CHAPTER 15 #2
Her weight shifts wrong.
Half a step.
Enough.
“Ava, drop,” I shout.
She moves.
I move too.
Not far.
Not reckless.
Just across the passing lane, one step earlier than the midfielder expects.
The pass comes low and hard.
I meet it with my right foot and drive it upfield before the runner can touch it.
The stadium erupts.
The sound hits my ribs.
For one clean second, I feel nothing but the play.
No wrap.
No pain.
No Nathan.
No replay.
Just the read, the step, the stop.
Ava slams a hand between my shoulder blades.
I manage not to flinch.
Barely.
“Sorry,” she says immediately.
“Celebrate smarter.”
“I’m learning.”
“Faster.”
She laughs, breathless, and gets back into shape.
We carry the score into halftime at nil-nil.
In the locker room, Coach Ramirez makes three tactical adjustments and gives me one look.
I answer it with one nod.
Pain level manageable.
Higher than start.
Still inside plan.
She nods back.
No speech.
Good.
The second half begins meaner.
Their coach has clearly decided subtlety is overrated. They overload the left channel with two runners and send diagonal balls into the space between Ava and me, trying to force either a sprint or a miscommunication.
For a while, we give them neither.
Ava grows into the match with every touch. She stops looking at me before moving. Starts reading before I call. Twice, she covers the lane cleanly enough that I feel pride before annoyance.
Growth is obnoxious when it works.
In the sixty-third minute, we score.
Not me.
Thank goodness.
Our midfielder wins the second ball after a clearance, slips it wide, and our forward buries the cross at the far post. The stadium detonates.
Ava jumps once.
I point at her immediately. “No.”
She lands. “I wasn’t going to hug you.”
“You were absolutely going to hug me.”
“Emotionally.”
“Also banned.”
She is still laughing when play resumes.
That is when the opponent gets desperate.
Desperate teams are dangerous because they stop pretending to be tidy.
The last twenty minutes turn sharp. Bodies hit harder. Passes come faster. The referee’s whistle gets more involved and less respected. I take one shoulder near midfield and feel the pain spark under the wrap, but it settles.
Manageable.
Still inside.
I tell myself that once.
Then again.
The clock hits eighty-six.
We are still leading by one.
The ball comes to their winger near the sideline. She drives hard, cuts back, then sends a looping pass toward the edge of the box. Their striker checks short. Their midfielder crashes late.
Two dangers.
Bad spacing.
Good disguise.
I step toward the midfielder, then see the striker spin behind me.
For half a second, I have to rotate left.
No way around it.
I call, “Ava, cover central.”
Then I turn.
The pain catches immediately.
Sharp.
Clean.
Bright enough to make the edge of the stadium blur.
The striker’s shoulder hits mine at the same moment.
Not dirty.
Heavy.
Awkward.
Exactly wrong.
My left side lights white.
The turf comes up fast.
Palm first.
Then hip.
Then breath gone.
The stadium tilts.
Noise disappears for one awful second, like someone has dropped the match underwater.
I stare at the grass.
Individual blades.
Wet. Torn. Too close.
My mouth opens.
No air.
The referee’s whistle cuts through.
Someone says my name.
Ava.
Closer now.
“Captain.”
I push to one elbow.
Pain clamps around my ribs and squeezes.
Absolutely not.
Not here.
Not on this grass.
Not with cameras close enough to count the sweat on my cheek.
“I’m up,” I say.
It comes out badly.
Ava crouches in front of me, body blocking the nearest camera angle like she has been trained by a menace.
Good defender.
Annoying friend.
“Emily,” she says.
“I’m up.”
“Breathe first.”
“I said I’m up.”
“You can be up after breathing.”
I glare at her.
She does not move.
The nerve.
I take one breath.
It hurts.
I take another.
Less impossible.
Coach Ramirez’s voice cuts from the sideline. “Emily.”
I look over.
She holds up one hand.
Not a command.
A question.
