SNEAK PEEK - Book 3
DEFENDERS & DO-OVERS
EMILY
The ball comes through the channel too fast.
Good.
Fast makes people honest.
The forward in front of me drops her left shoulder, sells the inside cut, and waits for me to bite. She is quick, young, and very sure I’m about to chase the first lie she offers.
I don’t.
I hold.
One breath.
Half a step.
Her plant foot opens toward the middle, exactly where she wants me to think the play is going. The real danger is the runner behind me, slipping between our centre back and the left side of our shape.
“Hold the line,” I call.
My voice cuts across the training pitch, sharp enough to slice through whistles, shouts, and the steady thud of balls moving through drills.
The forward touches the ball inside.
I step.
Not big. Not dramatic. Just enough.
My right foot hooks cleanly around the ball, steals it off her stride, and sends it skimming toward Ava before the attacker realizes the lane is gone.
The whistle blows.
“Reset,” Coach Ramirez calls from the touchline. “Again.”
I jog back into position, lungs burning, calves tight, sweat slipping down the side of my neck despite the early hour.
Morning glare flashes off the sponsor boards lining the Ocean Cup training complex.
The field still smells damp from overnight rain, wet grass and turf rubber and sunscreen already warming under the New Jersey sun.
Around us, cameras shift along the far fence. Tournament staff speak into headsets. Someone laughs near the media tent.
None of that matters.
The only thing that matters is the next attack.
That is what I love about defending. There is no time to admire yourself after a good read. No time to collapse after a bad one. You stop the danger, then turn around and ask where the next one is coming from.
Story of my life, really.
“Again,” I say, clapping once. “Quicker this time.”
Ava nods from two steps to my right. Her ponytail is coming loose, and there is a stripe of grass across one knee. She is twenty-two, which on this squad makes her both old enough to have played in stadiums and young enough to still look surprised when she belongs in them.
The next ball comes in.
Ava oversteps.
I see it before she does. Her hips turn too early, her weight slides onto the wrong foot, and the attacker takes the outside lane with one touch.
Ava freezes.
Not for long. Maybe half a second.
Long enough.
The forward drives past her and whips a low ball across the box. Our keeper collects it, but Ava’s face has already changed. Her mouth presses flat. Her shoulders pull in. She looks down at the grass like the mistake is written there and everyone can read it.
I know that look.
I hate that look.
I jog toward her before Coach can speak.
“What did you see?” I ask.
Ava exhales hard. “I opened too early.”
“Before that.”
Her brow pinches. “She was looking inside.”
“She wanted you to think inside. What was her first touch saying?”
Ava glances toward the attacking line, replaying it. Good. Make the brain work before shame gets comfortable.
“Outside,” she says.
“There it is.”
She scrubs one hand across her forehead. “I should’ve waited.”
“You should’ve trusted the line,” I say. “You don’t have to win the whole field in one step.”
Her eyes flick to mine.
That lands. I can see it.
I soften my voice, but only a fraction. Too soft feels like pity. Young defenders can smell pity like smoke.
“You’re not here because you never make mistakes. You’re here because you can read the next play faster than your fear can tell you you’re finished.”
Ava’s mouth twitches. “That sounds like something you’d put on a poster.”
“I would never use that many words on a poster.”
She huffs a laugh.
Good.
I point two steps wider. “Start there. Keep your hips patient. Make her prove the lie twice.”
Ava resets, and this time, when the forward comes at her, she waits. Her first step is smaller. Her angle is cleaner. The attacker runs herself into the sideline, exactly where Ava wants her.
“Yes,” I call, and the word comes out sharp enough that Ava straightens like I’ve handed her something stronger than praise.
That is what I want from this Ocean Cup.
Not just wins. Not just clean sheets. Not just headlines with my name attached to words like veteran and captain and steady, as if steady means untouched.
I want Ava and every young defender watching to know they can survive the loud moments. The ugly moments. The ones where the crowd thinks a mistake has already decided who they are.
I want to be the captain they can trust when the match gets mean.
Admiration is easy. Trust is harder.
The next sequence starts before I’m ready.
