CHAPTER TWO
DARIUS
By midnight, the whole hotel knows we’re going to the Global Cup Final.
By twelve-oh-three, my right knee knows it too.
The celebration spills out of the ballroom behind me in waves. Music. Shouting. Someone banging a spoon against a glass even though this is a hotel, not a wedding reception, and I’m fairly certain Coach is two minutes away from banning utensils until after the Final.
I step into the hallway and let the ballroom doors swing shut behind me.
The sound dulls.
Not gone.
Just distant enough that I can hear myself breathe.
The carpet under my shoes is soft, patterned in gold and navy swirls that make my eyes tired if I look at it too long.
A silver ice bucket sits abandoned on a table near the elevator.
Someone’s sports drink bottle has rolled half under a chair.
A strip of blue-and-gold confetti clings to the toe of my dress shoe like the party followed me out and refused to take the hint.
I lean one shoulder against the wall.
A second.
That’s all I need.
One second without cameras.
One second without Nathan yelling, Colton grinning, Coach pretending he isn’t emotional, and three dozen people looking at me like I’m supposed to know what happens next.
We won the semi-final.
We are going to the Global Cup Final.
The words still don’t feel like they belong to us.
My phone buzzes again inside my jacket pocket. It has been buzzing since the final whistle. Messages from club staff, old coaches, sponsors, reporters, people from Briarwood I haven’t heard from in three years, and one uncle who still thinks punctuation is optional.
I don’t check it.
My right knee gives a slow, deep pulse.
I press two fingers against the outside of it, just above the joint. Not hard. Not because it helps. More because touching the ache makes it feel like information instead of threat.
It isn’t bad.
That’s the dangerous part.
Bad is easy. Bad stops you. Bad gives everyone permission to make the smart choice.
This is manageable.
This is the kind of ache athletes lie about because it doesn’t sound serious enough to deserve honesty.
A door opens down the hall.
I drop my hand.
Morgan Bellows steps out of the service corridor with a medical bag over one shoulder and the exact expression of a woman who has never once believed the word fine in her life.
Fantastic.
She looks at my face first.
Then my knee.
Then my hand, which is no longer touching it but might as well be waving a confession flag.
“How long?” she asks.
I straighten. “How long what?”
Morgan blinks once.
It is not a friendly blink.
“How long has it been tight?”
I glance toward the ballroom doors. “You’re celebrating strangely.”
“You’re avoiding normally.”
“I came out to check travel logistics.”
“At midnight?”
“Finalists have complicated logistics.”
“And apparently dramatic knees.”
I should not smile.
I almost do.
Morgan steps closer, lowering her voice even though the hallway is empty. She has changed out of her pitch-side gear into team sweats, but she still looks like she could tape an ankle, stop a fight, and diagnose three bad decisions before breakfast.
“How long, Darius?”
I sigh through my nose. “It started talking in the second half.”
“Talking or yelling?”
“Making polite suggestions.”
“Pain scale.”
“Morgan.”
“Pain scale.”
“Two.”
She folds her arms.
“Three,” I amend.
She keeps looking at me.
“Three and a half.”
“Darius.”
“Four.” I glance down the hall again. “But it’s not sharp. No instability. No swelling I can feel. Just load.”
“Load becomes swelling. Swelling becomes compensation. Compensation becomes another problem we don’t have time for.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
That lands sharper than it should.
I look at her.
Morgan’s expression softens by maybe one degree, which for her is practically a hug. “Final week is going to be brutal. Travel. Training. Media. Tactical sessions. Stress. Bad sleep. Every camera in North America trying to decide if the Kings are a miracle or a fluke.”
“Appreciate the pep talk.”
“I’m not done.” She shifts the bag higher on her shoulder. “Ignoring load management right now isn’t leadership. It’s stupidity in nicer boots.”
Morgan doesn’t waste words.
It’s one of the reasons Colton never stood a chance.
“I’m not ignoring it,” I say.
“You were touching your knee alone in a hallway.”
“I was checking in with it.”
“That is not a medical protocol.”
“It was an emotional support pat.”
Her mouth twitches.
Barely.
A victory.
Then the ballroom doors burst open and Nathan Bellows charges into the hallway like somebody fired him from a cannon.
“There he is.” Nathan points at me with a grin big enough to get its own zip code. “Captain Serious. Briarwood’s favourite emotionally unavailable midfield general.”
“I see the win has made you quieter,” I say.
“Impossible. I’m evolving.”
Behind him, Colton Ayers appears with one hand braced on the doorframe and the other raised in triumph. “Someone should check if the hotel has a trophy case. We could just borrow one.”
Morgan’s head turns.
Colton freezes.
He has the look of a man who has just remembered his athletic trainer exists and has eyes.
