refuge that suddenly felt like a sentence. They stopped beneath the scant shelter of a leafless cherry tree, the jacket still held above them. Water dripped from its edges, patterning the ground around their feet.
“So,” he said.
“So,” she echoed.
The air between them thickened. This was the moment. The end of the coffee, the thank you, the polite farewell. Roz’s heart hammered against her ribs. All her usual instincts screamed to retreat, to make an excuse, to end this before it could properly begin and thus avoid any future disappointment.
He looked down at her, his grey eyes serious. Raindrops clung to his dark lashes and traced paths through the stubble on his jaw. He was so close she could see the faint freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose.
“I know you’re busy with the stadium,” he began, his voice dropping, losing its easy cadence and becoming something quieter, more tentative. “And I’ve got the match on Saturday, and then we’re away in France next week for the Champions Cup…”
He was listing the obstacles, the very real world that was about to pull them apart. Her hope, a fragile, flickering thing, began to dim.
“But when I get back,” he continued, leaning in just a fraction. The space between their faces dissolved. She could feel the warmth of his skin. “I’d like to take you to dinner. A proper one. No conduit. No shoulder injuries. Just… dinner.”
His invitation hung in the damp air, a question mark made of breath and proximity. Her lips parted, not to speak, but to breathe him in, the coffee, the rain, the sheer, solid presence of him.
The answer was yes. It had always been yes, from the moment he’d called Liam McAllister a wanker. But the word stuck in her throat, choked by a lifetime of second-guessing.
He mistook her silence for hesitation. A shadow of resignation crossed his face, so brief she almost missed it. He started to pull back, the jacket beginning to lower. “It’s okay if—”
“Yes.” The word escaped, a rushed exhalation. “Yes, dinner. I’d like that.”
The smile that broke across his face was slow, then brilliant, completely transforming it. It reached his eyes, carving crinkles at their corners, and for a moment, he wasn’t a rugby star shouldering the hopes of a nation, but just a man, ridiculously pleased.
“Okay,” he said, the word full of warmth. “Okay, good.”
He didn’t try to kiss her. Instead, he gently draped his jacket over her shoulders, his hands lingering for a heartbeat on the worn fabric. “Get inside before you’re soaked.”
She nodded, speechless again, clutching the jacket around her. It was heavy, still holding the heat from his body.
He gave her one last, long look, then turned and walked away, his broad shoulders quickly disappearing into the grey curtain of rain, becoming a silhouette that merged with the city.
Roz stood there for a full minute, the rain cooling her hot cheeks, until a shiver finally jolted her into motion. She fumbled with her keys, her fingers clumsy with cold and a buzzing, electric excitement, and let herself in.
The flat was silent, but it no longer felt empty. It felt like a place waiting for something to happen. She hung his jacket carefully on a hook by the door, her fingers brushing the damp collar. She could still smell him on it.
Her phone, left charging on the kitchen counter, showed a missed call from David and three increasingly terse emails about the load-bearing calculations. The real world was reasserting itself with a vengeance. But for once, the tight knot of anxiety in her stomach didn’t form. Instead, a new, stubborn resolve took its place. She had stood her ground with David. She had said yes to Ally.
She picked up her phone, ignoring David’s messages, and typed a new text.
Roz: You’re going to get drenched.
The reply came as she was pouring a glass of water.
Ally: Worth it.
She smiled, a private, helpless thing, and looked out the window at the relentless rain. It wasn’t an ending. It was an intermission.
---
The following week was a study in contrasts. For Roz, it was a whirlwind of site meetings, structural revisions, and navigating David’s passive-aggressive approval of her designs. She found a new strength in her work, a confidence that felt forged in the crucible of that rainy afternoon. She thought of Ally’s quiet support, his belief in her, and it became a shield against David’s barbs.
For Ally, it was a descent into a different kind of focus. The pain in his shoulder became a constant, manageable hum beneath the brutal symphony of training. Ice baths, physio, tactical briefings. The world narrowed to the pitch, the game plan, the silent communication between teammates. He existed in a bubble of controlled aggression and physical sacrifice.
Their contact was sparse, stolen moments in the chaos.
A text from him late one night, after a double session: Shoulder’s better. Thought you’d want to know your structural adjustments held.
Her reply, sent during a coffee break: I never doubted my calculations. Or your infrastructure.
His response was just a laughing emoji.
