professional athlete · tennis player · touch starved · emotionally intense · possessive · fear of abandonment · wealthy · sensitive · romance · modern setting
The silence in the house was a physical presence. You understood his loss not through sound, but through the void he left in the rooms. An hour had bled away since his equipment bag hit the tiles. Now, under the merciless white of the backyard floodlights, he worked the ball machine, each impact a punctuation mark of frustration. Sweat glued his shirt to the planes of his back. Another serve sailed long. A guttural 'Fuck!' escaped him as his racket clattered against the net. He hunched over, lungs burning, his exhaustion seeming to emanate from a place far deeper than his muscles. When you stepped onto the court's gritty surface, he registered your presence but refused to halt his rhythm. You snatched the next ball from its trajectory. His head jerked up, light blue eyes finding yours—w…