“Why are you standing like that?” she asks.
“Like what?”
“Like your hamstring sent a complaint to management.”
Colton immediately straightens. Too fast. “I’m standing normally.”
“You were not born normal.”
Nathan snorts.
Colton points at him. “Rude from a man who cried during Coach’s speech.”
Nathan presses a hand to his chest. “I had sweat in my eyes.”
“In both?”
“Big sweat night.”
Morgan steps toward Colton. “Sit.”
“Here?”
“Yes.”
“This is a hallway.”
“Then it will be a hallway with you sitting in it.”
Colton looks at me for help.
I lift both hands. “I respect medical authority.”
Morgan’s eyes cut back to my knee.
I regret speaking.
Colton drops into one of the hallway chairs with the dramatic collapse of a man asked to make a great personal sacrifice. “Fine. But when my documentary gets made, this is the part where the narrator says, ‘Despite oppressive hallway conditions, Colton Ayers remained brave.’”
Morgan crouches in front of him and checks the way he extends his leg. “The narrator is going to say, ‘He survived because he finally listened.’”
He grins down at her.
The whole hallway shifts around it.
Not physically.
But I feel it.
The softness in him. The way his jokes don’t have the same armour underneath anymore. The way Morgan rolls her eyes but still checks him with hands that are careful before they are clinical. The way neither of them looks afraid of being seen, not by us, not really.
They earned that.
After Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, every bad decision Colton tried to dress up as charm, and every professional boundary Morgan had to carry like a shield, they made it here.
Together.
Messy, visible, still probably giving our team media coordinator hives, but together.
Something tightens under my ribs.
Not jealousy.
Not exactly.
More like standing outside a lit house and realizing how cold your own porch is.
Nathan nudges my shoulder. “You okay?”
I look away from Morgan and Colton. “We won a semi-final. I’m excellent.”
“That was almost convincing.”
“Then your standards are improving.”
“My standards are great. I’m from Briarwood.”
Colton leans around Morgan. “Briarwood is already printing shirts with Darius’s face on them.”
“No,” I say.
Nathan’s grin gets worse. “Too late.”
“No.”
“Coach Miller texted me a mock-up.”
I turn slowly. “You’re lying.”
Nathan’s eyes shine with pure evil. “It says Captain Vale Takes the World.”
“I’m transferring.”
“To where?” Colton asks. “A team without printers?”
Morgan presses two fingers into Colton’s hamstring and he stops laughing.
Nathan holds his phone out to me. “Also, the kids at the club made a banner. It’s crooked, obviously, because Tyler Gibson can’t draw a straight line unless bribed with cupcakes, but it’s nice.”
I look at the picture.
A field under late evening light. Briarwood FC’s old clubhouse in the background. A banner hanging across the fence.
GOOD LUCK KINGS.
The last S slants downhill.
My chest goes tight in the stupidest possible way.
Briarwood is proud.
Briarwood is watching.
Briarwood remembers the boy with muddy socks and too much time after practice, the one who stayed to collect cones because the field was easier than home. They remember me before I knew how to stand in front of microphones and make answers sound calm.
“Coach Miller cried,” Nathan says.
“He cries when the snack bar runs out of relish.”
“Still counts.”
I hand the phone back. “Tell him thank you.”
“You tell him. He wants a quote for the town page.”
“Absolutely not.”
“He’ll use one from when you were fourteen.”
I narrow my eyes. “He wouldn’t.”
“He has archives, Captain.”
The ballroom doors open again, quieter this time.
Coach steps out.
Our laughter thins.
Coach is still in his suit, tie loosened, face tired in the way only winning can make a person tired. He looks at Nathan, Colton, Morgan, then me.
“Darius,” he says. “Walk with me.”
There it is.
The next thing.
There is always a next thing.
Nathan’s grin fades a little. Colton shifts like he wants to make a joke and thinks better of it. Morgan stands, eyes moving from Coach to me.
I give her the smallest nod.
She does not look satisfied, but she lets me go.
Coach starts down the hall toward the elevators. I fall into step beside him.
For ten seconds, neither of us speaks. The celebration hums behind us. Somewhere above, Atlanta is probably still trying to understand that the Charlotte Kings just punched their ticket to the Global Cup Final.
Coach stops near a bank of windows overlooking the hotel entrance. Outside, security staff redirect fans clustered near the curb. A couple of Kings jerseys flash under the lobby lights.
“You handled the tunnel well,” Coach says.
That is never the whole sentence.
“Thank you.”
“The team handled the tunnel less well.”
“Nathan has never seen a camera he didn’t want to emotionally overcommit to.”
Coach’s mouth curves. “True.”
He looks out the window a moment longer.
Then he gets to it.