In a world where every point can decide a career and perfection is a daily demand, even the smallest distraction can be disastrous. Elena - composed, distant, and painfully professional - knows this better than anyone. Working behind the scenes as part of the medical team for top tennis players, she's learned how to keep emotions in check. Always in the background. Never too close.
Rules that are never meant to be broken.
Until they are.
Carlos Alcaraz - young, unpredictable, electric. Known not just for his game, but for a presence that's impossible to ignore. Even for her. On the surface, they have nothing in common - except the growing proximity that no one is supposed to notice. Too often. Too intense.
It starts with fleeting moments. Lingering glances between points, the brush of a hand during a taped wrist, conversations that last longer than they should in the hallway after lights-out. Then a few drinks, a harmless game, and a door that closes behind them.
Set against the backdrop of one of the world's biggest tournaments - Wimbledon - this is a story of two people who never planned to fall into each other's orbit. It's not quite love. Not yet. It's tension, raw and electric. It's temptation. And it's the slow realization that some things, once started, are impossible to control.
But the closer they get, the harder it is to tell the game from the truth. And when everything starts to spiral like an unforced error under pressure, someone will have to risk something greater than a match.
Can you keep your distance when your body remembers every touch?
Can you ignore what should've never happened - but did, in a locked room, under cover of night, with someone breathing your name?
Can you stay detached when one look is all it takes to lose yourself?
What she'd look like without that shirt.
What she'd sound like if I kissed the corner of her throat and whispered her name there.
What she'd do if I pinned her against the counter and made her say please.
What she'd do if I-
"Dominic?"
•
"I stayed up late, trying to get good at maths... just so I could be someone you'd respect. Someone you might someday look at and see more. Someone who could belong in your world."
"I didn't want your money. Or your praise. I just..." my throat tightened, "I just wanted you to see me. Not Tristan's sister. Not a kid."
Just Elena.
•
Elena Evelyn Grantt has spent years pretending. Pretending she didn't love him, pretending she could move on, and pretending it didn't matter that he never saw her that way. To Carl Dominic Enzo, she was only his best friend's little sister.
But when Dominic returns, everything begins to shift. Older now and harder to ignore, he still calls her "little sister" and still treats her like family, yet his eyes linger longer than they should and the tension between them grows harder to resist.
She was never meant to love him. He was never supposed to want her.
But some lines are meant to be crossed...