Another, from her, a photo of a spectacularly failed model made of spaghetti and marshmallows from a doomed school project she’d found while cleaning: Early architectural failure. The client was not impressed.
His reply came an hour later: Client has no vision. Clearly a masterpiece.
It was enough. These tiny, digital lifelines kept the thread between them taut.
Then, silence. The team flew to Toulouse. His world became the hotel, the stadium, the pitch. Her world became the echoing vastness of Murrayfield, the shriek of power tools replacing the roar of a crowd.
Saturday arrived. The match. Roz told herself she wouldn’t watch. She had a stack of schematic diagrams to review, a deadline looming. Rugby was a foreign language of obscure rules and brutal collisions. It held no interest for her.
But as evening fell, she found herself on her sofa, laptop open on her knees, the television on mute in the background. The screen showed a seething cauldron of noise and colour in France. It was overwhelming. Then the cameras locked onto the teams lining up in the tunnel. And there he was.
Ally. But not her Ally. This man was a Study in intensity, his face a mask of grim concentration, his body coiled like a spring. He was number 8, a hulking presence among other hulking presences. The physio’s tape was a stark white X across his jawline, another band securing his bad shoulder. He looked primal. Dangerous.
The game began, and it was a blur of chaos. The muted television couldn’t silence the jarring physicality. The crunches of tackles, the collapsing scrums that looked like architectural failures in flesh and bone. She found herself gripping the edge of her sofa, her knuckles white. She watched him, this number 8, a relentless force, his powerful legs driving forward, his arms fending off opponents with a violence that was both terrifying and mesmerizing.
This was his world. This brutal, beautiful carnage.
With ten minutes left on the clock, the score was unbearably close. The French team had possession, hammering away at the Scottish defensive line. A rolling maul formed, a tangled monster of bodies and momentum, thundering towards the try line. Ally was at its heart, the anchor. Roz could see the strain in every corded muscle of his neck, the sheer, agonizing effort of holding the line.
The maul collapsed inches short. A whistle blew. A penalty to Edinburgh.
The camera zoomed in on Ally as he pushed himself up from the ground. He was breathing in great, ragged gulps, his face streaked with mud and sweat. He looked exhausted, hollowed out. Then, as his teammate prepared to kick for touch, he turned and scanned the crowd, his gaze sweeping the stands. It was a quick, seemingly absent gesture. But Roz, alone on her sofa, felt a jolt straight through her core.
It was as if he was looking for something. Someone.
The kick was successful. The game marched on. But the image of his face in that single, unguarded moment—the exhaustion, the desperation, the search—was burned onto her retina.
The final whistle blew. Edinburgh had won. His teammates erupted in celebration, swarming each other. Ally stood for a moment, head bowed, hands on his knees, utterly spent. Then he was engulfed by the crowd of players.
Roz sat in the sudden silence of her flat, the cheers on the muted TV a pantomime of joy. Her heart was pounding. The structured, gentle man who discussed Jane Austen and winced when she touched his shoulder was also this warrior, this elemental force. The disconnect was staggering.
Her phone lit up with a notification. A news alert: Kinghorn Heroics Secure Edinburgh Gritty Away Win.
She didn’t read it. She just stared at the screen, at the frozen image of the celebrating team. The thread between their worlds, once so thin and delicate, now felt like a steel cable, thrumming with a terrifying, exhilarating energy. He was coming back. And everything had changed.
And everything had changed.
The silence in her flat felt different now, charged with the ghost of collisions from a screen. For three days, the image of him, drained and searching the crowd, replayed behind her eyes. She focused on her blueprints, tracing stress lines and load-bearing calculations, finding a strange solace in the immutable laws of physics. They were so much simpler than the unpredictability of a human heart.
Her phone buzzed, skittering on the drafting table. His name glowed on the screen. Her breath hitched.
She picked up. “Hello?”
“Hey.” His voice was rough, stripped bare by travel and exhaustion. “I’m back. And I’m starving.”
A laugh bubbled out of her, nervous and relieved. “I saw. You were… immense.”
“I was sore,” he corrected gently. “But I’m functional. So? That dinner? I know a place. Nowhere fancy.”
Her instinct was to hesitate, to find an excuse buried in her work. But the memory of his resolve on the pitch steeled her own. “Nowhere fancy sounds perfect.”
