29. Kate
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Kate
The next ten days were going to be agony.
Okay, not dramatic, fall-to-the-floor agony, just that low, dull ache of missing someone so badly it threw everything else out of rhythm. Like time was going backward, and the more I watched the clock or the calendar, the slower it went. I was torturing myself.
I went back to work the following day, thinking the structure would help.
It didn’t.
The office was quiet, eerily so. Everyone was still catching up from post-summer term chaos or from being on leave, but I was actively avoiding people; slipping into side rooms with my laptop, dodging lunch invites and chats by the kettle. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to think.
I tried to concentrate on reports, deadlines, tribunals, all the things that usually kept me sharp.
But my brain felt too cloudy. Like he’d left fingerprints all over every part of me, and I couldn’t scrub them off even if I wanted to.
Jordan had ruined me, in the most beautiful, devastating way.
There was no inch of my life that felt the same. I was completely consumed by him.
He’d flown to Florida just a few days after Wimbledon.
He had a few days of rest before his brutal training schedule started thanks to his blazing win in London.
The time difference made things trickier, a solid five hours between us, and with his training, press, and recovery, we had to steal time in fragments. But we made it work. We always tried.
I’d told him not to worry about the time. “Call whenever you can. I don’t care if it’s 3:00 a.m. I’ll answer,” I told him.
And he did.
The first night he called, he’d just come in from training. FaceTime lit up on my screen, and my heart jolted. When I answered, there he was: shirtless, glistening, and a towel slung around his neck.
“Seriously?!” I groaned. “How is that even fair?”
He laughed that big, deep laugh that made his eyes crinkle. “Gotta remind you what you’re missing, Katie. Make sure you get on that plane next week.”
I sighed, sinking further into my bed. “Trust me, I’m already mentally on it. Work’s been torture. If I were a bloke, I swear, I’d have spent the week trying to hide a hard-on from Jen in Business Support.”
That got him properly going. His head fell back, laughing. I’d missed seeing that. Missed making him laugh like that.
When he looked back at the screen, his smile softened. “God, I miss you.”
“Me too,” I said. And I meant it, with every single inch of me. My heart tugged the moment the words left my lips.
There was a pause. That kind of silence where you can feel the other person wanting to close the distance.
“I’ve been watching your matches back on my laptop,” I told him with a smile. “Not quite the players’ box, but…I’m picking up plenty to tell Chris.”
“That means everything, babe.” His voice dropped a little, rougher now. “I swear I play better when I know you’re watching.”
I felt my throat tighten.
“I’m proud of you, you know that?”
He smiled. But I could see it behind his eyes, that same ache I was feeling. The missing. The want. The yearning.
Every night, we called. Some nights, it was five minutes.
Others, we talked for an hour. About nothing and about everything.
Each time, hanging up felt like another tiny heartbreak.
Then there were the texts. The flirty, borderline filthy texts he would send me while I was at work.
Making me clench my thighs together, always in the most inappropriate moments.
I knew next week couldn’t come soon enough. I needed to see him. But I was starting to realise that just seeing him again wasn’t going to be enough.
Because the truth was, I didn’t just miss Jordan. I ached for him. And somewhere in that burning ache, something was moving quickly inside me. Something that felt suspiciously like falling in love.