Chapter 36
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
ROSE
The cork pops louder than it needs to, sharp in the quiet of my flat, and Clara winces before grinning at me like we’re sixteen again and about to get caught doing something we shouldn’t.
“Jesus,” she says. “You’d think we were opening champagne with that drama.”
“I need the drama,” I reply, slumping back against the sofa as she pours.
The wine sloshes generously into both glasses.
Too generously but I don’t comment or complain.
Tonight is long overdue. I’m well aware I’ve neglected our friendship since Callum entered my orbit.
Hopefully, a few glasses of wine will put that to rights.
My flat smells of clean laundry and takeaway cartons that my flatmates and I haven’t thrown out yet.
It’s familiar, safe. Mine. Which is exactly why I came here tonight instead of staying at Callum’s, even though he offered, even though he looked disappointed when I said I wanted a night in with Clara.
I tell myself it’s healthy. Space. Normality.
I don’t tell myself the other reason.
Clara hands me a glass and clinks hers against mine. “To surviving unhinged exes.”
I snort despite myself. “To surviving them.”
The wine is sharp and a little too cold, but it loosens something in my chest that’s been knotted tight since the game. Since the toilets. Since Talia leaned in close enough that I could smell her perfume and whispered words that have refused to leave me alone.
You should ask him what secret he’s hiding.
Ask him why he feels guilty.
Clara watches me over the rim of her glass, already clocking that I’m somewhere else. She always does. She’s been doing it since we were flatmates, since she learned how to read the micro-expressions I don’t even know I make.
“Okay,” she says finally. “You’ve been quiet for at least three sips. Spill.”
I sigh and lean my head back against the sofa, staring at the ceiling. “I ran into Talia.”
Clara’s eyebrows shoot up. “At the game?”
“Toilets.” I swallow. “She cornered me.”
Clara’s mouth twists. “Of course she did. What did she say?”
I hesitate, fingers tightening around the stem of my glass. Saying it out loud feels different. Heavier. More substantial.
“She told me Callum’s hiding something,” I say slowly. “That he feels guilty about something. She said I should ask him why he’s with me.”
Clara doesn’t interrupt. She just watches, eyes sharp but gentle, giving me the space to keep going.
“I know she was trying to get under my skin,” I add quickly, as though I need to convince myself. “She was angry. Bitter. She lost access to the family box, she lost him—”
“But?” Clara prompts.
“But.” I exhale. “But it stuck.”
Clara takes a slow sip of her wine, and I can almost see the clogs turning as she’s thinking. “Okay. Let’s break this down. Do you think Callum is hiding something?”
My instinctive answer is no. Immediate. Protective.
But it doesn’t come out of my mouth.
Instead, I think about the way his jaw tightens when the past comes up. The way he goes still sometimes, like he’s bracing for a hit that never comes. The sleepless nights. The apologies he whispers when he thinks I’m asleep.
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Clara nods once. “Has he ever lied to you?”
I open my mouth. Close it.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Not outright.”
“But?” she says again, gently relentless.
“But he avoids things,” I say, the words tumbling faster now. “Changes the subject. Gets protective in this… intense way. Like he’s compensating for something.”
Clara sets her glass down. “Rose. I’m going to ask you something, and I need you not to get defensive, okay?”
My stomach tightens. “Okay.”
“Do you trust him,” she asks, “or do you trust the version of him you’ve built in your head?”
The question lands hard.
I stare at my wine, watching the surface ripple as my hand shakes slightly. “That’s not fair.”
“I know,” Clara says softly. “But I’m not asking to hurt you. I’m asking because I love you.”
I swallow. Images flicker through my mind of Callum searching for me in the crowd, his hand warm and steady at my back, the way he looks at me as if I’m the only solid thing in the room.
“I trust him,” I say. “I do. He’s never made me feel unsafe. Never made me doubt that he wants me.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Clara says.
I close my eyes.
The shadow of doubt, the one I’ve been pretending isn’t there, stretches a little longer.
“I trust who he is with me,” I say finally. “I don’t know if I know all of him.”
Clara’s expression softens. “That’s not the same thing as him being bad, Rose.”
“I know,” I whisper. “But what if it’s something big?”
Silence stretches between us, thick and uncomfortable.
“What did Talia mean about guilt?” Clara asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know. That’s the problem.”
My thoughts drift, unwanted but insistent, to the accident and the way he randomly showed up at the hospital the day after.
He told me he read in the news that I’d been at the game, and he thought it would be a nice thing to do.
The way his hands clenched as though he was physically holding something back the first time I asked about him showing up.
I’d chalked it up to protectiveness. To anger on my behalf.
Now, I’m not so sure.
“Do you think,” Clara says carefully, “that if there is something, he’s not telling you because he’s scared of losing you?”
That hits too close to the bone.
“Yes,” I say immediately. Too fast.
Clara nods. “Then the question becomes how long are you okay not knowing?”
My throat tightens.
Because that’s the actual question, isn’t it?
How long before the unspoken becomes louder than everything else. How long before every silence feels loaded. Every deflection feels deliberate.
“I don’t want to push him,” I say. “He’s already dealing with so much. The press. Talia. The season—”
“And you?” Clara asks.
I look at her.
“What about you?” she repeats. “Where do you fit in that list?”
The answer comes unbidden and terrifying.
After him.
I hate that.
“I don’t want to lose him,” I whisper.
Clara reaches across the coffee table and squeezes my hand. “Then don’t lose yourself trying to keep him.”
We sit there as the wine level sinks lower and lower, the bottle sweating onto my coffee table, time stretching in that hazy way it only ever does when you’re half-tipsy and trying not to think too hard.
Outside my windows the city keeps breathing, keeps moving, headlights sliding along the road below like ribbons of light, people laughing somewhere on the pavement, a bus sighing as it pulls away from the stop.
Someone’s music thumps faintly through an open window across the street.
Ordinary sounds. Ordinary lives. It’s disorienting, how normal everything feels when my chest is tight and my thoughts won’t settle, like the world didn’t get the memo that something inside me has shifted.
The flat glows softly around us, lamps casting warm pools of light that should feel comforting, and usually do, but tonight it only highlights how still I am, how much I’m holding inside.
Life keeps going with lectures, games, dinners, nights out, all while I sit here staring into my glass, wondering when exactly the ground tilted beneath my feet and whether I’ve been pretending not to notice.
But something is wrong. I can feel it now, that low ache under my ribs.
Talia’s words replay again, sharper this time.
Ask him why he feels guilty.
I don’t know what Callum is hiding. And I’m scared of what I might find when I finally ask.