The Striker's Forbidden Love

Chapter Three - I Have More

I have more.

Mia stared at the words until they stopped looking like English, phone gripped so tight her knuckles ached. Her first instinct was to type back something sharp. Her second instinct, the smarter one, was to not respond at all.

She went with the third instinct, which was neither smart nor sharp; she called her brother.

"It's ten at night, Mia. This better be an emergency." Marcus said, picking up on the second ring, sounding more amused than annoyed.

"Someone's sending me photos of me and my coach." Mia said, skipping every possible lead-up.

"Anonymous account. No name. Just... photos."

There was a pause on the line, the kind that told her Marcus had gone very still on the other end.

"Define 'photos.'"

"Training photos. Him correcting my stance. Nothing weird." Mia said, then hesitated. "I mean. It doesn't look weird. It just... looks like something."

"Mia." Marcus said, using the tone he'd used on her since she was eight years old and about to do something reckless on a pavement court with no adult supervision in sight. "Is there a 'something'?"

"No." Mia said, too fast.

"Mia."

"There's not a thing, Marcus, oh my god." Mia said, laughing despite herself, the sound coming out more strangled than she meant it to.

"He's my coach. I've known him for a week and a half."

"Uh huh." Marcus said, clearly unconvinced, clearly enjoying himself now that the emergency had downgraded to something he could tease her about.

"And in this week and a half, has he done anything a normal coach wouldn't do?"

Mia opened her mouth to say no, and then thought about the office. The game tape. The way he'd leaned in close enough that she could smell rain on his jacket, close enough that neither of them had moved away first.

"He showed me game film after hours once." Mia admitted, quieter now.

"That's not a crime, Mia."

"I know that."

"Then why do you sound like you committed one?" Marcus asked, and this time there wasn't any teasing in it at all, just the same steady patience he'd had every time she came home from tryouts as a kid, certain she'd failed, needing someone to tell her the truth instead of comfort.

Mia didn't answer right away. She sat down on her kitchen floor, back against the cabinets, phone pressed to her ear, and let herself actually think about the question instead of deflecting it.

Growing up, it had always been her and three older brothers on a cracked half-court behind their apartment building, playing soccer with a ball more patched tape than leather, because a real one cost money nobody had to spare.

Marcus was the oldest, the one who'd taught her to play in the first place mostly by refusing to go easy on her, shoving her off the ball, laughing when she fell, then hauling her back up and making her run it again.

She used to cry about it. She'd never once told him that. By the time she was twelve she'd stopped crying and started scoring on him instead, and that was the day he'd looked at her differently not like a little sister anymore, but like someone who might actually be good at this.

Nobody scouted pavement courts. Nobody handed out academy invitations to a girl who'd never played on real grass until she was sixteen years old, standing at the edge of a proper pitch for the first time in her life, convinced everyone could tell she didn't belong there just by looking at her cleats.

She remembered the tryout at Ironbridge two years ago with a clarity that still made her chest tight remembered being the last name called, remembered thinking she'd blown it, remembered the assistant coach at the time squinting at his clipboard and saying her name like he wasn't sure he was pronouncing it right.

She'd made the team. Barely. And she'd spent every day since making sure "barely" never described her again.

"I don't know why I sound like that." Mia said finally, answering her brother a full minute late. "I just... I don't want it to be a thing, Marcus. I need this season. I can't afford a scandal before I've even had a real shot."

"Then don't let it be a thing." Marcus said, gentler now. "But Mia, if it's already a thing, pretending otherwise doesn't make it not a thing. It just makes it a thing you're lying to yourself about."

"Since when did you get so wise?" Mia said, half a laugh escaping despite the knot still sitting in her stomach.

"Since I turned thirty and started reading self-help books to survive fatherhood." Marcus said, and this time they both actually laughed, the tension in Mia's chest loosening just slightly.

"Look. Whoever's sending you this stuff block them. Screenshot it first in case it matters later, then block them. Don't feed it by staring at your phone all night."

"That's actually good advice." Mia said, surprised.

"I have my moments." Marcus said, smug. "Now go to bed. You've got practice tomorrow, and knowing you, you'll be there forty-five minutes early trying to prove something to a man who apparently already knows your shoe-tying habits."

"Goodnight, Marcus." Mia said, rolling her eyes, though there was no real heat in it.

"Night, little sis. Lock your door. And Mia" He paused, voice dropping into something more serious. "Be careful. Whatever this is."

She hung up and did exactly what he told her, screenshotted the message, blocked the account, and sat there in the quiet of her kitchen floor a while longer before finally dragging herself up to bed.

Sleep didn't come easy. She kept replaying the conversation with Marcus, kept circling back to the one question she hadn't actually answered out loud: whether there was something. She told herself there wasn't. She told herself a lot of things that night that didn't hold up particularly well by morning.

Her phone buzzed at six a.m., an hour before she needed to be up, an hour before practice, an hour before she had any business being awake at all.

She grabbed it half-asleep, half-panicked, certain it was the anonymous account again.

It wasn't.

It was Daniel.

Need you at the field twenty minutes early today. Something came up. Don't tell the team yet.

Mia sat straight up in bed, sleep gone entirely, heart suddenly pounding for reasons that had nothing to do with the hour.

Something came up that could mean anything. A tactical change. An injury update. A schedule shift.

Or it could mean he'd seen the photos too.