The Striker's Forbidden Love

Chapter Four. The Knee That Ended Everything

"You're early." Daniel said, not looking up from the folder spread open on the bench in front of him. "Good."

"You told me to be." Mia said, dropping her bag by the fence, heart still hammering from the twenty-minute drive spent bracing for the worst. "What's going on? Your text made it sound like the building was on fire."

"Nothing's on fire." Daniel said, and finally looked up, and whatever Mia had braced herself for, it wasn't the almost-sheepish look on his face. "We got moved up. The match against Brantford got pushed to Saturday instead of next week.

Scheduling conflict on their end."

Mia blinked. "That's it? That's the emergency?"

"I needed to adjust the whole week's training plan before the team got here." Daniel said, gesturing at the folder like it explained everything, which, to be fair, it kind of did. "Didn't want to spring it on you all at seven a.m. with no warning."

"So you texted me at six a.m. instead. Great system." Mia said, relief and irritation fighting for control of her voice at the same time, landing somewhere in between.

"You're welcome." Daniel said, and this time there was no mistaking the small, satisfied curve at the corner of his mouth.

Mia stood there another second, adrenaline draining out of her all at once, leaving her oddly light-headed. She'd spent the entire drive convinced this was about the photos convinced he'd found the same grainy image she had, convinced this was the conversation where two years of work quietly came apart. Instead it was a schedule change. A completely normal, boring, coach-shaped schedule change.

"You okay?" Daniel asked, tilting his head, actually looking at her now instead of the folder. "You look like you ran here."

"I'm fine." Mia said, too fast, exactly the way she'd said it to her brother the night before.

"Right." Daniel said, clearly not buying it, clearly deciding not to push. "Well. Since you're here early anyway, help me set the cones for the shape drill. Might as well make the six a.m. text worth something."

They worked in silence for a few minutes, dragging cones into formation across the wet grass, the sky still doing that pale gray thing it did before the sun actually committed to showing up.

Mia found herself watching him out of the corner of her eye the careful way he squared each cone, like precision mattered even for something this small, like sloppiness anywhere was a c***k that let bigger sloppiness in.

"Can I ask you something?" Mia said, before she'd fully decided to.

"Depends what it is." Daniel said, not looking up from the cone in his hand.

"Why soccer? I mean why coaching. You clearly could've done something easier." Mia said, gesturing vaguely at the whole exhausting operation around them, the cones, the early mornings, the team of twenty-two women who each thought they deserved more playing time than they were getting.

Daniel went quiet for a second, longer than the question really needed.

"I played pro for six years." He said finally, voice flatter than usual, like he was reading it off a card instead of remembering it. "Midfielder. Good one, actually, if you'd asked anyone back then."

"What happened?"

"ACL. Full tear, both ligaments, during a match that didn't even matter that much." Daniel said, and there was something in the way he said didn't even matter that much that told Mia it had mattered plenty, right up until it didn't.

"Twenty-eight years old. Surgeons said I could come back if I wanted to fight for it. Physical therapists said the same thing, actually meant it a little more."

"Did you fight for it?"

"For a year." Daniel said. "Hardest year of my life, and I grew up with four brothers who thought competitive eating counted as a sport, so that's saying something."

Mia laughed despite herself, and Daniel almost smiled, the corner of his mouth doing that thing again.

"Knee never came all the way back." He continued, quieter now. "Not to pro level. I could've kept playing somewhere smaller, somewhere nobody cared if I was eighty percent instead of a hundred. But I didn't want to be somebody's charity minutes. I wanted to be good or I wanted to be done."

"So you chose done."

"I chose coaching." Daniel said, correcting her gently. "Which felt like giving up for about six months, and then it didn't. Turns out I like this more than I ever liked playing. I like watching someone get better because of something I noticed that they didn't. That felt like enough."

Mia didn't say anything for a moment, turning that over, surprised by how much it landed somewhere real in her chest. She'd assumed without ever really examining the assumption that Daniel's rigidity came from some cold, joyless place.

Rules for the sake of rules. Now it looked more like something a person built for themselves after watching the thing they loved get taken away once already, brick by careful brick, so it couldn't happen the same way twice.

"Is that why you're so..." Mia started, searching for the word.

"Insufferable?" Daniel offered, deadpan, echoing her own word back at her from two days ago.

"I was going to say strict." Mia said, fighting a smile.

"Same thing, from where you're standing, probably." Daniel said, and this time he did smile, just slightly, just enough. "I don't bend the rules because bending them once meant I'd probably bend them again. And again. Until there wasn't a rule left worth having. I built this whole coaching philosophy out of not wanting to lose control of something a second time."

"That sounds exhausting." Mia said honestly.

"It is." Daniel admitted. "But it's mine. Nobody can take discipline away from me the way they took the knee."

The team started trickling in behind them, voices and cleats on gravel, the moment closing itself the way these moments always seemed to quietly, before either of them could examine it too closely.

Daniel straightened up, folder back under his arm, coach-face sliding back into place like a mask he kept in his back pocket for exactly this purpose.

"Anyway." He said, voice returning to its usual brisk register. "Schedule change. Extra fitness work today to compensate for the shorter prep window. Don't hate me too much."

"I already hate you plenty." Mia said, deadpan right back at him, and this time they both actually laughed, quiet and real, before the rest of the team got close enough to hear.

She grabbed the last cone and jogged it into position, feeling lighter than she had all morning lighter than she'd felt since the anonymous account first sent its photo, honestly, like something in her chest had loosened just from hearing him talk about the knee, the fear, the year he spent fighting for something that never fully came back.

She didn't notice Sofia watching the two of them from the edge of the pitch, arms crossed, expression unreadable, until practice was already well underway.

And she definitely didn't notice, tucked into her gym bag where she'd shoved it that morning without thinking, that her phone had lit up twice more since she'd arrived with the same blocked account, somehow already back despite everything Marcus had told her to do.

Two new messages. Both unread. Both waiting.