The Striker's Forbidden Love

Chapter Eight - Every Word Counts

Mia didn't sleep. Not really. She spent most of the night staring at her ceiling, running through every possible reason Elena Vance might want to see her, and none of the answers she came up with made the knot in her stomach loosen even slightly.

By the time she walked into the club's administrative building the next morning, she'd rehearsed at least four different denials, two apologies, and one increasingly unhinged plan to simply move to another country if it came to that.

"Sit down, Torres." Elena said, not unkindly, gesturing at the chair across from her desk without looking up from the folder in front of her.

Mia sat. Her palms were sweating. She hoped it didn't show.

"You're not in trouble." Elena said, finally glancing up, and something in Mia's chest unclenched so fast it almost hurt. "Why do you look like you're bracing for a firing squad?"

"No reason." Mia said, too quickly, in the exact tone that made every guilty person on television sound guilty.

Elena studied her for a beat, one eyebrow raised, and then apparently decided not to pursue whatever that reaction actually meant. "The scout everyone's been whispering about it's confirmed.

National team assistant director. Coming to watch the Brantford match this weekend."

Mia's brain took a full three seconds to catch up. "This weekend? As in Saturday?"

"As in the match you've already been training for all week, yes." Elena said, a small, dry smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. "I need you prepared for what that means. Reporters. Attention. People asking you questions you didn't ask for. I don't want you blindsided by any of it."

"Okay..." Mia said slowly, still catching up. "So this meeting is about... media training?"

"This meeting is about making sure the best player on this roster doesn't accidentally torch her own opportunity by saying something regrettable to a reporter with a microphone shoved in her face."

Elena said, sliding a printed sheet across the desk. "Sample questions. Sample answers. Read them before Saturday."

Mia scanned the page, mostly harmless stuff, questions about her form, her expectations for the match, the usual boilerplate athletes were trained to handle without embarrassing themselves.

Nothing about Daniel. Nothing about anything she'd spent the entire night dreading.

"Is that all?" Mia asked, unable to keep the relief out of her voice.

"That's all." Elena said, then paused, studying her again in that same measuring way. "Unless there's something else you'd like to tell me, Torres."

The question landed like a trapdoor opening under Mia's chair.

"No." Mia said, too fast again, heart suddenly hammering. "Nothing else."

"Alright." Elena said, and let it go though something in her expression suggested she was filing the reaction away for later rather than actually believing it. "Go. You've got practice in twenty minutes, and I imagine Coach Reyes will have plenty to say if you're late again."

Mia stood, gathered the printed sheet, and made it almost to the door before Elena spoke again.

"Torres."

Mia turned. "Yeah?"

"This scout matters. More than you probably even realize yet." Elena said, voice softer now, almost warm. "Don't let anything…. anything at all….get in the way of what you've built here. You understand me?"

"I understand." Mia said, and meant it more than Elena probably knew.

She walked out of the administrative building into the cold morning air, lungs finally working properly again for the first time since the text had arrived the night before, and let herself laugh, short, disbelieving, equal parts relief and exhaustion. All that dread, all those rehearsed denials, and it had just been the scout. Just Elena doing her job, protecting an investment, nothing more sinister than that.

She was still riding the high of it when she reached the pitch and found Daniel waiting by the fence, arms crossed, watching her walk up with an expression she couldn't quite read.

"Well?" He asked, low, urgent. "What did she want?"

"The scout's confirmed. Saturday's match." Mia said, grinning despite herself. "That's it. Media training. Nothing about... you know. Anything else."

Something in Daniel's shoulders visibly loosened, relief passing across his face so plainly that Mia almost laughed again just watching it happen.

"Good." He said. "That's good."

"You were worried." Mia said, something warm blooming in her chest at the admission she hadn't expected from him.

"Obviously I was worried." Daniel said, like it should've been obvious. "I barely slept."

"Me neither." Mia admitted.

They stood there a moment, closer than professional distance technically allowed, neither one moving away first, the whole morning suddenly feeling lighter than it had any right to after the night they'd both had.

"We should probably..." Mia started, gesturing vaguely at the growing distance she was supposed to be maintaining.

"Right. Yes." Daniel said, stepping back, coach-face sliding into place like a shield he'd almost forgotten to raise. "Practice starts in ten. Go warm up."

Mia jogged off toward the rest of the team, adrenaline and relief mixing into something that felt almost like happiness, almost like the whole nightmare of the last few days had finally started to loosen its grip.

She didn't notice, jogging past the equipment shed, that Sofia was already there, phone in hand, thumb moving fast across the screen, expression unreadable in the pale early light.

She definitely didn't see what Sofia was typing, or who she was sending it to, before she slipped the phone into her pocket and jogged out to join the rest of the team like nothing at all had happened.