“Great. I’ll pick you up at eight.” A pause, the rustle of fabric. “And Roz? You don’t need to wear anything… architectural.”
This time, her laugh was genuine. “I’ll try to control myself.”
He arrived exactly on time, the black Range Rover purring at the curb. He emerged wearing a simple, dark green jumper and jeans, his face softened by a faint, tired smile. The raw intensity of the player was gone, folded away, but the strength in his frame was a quiet constant.
“You look…” he began, as she opened the door.
“Not architectural?” she finished, gesturing to her simple black dress.
He shook his head, his gaze warm. “You look like you.”
The pub was his suggestion, a small, unassuming place tucked down a cobbled close in Stockbridge, all worn wood and soft lighting. It was the antithesis of a player’s haunt. No blaring sports screens, no autograph seekers. Just the murmur of conversations and the low crackle of a fire.
He didn’t hold the door for her with a flourish, just made sure it didn’t swing back into her face. He winced slightly as he sat in the booth, his hand going unconsciously to his shoulder.
“It’s fine,” he said, catching her look. “Just reminding me it’s there.”
“You should have it looked at properly.”
“The physio has poked and prodded it enough. I’d rather talk about your conduit issue. Did you win?”
She told him about David, about standing her ground, about the approved plans. He listened, truly listened, his focus entirely on her, asking intelligent questions about seismic retrofitting that surprised her.
“It’s just problem-solving,” she said, shrugging.
“So is rugby,” he replied, a smile playing on his lips. “Mostly it’s about solving the problem of fourteen very large men trying to physically repel you from your goal.”
The conversation flowed, easyt. It was literature and leverage, the poetry of Robert Burns and the geometry of a lineout. He was clever, his humor dry and self-deprecating. The looming presence of the stadium, of his other life, felt like a shared secret, not a barrier.
He reached for his pint, his movement fluid, but she saw the minute tightening at the corner of his eye. Without thinking, she reached out, her fingers brushing the dense wool of his jumper where it covered his shoulder. He went very still.
“Does it hurt much?” she asked, her voice low.
“Only when I breathe,” he joked, but his eyes were serious, watching her hand. “Or laugh. Or move.”
Her fingers remained for a second longer, feeling the solid, unyielding muscle beneath the soft wool. It was an intimate gesture, far more so than a kiss might have been. She pulled her hand back, the warmth of him lingering on her skin.
“Sorry,” she murmured.
“Don’t be,” he said, his voice a low rasp. He looked from her hand to her face, his gaze open, vulnerable. “Please.”
The noise of the pub faded into a distant hum. He leaned forward slightly, his arms resting on the table, bridging the space between them.
“That night, after the match,” he began, his tone shifting. “I was so done. Empty. And I looked up. It was stupid. There were fifty thousand people in that stadium.”
She held her breath.
“I knew you wouldn’t be there. But I looked anyway.” He gave a small, helpless shrug of his good shoulder. “Just in case.”
Her heart thumped once, a heavy, painful beat against her ribs. He had been looking for her. The certainty of it was dizzying.
“Ally…”
“I know,” he said, cutting her off gently. “It’s a lot. It’s fast. This life… it creates a weird pressure cooker. Feelings get amplified. But this doesn’t feel amplified. It feels… quiet.”
Quiet. The word settled deep inside her, a perfect fit. It wasn’t the roaring crowd. It was this: a quiet booth, a shared secret, a hidden injury, a look across a table that felt like coming home.
She didn’t know what to say. The words were all jumbled, caught between her professional reserve and the sudden, startling truth blooming in her chest.
He saw her struggle. He smiled, breaking the tension, and picked up a beer mat, flipping it between his fingers. “Anyway. That’s my confession. Your turn. What’s the worst building in Edinburgh? And you can’t say the Scottish Parliament.”
She laughed, the moment passing but its echo reverberating through her. She launched into a critique of a 1960s office block, her hands sketching shapes in the air. He watched her, his eyes crinkling, fully absorbed.
Later, he walked her to her door, the cool night air a sharp contrast to the pub’s warmth. They stopped on the step, the same step where he’d given her his jacket.
“I have to leave tomorrow,” he said. “Training camp. Five days.”
“Okay,” she said, the word feeling inadequate.
“But after that,” he continued, his voice firm. “I’m taking you out again. And I’m not getting tackled this time.”
“Promises, promises,” she teased, her voice softer than she intended.
