Chapter 18
Tessa
In Portland, the stands roar with twenty-two thousand people, and most of them want to watch us lose.
I stay with the team trainers at one end of the bench in case we’re needed, but my pulse runs too high for someone who isn’t playing. My hands feel hot. My mouth tastes like metal.
Our fans are clearly outnumbered, maybe three thousand, Hades says, but you’d never guess it from the noise they make. Their chants cut through the hate like a blade.
The starters walk out, and Zoe flicks me a look that says everything. She isn’t used to sitting. In her whole career she's been a locked-in starter, and she looks wrong in that yellow sub bib over her game jersey. Like someone puts a muzzle on a wolf.
The whistle blows.
The first half is trench warfare.
Portland controls possession. Sixty percent, the official stats say, but they can’t crack us.
Lucía and Jamie build a wall that doesn’t bend.
In midfield, Jade runs like she has three lungs.
She organizes, covers space so the back line can breathe, picks off passes like she reads minds.
She doesn’t make Zoe’s return to the starting eleven easy.
Hades loses her mind on the sideline. She shouts, throws her arms, points, claps, curses. We aren’t creating chances. Every counterattack dies before it even gets teeth. Iris is alone up top, isolated, getting more and more pissed every time the ball doesn’t reach her feet.
0–0 at halftime.
Hades gathers the team in the locker room. From where I stand near the door, I see Zoe on a bench, listening hard. Not so much listening as taking the full-volume rant Hades delivers to everyone.
“I need more depth!” Hades yells. “More risk. Iris, you’re getting more balls in the second half even if I have to throw them to you myself.”
Iris nods like that’s a real plan.
“Zoe, warm up. You’re going in,” Hades announces as we head back through the tunnel.
Minute fifty-five, Portland finally breaks our line. Their forward gets the ball at the top of the box, turns, shoots. The ball bends, takes a weird bounce off the turf, skims our keeper’s fingertips, kisses the inside of the post—
and goes in.
1–0.
The stadium explodes. Claps. Chants. That smug Portland roar. My heart launches into my throat.
“Zoe, in!” Hades barks.
She shouts adjustments from the sideline. We reshuffle. But Portland smells blood now. They press higher, harder, hunting the second goal that ends it.
Jade looks over from midfield and shakes her head, blowing out a long breath, thinking she’s the one coming off. But Hades pulls a defender.
“Zoe plays holding mid,” Hades tells her when she steps close. “Organize from deep. Jade, you’re the ten now. I want you running like your life depends on it.”
Minute sixty-eight, we win a corner.
Zoe sets the ball. Everyone crowds the box, the usual shoves and jersey tugs, bodies stacked like a traffic jam.
Zoe strikes with the inside of her cleat. Perfect flight. A poisoned little arc that drops right where the keeper hesitates—come out or trust her defenders. Chaos. Bodies jump. Elbows. A clearance finally comes, but the ball falls to Jamie at the top of the box.
She doesn’t think. She doesn’t try to build something pretty. She just hits it back toward goal.
And there’s Iris.
She appears like she spawns out of thin air, breaks free with a move that feels illegal. She leaps. One header. The ball snaps into the upper left corner and the keeper can’t touch it.
Goal.
Our fans erupt. Three thousand people screaming like thirty thousand. Iris sprints toward them, yanks off her jersey, and spins it over her head.
Yellow card.
Hades grabs her own hair and stares at the sky like she’s asking the universe why it gives her talent and chaos in the same body.
Twenty minutes left.
“That girl is half insane,” Sara says beside me.
“Fully,” I answer, “but nobody has more goals than her.”
Zoe isn’t the same player she was a year ago.
She doesn’t win fifty-fifties as easily. Her sprints come shorter, measured, conserving energy.
But she plays smarter now.
She owns the midfield like it belongs to her. She points teammates into positions. She reads plays before they happen. She doesn’t chase the ball; she moves to where the ball will be.
She slows the tempo, but makes it deadlier.
Minute eighty-five.
Zoe wins the ball at midfield. Nothing flashy. She just cuts out a sloppy pass. She lifts her head.
I see what she sees: Jade peeling wide right, dragging a defender.
Iris running the line toward the box. The pass is almost impossible.
A long ball, forty yards in the air, dropped into the seam between center back and fullback.
Iris doesn’t even have to break stride. The ball lands right into her run. No offside.
She brings it down off her chest. One touch. She opens onto her stronger foot.
She shoots.
The ball stays low, hunting the bottom corner.
The keeper dives.
Too late.
Goal.
1–2.
Our fans blow up again, and Iris starts to sprint toward them to celebrate.
“Don’t you dare take your jersey off, Vance!” Hades screams from the bench. “I swear I’ll trade you to another team!”
Two of our players tackle Iris into a hug before she gets there. Soon the whole team piles in front of the traveling supporters, jumping and shouting.
But what stuns me isn’t that celebration. It’s the other one. Quieter. Easy to miss. The cameras won’t catch it.
Jade Herrera runs to Zoe. Not to Iris. Straight to Zoe.
She hugs her. Quick, tight, no time for more—because Iris comes flying in, launches onto both of them, and takes them down, yelling something I can’t make out but I’m almost sure shouldn’t be said around Wesley.
The rest of the team crashes on top. Arms. Legs. Joy. A beautiful mess.
I try to swallow my tears.
I fail.
The last five minutes crawl.
Portland throws everyone forward. Corners. Free kicks. Desperate shots from every angle. Our defense holds. Lucía defends like her life depends on it. Jamie clears balls that look impossible.
Zoe drops to help. It isn’t her natural spot, but it doesn’t matter. She closes space, intercepts, barks instructions loud enough I hear them from the bench.
Four minutes of stoppage time.
Three.
Two.
One.
Final whistle.
Win.
1–2.
Final bound.
The team collapses in the center of the stadium. Hugs, screams, tears. Even Hades, who almost never shows emotion, gets pulled into it.
Zoe breaks from the group. She finds me with her eyes and smiles.
**
The locker room is chaos.
Champagne nobody can explain—because Iris finds it, and nobody asks questions. Music blasting. Players singing songs someone on the team probably invented years ago.
The noise dips when Hades walks in.
“Good match,” she says, like it’s a grand speech.
Two words. For her, that’s a novel.
“Now rest. We have a week to prep for the final.”
She pauses. Looks at Iris, who still grips the champagne bottle.
Hades rolls her eyes and shakes her head, but she doesn’t say a word.
“Showers. I want all of you on the bus in an hour.” She cuts her gaze toward Iris. “Sober.”