Chapter 2
CHAPTER TWO
MURPHY
Idon’t get nervous. I’m not that guy. I chirp, I banter, I skate like hell and bounce off glass as though I’m made of rubber. I’m the easy-going one, the one people come to when shit gets heavy. But tonight? Tonight, I’m fucking terrified.
Because Sophie’s coming over, and somehow that’s turned me into a man who cleaned under his sofa cushions.
My place reeks of lemon polish and existential crisis.
I’ve got the match on in the background; playoffs, second leg, tight score, and the takeaway is already ordered. I even lit a candle. Who the hell am I?
When the door buzzes, I do this weird full-body twitch and nearly launch the remote across the room. I run a hand through my hair, like that’s gonna magically fix the mess on my head, and swing the door open.
She stands there in a denim jacket, with her hair piled up on the top of her head in a mass of curls, somehow it makes her cheekbones look sharper. She’s holding a six-pack in one hand and a smug grin in the other.
“Didn’t realise I had to climb three flights of stairs just to lose at FIFA,” she says, breezing past me as if she owns the place. “Where’s the console, Murphy? I came to humiliate you.”
I blink. “No hello? No ‘wow you look devastatingly handsome tonight’?”
“I thought we were being honest.”
Touché.
She tosses her jacket onto the back of the couch and makes a beeline for the TV.
I watch her move like I’m not completely entranced, even though I am.
Even though I’ve been thinking about her since that team pub night weeks ago, when she rolled her eyes at one of Ollie’s god-awful jokes and gave me this look.
That look that said she saw straight through my nonsense, and maybe liked me anyway.
We start playing and she’s better than I expected. Aggressive and ruthless. The kind of player who slide tackles in the penalty box and doesn’t even flinch when she gets a yellow. “Jesus, Soph. You playing to win or to wound?”
“Same thing,” she says, her eyes fixed on the screen. “You gonna cry if I beat you?”
I grin, but there’s a twist in my chest. Because I actually don’t want to win this one, not the way I usually do. I want to draw this out. Stay in this moment where it’s just us, controllers in hand, knees bumping on the couch and that tension hovering like smoke.
After her second goal, she leans back with a victorious sigh. “You’re suspiciously quiet. That mean you’re concentrating or sulking?”
“Neither,” I say, my voice lower than I mean it to be. “Just watching you.”
She stills. And now I’ve done it. I’ve crossed some invisible line neither of us ever talked about, but both of us know is there. She meets my eyes slowly, the game forgotten, the screen flickering in the background like a heartbeat.
“Why now?” she asks.
It’s not accusatory. Just real and honest. And I owe her the same.
“Because if I waited any longer, I’d lose my mind,” I admit. “You’ve been driving me mad. And not just ‘she’s hot’ mad. It’s the way you talk, the way you don’t let me get away with shit. The way you see the real me and don’t run.”
Her breath catches, but she doesn’t move away. “You do realise you’re my best friend’s boyfriend’s best mate, right?”
“I’m also a grown man who can handle a little complication if it means something real.” I pause, my heart hammering. “And this feels real.”
She studies me like she’s waiting for me to crack. Then, softly says, “I don’t want to be something you do for fun until it stops being easy.”
I lean closer. “You think I’m looking at you like you’re easy?”
“No,” she whispers. “That’s what scares me.”
Silence falls between us, heavy and full of meaning. I reach for her hand, just barely brushing my fingers against hers. She doesn’t pull away. Doesn’t move at all. Just looks at me as if she’s searching for some truth she hasn’t quite let herself believe yet.
Then she breaks the moment with a sharp exhale and a smirk. “You still owe me a rematch. I want a clean hat-trick.”
I let the tension break, even though I’m still buzzing from it. “You’re not getting a hat-trick in my house, woman. Over my dead, FIFA-losing body.”
We fall back into the game, but it’s different now. Looser. Warmer. Like something shifted under the surface and neither of us has the words yet.
At halftime we swap controllers for beers. Sophie perches on the kitchen counter like she belongs there, sipping from the bottle and laughing at the memory of Dylan trying to teach Mia how to skate backwards.
“You know,” she says, “I always thought I’d end up fancying someone predictable. Like an accountant.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”
She shrugs. “You’re not predictable.”
“No?”
“No,” she repeats. “You surprise me, and that’s dangerous.”
“Or exciting.”
She tilts her head. “Jury’s still out.” But she’s smiling when she says it, and her eyes are warm, and suddenly I know that whatever the hell I did with my heart before doesn’t matter, it’s hers now. Fully. Without backup. No reserve goalie, no insurance policy. Just hers.
When she leaves later that night, after one more game, one more drink, and a hug that lingered a second too long, I stand at the window and watch her car pull away. The headlights carving through the dark as if chasing something inevitable.
And I whisper to myself, “What the hell did she do to my heart?”
But the answer’s already written all over my stupid, grinning face.
She stole it.