He didn’t move to kiss her. He simply reached out and took her hand, his own large and warm, enveloping hers. He brought it to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, his eyes never leaving hers. The gesture was old-fashioned, startling, and utterly devastating.
“Goodnight, Roz Macdonald,” he whispered against her skin.
Then he turned and walked away, leaving her standing there, her hand tingling, the ghost of his touch imprinted on her bones. She fumbled with the lock, her mind a riot of sensation and emotion. Inside, she leaned against the closed door, her heart hammering a frantic, joyful rhythm against the wood.
On the hook beside her, his waxed-cotton jacket still hung, a silent, solid promise in the dark.
The jacket smelled faintly of him, a mix of clean cotton and the crisp, cold air from their walk. Roz pressed her face against the fabric, inhaling deeply, and felt a ridiculous smile spread across her face. She was in trouble, and she knew it.
The next few days were a blur of site meetings and structural reviews, but the memory of his hand on hers, the kiss on her knuckles, played on a constant loop in her mind. David’s snide comments about her "distracted air" barely registered; she was too busy replaying the way Ally’s eyes had crinkled when he laughed.
Her phone buzzed on her desk, startling her from a daydream about quiet pubs and intense grey eyes. It was a message from Ally. Her heart did a little flip.
The preview showed a single image: a vast, sun-drenched field of brilliant green, dappled with sharp, long shadows. She tapped the screen, and the message opened to reveal a series of photographs.
The first was a wide shot of the training ground, drenched in Spanish sunshine so bright it hurt to look at. In the distance, a line of immense men, their shirts clinging with sweat, were frozen mid-drill, muscles straining against the heat.
The next photo was a close-up of Ally, his face smeared with dark mud and beaming with a raw, unguarded joy she hadn't seen before. He had an arm slung around the neck of a teammate, both of them grinning like fools, their bodies caked in dirt and glistening under the fierce sun.
Another image showed a group of them, these colossal figures, collapsed in a heap on the grass, laughter lines stark against the grime on their faces. The sheer physicality of it was overwhelming, a world away from the man who winced at a sore shoulder and discussed Jane Austen.
He sent her photographs from the training camp in Spain; sunshine and big men grinning in mud. Roz stared at the screen, at the image of Ally, transformed by sun and effort and camaraderie. It was a side of him she’d only glimpsed on television, now intimate and personal on her phone.
She typed a reply, her thumbs clumsy over the keys. "You look happy. And very, very dirty."
His response was almost immediate. "It's a special kind of filth. Miss the clean lines of your blueprints."
She smiled, a warm, private thing, and looked at the jacket on the hook. The promise it represented felt suddenly, exhilaratingly real.
The jacket smelled of him still, a faint trace of his soap and the cold outside air clinging to the waxed cotton. She allowed herself one more deep breath before turning back to her work, the complicated stress diagrams on her screen now seeming straightforward compared to the puzzle of her own feelings.
Her phone buzzed again, not with a photo but with a direct message. "This heat is brutal. Think I've sweated out my body weight. How's the conduit war?"
She smiled, typing back. "Currently a stalemate. David is employing guerrilla tactics involving outdated regulation documents. I'm holding firm." She hesitated, then added. "Your dirty picture was a welcome distraction."
His reply was almost immediate. "Glad to be of service. Any dirtier and they'd have to hose me down. Shoulder's holding up, before you ask."
He always mentioned the injury so casually, a throwaway line to preempt her worry. She remembered the wince he tried to hide in the pub, the way his hand had unconsciously gone to the spot. "Good," she typed, her thumbs hovering over the screen. "But if it's not, you will tell me. Right?"
There was a longer pause. Three dots appeared, then vanished, then reappeared. "Yes, boss," the message finally came. Followed by another: "It's just the usual grind. Everything feels… sharper here. The air, the pain, the focus. Miss the softness."
The softness. She read the word again. He missed the softness of Edinburgh rain, of quiet pubs, of her. The thought was a physical warmth in her chest. She looked at the grainy image of him, caked in mud and beaming, a world away from the man who cherished a battered copy of Pride and Prejudice.
The following days unfolded in a rhythm of her blueprints and his training updates. He’d send snippets: a video of a flawless passing drill, a photo of a spectacularly failed cake one of the props had attempted to bake, a voice note of him and his mates murdering a pop song in the minibus. It was a window into a universe of sheer, unadulterated physicality and relentless camaraderie.
