Chapter 12
CALLUM
Rewind - Stereophonics
When he ended the call with the States about the new corporation they were investigating, the only thing waiting for him was a pounding headache.
It was one of those headaches that settled behind his eyes and whispered just give up.
The kind that made him want to chuck his phone out the window, tell the world to fuck off, grab his keys, and drive straight to Wales.
No signal. No people. Just waves, trees, silence.
A break. A breath. Then maybe, just maybe, he’d come back and remember why he started Lamina in the first place.
“We’ve got a meeting with Sofia in five. Don’t forget,” Asma announced, peeking into his office. Her smile was wide, bright, too alive for how dead he felt inside.
Asma loved Lamina, probably more than he ever had.
It had been her baby. He and Leif had thought it was a good idea, sure.
They even felt alive, in the past, at the idea of building something so life changing, but Asma had lived for it from day one.
Now, five years in, Callum was starting to understand what people meant when they said they were in burnout.
Perhaps he was being dramatic, but lately it felt like his whole life was one endless to-do list, and none of it actually made him happy.
Callum nodded, cracked his neck, and dragged himself to the conference room after asking his assistant for a coffee.
It was 6:30 PM, and he wasn’t sure when the meeting would end.
He loved Sofia, but he hated the life he had ended up living.
Her three-day destination wedding had been a dream, one that now haunted his mind every time he thought that life could be that good every day, not just three out of 365.
He frowned the second he walked in.
The massive screen on the wall wasn’t showing financial reports. It was a surf competition. Live.
Sofia, with her bright smile and the glow on her skin that reminded him she was living outside that office while he was imprisoned in it every day, was already seated behind her laptop, looking vaguely guilty.
“Sorry. But Ilias is competing today. And Alejandra too.”
Callum didn’t reply. He just sat down in silence. The last thing his brain needed right now—especially with a migraine brewing—was Alejandra fucking López Romero in full HD, being perfect, powerful, and completely unreachable.
She was on-screen now, stretching on the sun-warmed sand, headphones in, eyes closed, completely absorbed in her own rhythm.
Every movement was controlled, a seamless flow of strength and grace.
The long-sleeved rash guard clung to her like a second skin, revealing the subtle lines of her muscles as she leaned into a stretch, the braid of her hair pulled tight against her head revealing her gorgeous features, not a strand out of place.
Her jaw was set, her expression serene but impossibly determined, a quiet intensity radiating from her every pore.
Even the way she breathed seemed choreographed, a slow in-and-out that made him painfully aware of the difference between her life and his own. The ocean glittered behind her, waves rolling gently, but she was the center of it all.
She looked incredible. Dangerous, really. Like she had everything he didn’t, and the cruel part was, she made it look effortless.
And he hated himself for it.
Four months had passed, and his mind still hadn’t moved on. He’d agreed to no contact. He had even been happy about it. Like a fucking idiot.
Callum had tried with his entire being to avoid her. But it was impossible.
Now here she was, in his meeting room, larger than life.
“Is this the first day or the finals?” Leif asked, breaking the silence.
“First day,” Sofia replied. “Elimination round.”
Callum’s eyes stayed glued to the screen, even as he tried not to. She was sitting on a bench now, still meditating, completely in the zone. That look on her face, he remembered it. Right before she came. Right before she’d whispered his name like it was sacred.
And here he was, watching her like a stalker, praying nobody noticed the way his stomach twisted.
He’d checked her Instagram way too many times. Skipped her stories so she wouldn’t see his name pop up. Watched her interviews like he was doing recon for a mission.
Why had he agreed to cut it off completely?
Oh right. Because they were both workaholics living in two entirely different worlds. She surfed in tropical oceans. He worked in air-conditioned hellscapes with fluorescent lights and fraud reports. She chased waves. He chased criminals in spreadsheets and probably, a burnout.
Maybe she’d been right. Maybe it wouldn’t have worked.
But fuck, she felt like something. Something real. Something that could have worked if they only would have given it a chance.
“Should we start?” Asma asked, entering the room and closing the door behind her.