We agreed on this.
Pain threshold. Communication. Truth as tactical information, not surrender.
My body votes no.
My pride votes shut up.
My captaincy takes the deciding vote.
I tap two fingers to my chest, then point to Ava and hold up two.
I need cover for two minutes.
Coach Ramirez watches my face.
I hold her stare.
She nods once.
Ava exhales beside me. “Good.”
“Do not sound relieved.”
“I’m tactically relieved.”
“Borderline.”
She helps me stand only after I nod.
Her hand is firm under my elbow for half a second, then gone.
Perfect.
The referee asks if I need medical.
“No,” I say.
Coach Ramirez says nothing.
The match resumes.
For the final minutes, I play smaller and smarter.
That is the phrase I would use if I were coaching Ava.
Smaller and smarter.
I hate that it applies to me.
I let Ava take the recovery lane twice. I communicate earlier.
I stop chasing the third option when the first two are covered.
I force one attacker wide with positioning instead of tackle.
I clear one ugly bouncing ball with my right foot and feel the pain crackle through me like lightning trapped under skin.
Still inside.
Barely.
But inside.
The fourth official signals added time.
Three minutes.
The crowd stands.
I taste blood where I bit the inside of my cheek on the fall.
In the second minute of stoppage, their winger tries one more cross.
Too high.
Too desperate.
Our keeper catches it and drops to the turf like she plans to marry the ball.
The whistle blows.
Canada wins.
The stadium explodes.
Ava reaches me first.
Then stops herself so hard she almost trips.
I laugh.
It comes out half breath, half pain.
“You may celebrate,” I say.
“Carefully?”
“Carefully.”
She wraps both arms around me anyway, but gently this time. Her shoulder presses against mine. Her hair smells like sweat and grass and victory.
“We won,” she says into my shoulder.
“Yes.”
“We won.”
“You’ve mentioned.”
Her laugh turns wet.
I hold her with one arm and keep the other near my side. Around us, teammates collide, jump, shout, cry, and do every foolish physical thing that people do when a final whistle gives them permission to be ridiculous.
I smile for the cameras.
For the team.
For Ava.
For the little defenders watching.
My side throbs under the wrap with every heartbeat.
But we won.
I clap toward the fans. Shake hands. Let Coach Ramirez grip my shoulder, not my ribs, bless her. Hug our keeper from the correct angle. Keep moving because stillness gives pain time to organize a union.
Then I look up.
I should not.
I know exactly where he is.
Nathan stands in the crowd, one hand braced on the railing.
Morgan is beside him, both hands near her mouth. Colton is shouting something, probably emotional and nutritionally unsound. Darius claps with both hands over his head. Sienna has her phone lowered for once, watching the field instead of the screen.
Nathan is not cheering.
His face is pale.
Worried.
Very worried.
The kind of worried that makes a man move.
He does not.
He stays where he is.
No gesture toward the tunnel. No mouthed question. No frantic signal to Morgan. No attempt to turn my pain into his job.
He only lifts two fingers and taps them once against his chest.
I see you.
The gesture reaches me before I can stop it.
Not rescue.
Not warning.
Witness.
My throat tightens.
I look away first because I have a country to captain and a body to negotiate with, and because if I keep looking, my face might say something the stadium does not deserve.
Ava turns beside me, still grinning.
Then her smile fades.
Her eyes move past me.
Up.
To the giant stadium screen.
A cold line moves through my stomach.
I turn.
The replay is already running.
The final whistle celebration.
Ava’s careful hug.
My smile.
Then the half-second after her arm brushes too close to my left side.
My face changes.
Just a little.
Enough.
Pain, bright and unmistakable, flashes across my features before I catch it.
The image is huge above the pitch.
Huge above the crowd.
Huge enough that no one has to be a defender to see what I failed to hide.
The stadium noise keeps roaring.
My side pulses under the wrap.
Ava whispers, “Oh no.”
On the screen, my wince plays again.
Slower this time.
***