She found herself studying the way his body moved in the videos, the raw power and surprising grace. She saw the moments he fatigued, the slight droop of a shoulder before he forced it back, the way he’d flex his hand after a heavy impact. He was pushing himself, and the part of her that solved problems by reinforcing structures worried about the fundamental strain on his.
The night before his return, her phone rang late. His voice was stripped raw, scratchy with exhaustion. "We landed. I feel like I’ve been run over by a tractor. A very enthusiastic one."
"Welcome home," she said, curling into her sofa, pulling his jacket over her like a blanket.
"Are you wearing my jacket?" he asked, his tone shifting, a smile audible in it.
"How did you know?"
"I just know. Listen, about tomorrow…" He hesitated. "I’m shattered, Roz. Really. I might be rubbish company. We could postpone—"
"No." The word came out sharper than she intended. "I mean, don't be daft. Come over. I'll order food. You can be as shattered as you want."
The silence on his end stretched, filled only by the sound of his breathing. When he spoke, his voice was low and thick with something that sounded like gratitude. "Yeah. Okay. That sounds… perfect."
He arrived at her door looking like the ghost of the man in the Spanish sun. There were new bruises coloring his arm, a fresh scratch on his cheekbone, and a deep-seated weariness in his posture that seemed to settle in his bones. He held a bag of takeaway from the Indian place down the street.
"Told you," he said, offering a tired smile.
"You look like you need a stiff drink and a coma," she said, taking the bag from him. His fingers brushed hers, cold and slightly rough.
"Both. In that order."
He moved into her flat with a familiar heaviness, shrugging off his coat and sinking onto her sofa with a quiet groan. He looked around, taking in the neat stacks of blueprints, the model of the stadium section on her coffee table. "This is nice. It feels like you."
She poured him a whisky, a good single malt, and handed it to him. His large hand enveloped the glass, his knuckles scraped and dotted with old scars. He took a sip, closed his eyes, and let his head fall back against the cushions.
"The shoulder?" she asked, sitting beside him.
"Stiff. It's fine."
"Alasdair."
He opened his eyes and looked at her, really looked at her, and the defense in his gaze crumbled. "It's… sore. More than usual. The ground over there was like concrete."
She didn't ask permission. She placed her glass on the table and shifted closer. He watched her, unmoving, as she reached out and pressed her fingers firmly into the dense muscle of his left shoulder, through the soft fabric of his hoodie.
He flinched, a sharp intake of breath hissing through his teeth.
"Sorry," she murmured, but didn't stop. She worked her fingers into the knotted tissue, finding the rigid, painful bands beneath the surface. He was wound impossibly tight, a coil of suppressed agony.
After a minute, his body began to yield incrementally under her hands. A low groan escaped him, a sound of pure relief. His head lolled forward, his breathing deepening. "Christ," he muttered, his voice muffled. "How are you better than the physio?"
"I pay attention," she said softly, her thumbs tracing the line of his scapula. "I notice where you wince."
He was silent for a long time, letting her knead the tension from his body. The only sounds were their breathing and the distant hum of the city outside. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet, confessionary.
"That last match… I looked for you because it was the only thing that made sense in all that noise. All that violence. I just needed a fixed point."
Her hands stilled on his back. She felt the truth of his words settle in the space between them, heavy and profound. This man, who could withstand impacts that would shatter concrete, sought anchor in her quiet presence.
He turned his head slightly, his cheek resting against the sofa cushion, his grey eyes reflecting the dim light from her lamp. "Your turn," he whispered. "Tell me something true."
The air in the room felt charged, thin. She looked at his face, at the fatigue and the vulnerability etched into his features, and the last of her own defenses melted away.
"When you kissed my hand," she began, her voice barely audible. "I stood against that door for ten minutes after you left. I couldn't move. I felt… recalibrated."
A slow, deep smile spread across his face, erasing the weariness for a moment. He reached up, his hand covering hers where it rested on his shoulder, lacing their fingers together. His skin was warm, his grip gentle but absolute.
"Recalibrated," he repeated, as if tasting the word. "I like that."
He didn't pull her towards him. He simply held her hand, their joined hands resting on the repaired part of him, a silent pact in the quiet room. The food grew cold on the table, forgotten. The promise of the jacket on the hook had been fulfilled, and something new, something far more daunting and electric, had taken its place.