Sofia nodded, but even she was half-glued to the screen, where Alejandra was now standing up, ready. Her competition shirt clung to her body, the number 23 printed on her back, the Spanish flag patch sewn onto her arm. She looked razor sharp. Lethal. And yet… calm.
Callum clenched his jaw.
He didn’t know much about Pipeline. He didn’t know much about surfing besides what he had learned growing up in Aberystwyth.
He wanted to ask Sofia if that was the wave where she had breached her scalp, he remembered her appearing with a bandage on her head once.
But he didn’t dare ask. He didn’t want all of his friends and colleagues to think he still had a thing for her.
By the fact that Alejandra was wearing a helmet, that said everything he needed to know about how punishing that wave could be.
Unaware of where his mind truly was, Asma started talking about the new corporation they were tracking—a massive fraud case linked once again to Whitmore, Sofia’s ex. That man just didn’t know when to quit. House arrest in the U.S. hadn't done shit to slow him down.
Callum used to enjoy the thrill of this work. Digging into people’s messes. Sending bad people to prison. He used to feel like Robin Hood, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. But not today. Not now. Not in a very long time.
His eyes flicked back to the screen. Alejandra was in the water now, perched on her board, watching the sets come in. She was competing against a girl from the States and another from Germany. The ocean stretched wide around her, the surface calm and glittering.
“Callum, are you even listening?” Leif smirked.
Bastard.
He forced his gaze away from the screen. “Yes. The data’s still incomplete. My team didn’t have time to sift through everything yet.”
Leif raised an eyebrow but didn’t push. Everyone in that room knew he’d slept with Alejandra. And everyone was waiting to see how long he’d keep pretending she didn’t still haunt him.
When he looked back at the screen, Alejandra was paddling hard into a wave. She rose up without effort, her body balancing on the crest like it belonged there, as if gravity bowed to her. For what he knew about surfing—which wasn’t much—her form was perfect, almost impossibly so. But then—
Alejandra slipped.
Something went wrong. Her foot seemed to miss the grip, and her body tumbled. She dropped straight down the face of the wave, disappearing beneath the white foam.
Callum froze, the sound of the chair scraping against the floor barely registering. Whoever had been speaking in the meeting went on talking, their voice distant and meaningless. His chest tightened, his stomach pitched, and his heart… God, his heart stopped.
The board crashed toward the shore moments later, leash torn, skimming the water like a broken promise. But she didn’t surface. Alejandra didn’t come up.
Sofia mirrored his movement, standing and muttering something in Italian, but he couldn’t see her, couldn’t hear her. Nothing existed except the screen and the blue surface of water.
Come on. Come on. Come on.
His pulse spiked, a hammering in his ears, drowning out everything else. He was holding his breath as if the pressure of the water was pressing against his lungs. As if he were the one trapped under meters of ocean, gasping, clawing, suffocating.
She had to come up. She had to.
Please. Please, please, please… Alejandra, come up. Breathe. Just breathe.
He hadn’t prayed in years. Not seriously.
Not for anything real. But here he was, whispering, yelling, begging to a god he didn’t believe in, hoping that some thread of mercy might reach her.
Because nothing—not spreadsheets, not logic, not a single fucking detail he’d memorized—could control the ocean.
His fingers curled into fists, knuckles white, nails biting into his palms. His mind raced, each scenario more horrifying than the last. What if she didn’t come up?
And then another, crueler thought: what if she didn’t come up…
and he survived it? Could he survive it?
Could he survive losing her like that, seeing her vanish and knowing nothing could save her?
His breaths came in ragged gasps. Sweat pricked at his hairline, and a cold tremor ran down his spine.
He didn’t care if anyone noticed. He didn’t care if his friends or Sofia thought he was losing it.
He was terrified. Terrified in a way that was bigger than embarrassment, bigger than logic, bigger than him.
The camera zoomed out, then in, then panned over the endless water. Nothing. Nothing.
Callum’s chest ached. His throat burned. And all he could do was wait. Wait and hope. Wait and beg.
And maybe that was the most terrifying part of all: the absolute helplessness.