The Striker's Forbidden Love

Chapter Twenty-Seven--Total Distance

Daniel read the message twice, jaw tight, before handing the phone back.

"Do you believe her?" he asked.

"I don't know," Mia admitted. "Sofia's been wrong about things before. But she's also been right about things nobody else caught."

"Ask her who," Daniel said. "If she has a name, we need it. If it's just a feeling, we can't act on it yet, not with the new policy hanging over everything."

Mia texted Sofia back, a single question…..” Who” and waited, phone gripped tight, while Daniel paced a slow circuit around the empty meeting room.

Sofia's reply came a few minutes later. “Not sure yet. Overheard part of a call. Working on it. Will tell you when I know more.”

"Not enough to act on," Daniel said, reading over her shoulder. "But enough to keep in mind."

"Everything's 'not enough to act on' lately," Mia said, exhaustion bleeding into frustration. "I'm so tired of gathering half-clues and waiting."

"I know," Daniel said. "I am too."

They stood there for a moment, the new policy still hanging heavy between them, before Daniel finally spoke again, voice lower now, more careful.

"We have to actually do this, Mia. Not the version of distance we've been failing at for weeks. The real thing. No equipment shed conversations. No late-night calls. Nothing that could be read as anything other than coach and player, full stop."

"For how long?" Mia asked, the question costing her more than she wanted to admit.

"Until the season ends. Until this dies down enough that a suspicious glance doesn't end both our careers." Daniel said. "I don't know exactly how long that is. I know it's longer than either of us wants."

Mia nodded, throat too tight to answer properly, and left the meeting room without another word, unable to trust her own voice not to c***k.

The days that followed tested that promise in ways Mia hadn't fully anticipated. Practice became a study in careful choreography, Daniel addressing the whole squad instead of individuals, corrections delivered generally rather than personally, every interaction stripped down to the barest professional minimum.

It worked, in the sense that nothing incriminating happened. It also hollowed something out of every single day, a low ache Mia carried from the moment she arrived at the training ground until the moment she finally drove home, alone, to an apartment that had started to feel emptier than it used to.

"You look terrible," Priya said at the water break on Thursday, studying Mia with real concern. "No offense. You just look like someone who hasn't slept properly in a week."

"I haven't," Mia admitted. "New policy's got everyone walking on eggshells. It's exhausting pretending things are normal when nothing about this week has been normal."

"For what it's worth, you're handling it better than I would," Priya said. "I'd have cracked days ago."

"Who says I haven't?" Mia said, managing a tired smile despite everything.

Priya bumped her shoulder gently, a small gesture of solidarity that meant more than any words could have, and the two of them fell into comfortable silence, watching the rest of the team run drills under Daniel's careful, distant supervision.

Mia caught his eye once across the pitch brief, unreadable, gone almost before it registered and felt the ache in her chest deepen instead of easing, the careful professional distance somehow making the pull between them feel stronger rather than weaker.

Match day arrived Saturday with the whole week's tension still coiled tight beneath the surface. Ironbridge won, comfortably, Mia scoring once in the second half in a stadium that seemed more interested in her personal life than her footwork, judging by the murmur that followed her every touch of the ball.

She showered, changed, and left through the side exit afterward, avoiding the press pen entirely, exhausted past the point of caring whether that itself looked suspicious.

Her phone buzzed as she reached her car. Not Sofia. Not the burner account.

A text from Daniel, the first personal message he'd sent her in four days of careful, total silence.

“I miss this. I know we can't. I just needed to say it once.”

Mia stared at the screen, throat tight, thumb hovering over the reply for a long moment before she finally typed back three words of her own.

“Me too. Always.”

She hit send, and immediately, her stomach dropped not from regret, but from the sudden, sick realization that she hadn't checked who else might be standing close enough in the parking lot to see her face while she typed it.