Nine
THE FOLLOWING MORNING there was still no message from Miles, but I was determined not to think about it – qualifying started in five days and I had to be ready.
Yet on my way to the gym, I slowed outside Miles’s door, listening for sounds of life.
I did the same on the way back, covered in sweat, and there was still nothing.
If he wanted something, he would message, I told myself as I went to shower.
It wasn’t my place to push or worry. But he had.
When I’d stopped answering his messages, he had worried enough to break into my apartment, enough to message Katie and traipse out to the courts to be sure I was all right.
Why was this different? Because he didn’t have panic-induced crises like I did?
Because he could take care of himself? Perhaps, but he’d also stood outside my door and admitted he wasn’t used to being alone.
So, after lunch I muttered, “fuck it” and went to knock on his door.
As the sound faded, a murmur rumbled within.
Feet scuffed on the carpet. Then the door opened and there was Miles, everything about him soft and hazy, the sunlight pouring through his windows limning him in gold.
It was noon, yet he looked like he’d only just woken, his blond hair tousled and his shirt the worn, faded sort that got slept in. He didn’t smile.
“I’m on a call.”
“Oh, I can come back later,” I said. “Or not, if you prefer.”
I turned to leave, but he gripped my arm. “No, come in. Just . . .” Miles pressed a finger to his lips and pulled the door wide for me to enter.
As I took a few hesitant steps inside, I realised I hadn’t yet been in his apartment.
We’d kept defaulting to mine because the shower worked, but now, for the first time, I was standing in Miles Callahan’s personal space.
I took in the collection of water bottles neatly lined up on the sink, the large vase of flowers beside the TV, and the feeling of spaciousness he’d achieved through a total lack of clutter.
There was no discarded laundry, no dirty plates, no loose tennis gear, just a sleek laptop sitting open on the kitchen bench running a video call.
The man on-screen sat in an elegant kitchen filled with morning sunlight.
He had one of those fancy coffee tumblers that looked like a cup within a cup, and despite the hour wore a collared shirt crisply starched.
And one glance at his face was all I needed to know I was looking at Mr Callahan senior.
“Miles?” the man snapped, peering irritably into the camera like his son had shrunk. “Are you there?”
“Sorry, Dad,” Miles said, striding over. “Lunch arrived. What were you saying?”
I shot him a bemused look at being called lunch, but Miles just leaned against the bench beside the laptop, where his own far less fancy mug of coffee sat waiting.
“I was saying your serve was sloppy,” Mr Callahan said. “Kozel should never have gotten a look at so many second serves. You were handing them out like it was his damn birthday.”
I’d been looking for somewhere to sit out of the man’s eyeline, but I spun around at that, barely managing to swallow a shocked ‘the fuck?’. Miles glanced at me, and waved a hand in front of the laptop’s inbuilt camera to show it wasn’t on.
“Miles?” His father heaved a sigh. “Turn on your damn camera, I can’t tell if you’re even there.”
“I’m here and I’m listening,” Miles said. “Just not sure what you want me to say.”
“You could start by explaining yourself.”
Miles started turning his mug on the bench with a slow scraping sound. “What’s to explain? I served poorly. Leo already called me.”
“Good, but he doesn’t tell you what you need to hear. Which is that you’re lazy, Miles, and that match was embarrassing.”
My hands clenched into fists, but I forced myself to swallow a retort.
Miles had snapped at Danny for far less, but this was his dad and I wasn’t even meant to be there let alone listening – anything I said sure to only make things worse.
Thinking to give him privacy, I headed for the door as his father went on, “Now you’d better tell me what you plan to do about it.
Aside from apologising to Leo and the team and asking them to catch the next flight over. ”
“I’m not doing that,” Miles said, hurrying after me to lean his weight on the door, blocking my way.
“What do you mean?” Mr Callahan demanded from the laptop as Miles slid his arm around my waist and pulled me back. “Yesterday’s farce has already proven you can’t handle this on your own.”
Despite knowing the camera was off, I wanted to shrivel up as Miles dragged me in front of it. “What are you doing?” I hissed, but he just wrapped his other arm around me as though to stay any thought of escape.
“I mean that I’ll decide when I want the team to join me,” Miles said.
“Miles, you need them. I’m sending them.”
“Then I’ll just send them away!” Chest to chest, those words reverberated through his ribs and into mine like a suppressed roar. “I told you it would be my decision and you agreed.”
Behind me, Mr Callahan scoffed. “I agreed only to let you get it out of your system.”
“You mean only because I threatened not to play.”
“Yes, and having started there, I should have known you would be childish.”
“I am always predictable,” Miles agreed blandly, and bent his head to kiss me.
I knew his father couldn’t see us, yet I stiffened and made to pull away. Except Miles’s hand was pressed to the back of my head, holding me captive, and it was impossible to resist his soft lips coaxing mine open.
“What’s predictable is this outcome,” Mr Callahan said as Miles gently devoured me.
“I told you how it would be and instead you dug your heels in and now we’re reaping the failure.
” A few beats of silence hung, and when Miles didn’t answer, his father shifted tone.
“You need the team, Miles. They can stay elsewhere if it’s space you want.
Just tell me where you are and we’ll make it work. ”
Miles went on kissing me, deeper and deeper like I was his only air.
“Ah, is that why you’re keeping your camera off?” His father’s laugh was humourless. “You don’t want me to know. Well, if you want to lose tournaments to punish us, just pull out next time instead of embarrassing yourself.”
I wanted to shout at him. Wanted to hiss in his face that Miles had never embarrassed himself on court in his life. I crushed the impulse.
“Do you have a plan for counteracting the media speculation?” Mr Callahan continued. “Or must we also smooth that over for you?”
Miles finally pulled his lips from mine. “You can’t tell me Tina complained about dealing with it,” he said, his breath brushing by my ear.
“No,” his father agreed. “Because unlike you, she doesn’t complain. She just gets on with the job.”
While the man spoke, Miles slid his hand down the front of my shorts to cup the growing erection even his father’s virtual presence couldn’t stem.
The move was so unexpected that I gasped before I could stop myself, and Miles’s dad broke off the beginning of a fresh complaint to say, “What? Something you want to say?”
“No, I just stubbed my toe,” Miles replied with a passable attempt at a pained hiss for his father and a more than passable glare for me.
Gripping my shoulders, he spun me to face the bench and the man still frowning at us from the laptop screen.
This time I was ready when Miles slid his hands beneath my clothes.
Although ready only meant being prepared to bite my lip, not that I didn’t want to squirm, caught there against his chest while he wrapped a hand around my cock.
While the other slipped up my shirt to find one nipple. While his father stared right at me.
“I know you don’t care about such things,” the older man went on after a beat of silence.
“But negative press and media speculation is bad for business. If you’re going to play poorly, your sponsors would be less concerned if the team were there.
The speculation you’re not happy with Leo’s work makes you look erratic. Unreliable.”
“The press always find something to talk about,” Miles said, stroking me as I hardened in his hand. “No one takes them seriously when they’re just speculating, not even sponsors.”
Mr Callahan clicked his tongue. “Why risk it? You should be focussed on winning and getting paid, not wasting your time on this foolishness.”
“Even if all my sponsors abandoned me, I would still get paid for playing tournaments,” Miles snapped, somehow still managing to maintain his rhythm rubbing my dick. “I’m a tennis player, not a—”
“For now, yes, but you can’t play forever. Your game is already slipping, as yesterday—”
“It was one bad match!”
The shout rang through the tiny kitchenette and Mr Callahan’s eyes widened.
Seemingly shocked into silence, he didn’t speak for a few long seconds – long seconds during which Miles went on making use of his far too skilled hands.
The part of me that was caught between him and his father like a shield wanted him to stop, but the part of me that was rock hard really didn’t.
I could feel him hard against me too, and had to swallow every groan climbing up my throat as my pre-cum dampened his hand, slicking his speeding strokes.
On the screen, his father sighed. “We have your best interests at heart, Miles. We worry about your future. Why only this week your mother has been working on a new deal with—”
“I don’t need another sponsor,” Miles said, a breathless edge to his voice I hoped his father wouldn’t catch. “Fuck,” he then groaned against my ear. “You’re so wet.”
He sounded delighted, but my cheeks burned and I squeezed my eyes shut like I could will his father out of existence, even as he said, “Nonsense. You need all the endorsements you—”