The ball switches wide. I track the movement, check my shoulder, and step across to close the gap. My body follows the read on instinct.
Then pain bites under my left ribs.
Small.
Sharp.
Private.
It hooks low toward my hip when I twist, like someone has tugged a wire I keep pretending isn’t there.
I keep moving.
Of course I do.
The clearance comes off my right foot, clean and hard. The ball sails toward midfield. I jog back into shape before anyone can see the half-second where my breath forgets how to work.
My left side pulses.
Oblique. Intercostal. Compensation through the hip.
The words sit in the back of my mind, neat and clinical and extremely unwelcome. I know enough about my own body to name the problem. I also know enough about tournament weeks to understand what happens when a captain gives a problem a name too soon.
Names become questions.
Questions become stories.
Stories become decisions made in rooms where you are discussed instead of heard.
No, thank you.
I adjust my captain’s armband and point Ava two steps wider.
“Again,” I call.
Coach Ramirez watches from the sideline. Her expression gives away nothing. That is one of the many annoying things I respect about her.
We run the next sequence harder.
Then the next.
And the next.
I stay inside the rhythm of it. Ball. Angle. Voice. Reset. Ava’s positioning improves. Our midfield screen tightens. The younger attackers stop trying to embarrass us and start trying to outthink us, which is far more useful.
This is my field.
My team.
My tournament.
My armband.
The pain can file a formal complaint after training.
Ava reads the next pass before it arrives and cuts it out with a clean step.
“Better,” I call. “That’s the one.”
She grins like she is trying not to.
The whistle slices through the morning again.
“Water,” Coach Ramirez says. “Two minutes.”
Players scatter toward the sideline. Bottles crackle. Someone complains about the humidity. Someone else tells her she’s Canadian and therefore legally not allowed to complain below thirty degrees.
I walk, not limp, to the water table.
Walk normally.
Breathe normally.
Act like your left side isn’t trying to negotiate custody of your entire personality.
I take a bottle from the cooler and twist the cap. Cold condensation slicks my palm. The first swallow tastes like plastic and minerals and salt from my own lip.
A low stir moves through the complex before I turn.
Not loud. Not official. Just the kind of ripple that passes through staff, camera crews, and players when something shiny enters the frame.
“The Kings are here,” someone says near the fence.
My hand tightens around the bottle.
The cap digs into my palm.
I do not look.
For three whole seconds, I am a mature adult woman with international caps, a captain’s armband, and enough self-control to run a back line in front of sixty thousand people.
Then a bus sighs at the curb.
Camera shutters start clicking.
Blue-and-gold gear flashes beyond the fence.
I look.
The Charlotte Kings spill out into the adjacent facility like they’ve brought the final whistle with them.
Global Cup champions. Fresh off the kind of win that will make their faces impossible to avoid for the next six months.
Staff move around them with clipboards and headsets.
Media crews pivot like flowers turning toward the sun.
Colton Myers steps off first, laughing at something over his shoulder. Of course he does. That man looks like he could find a punchline in a tax audit.
A few players follow.
Then Nathan Bellows steps off the bus.
And the morning tilts.
Not dramatically. I do not drop my bottle. I do not gasp. I do not clutch my chest like an eighteenth-century heroine whose corset has finally filed for divorce.
But something inside me still misplaces its footing.
Nathan has a duffel over one shoulder and damp hair like he has either showered recently or run his hands through it too many times. He is laughing at something Colton says, the kind of low, easy laugh that used to slip under my guard before I had one worth mentioning.
He looks older.
Of course he does.
Stronger through the shoulders. Sharper at the jaw. More settled in his body than the boy who once stood beside me on muddy development fields and made almost feel like a promise.
Worse, he looks familiar.
Not in the obvious places. I could have prepared for those. The smile. The height. The defender’s posture, always balanced like he expects the world to cut inside.
It is the smaller things that hit.
The crease beside his mouth.
The way his hand automatically steadies a rookie stepping off the bus behind him.
The way he glances at the field before the cameras, because Nathan Bellows has always looked for the play before the story.
No.
Absolutely not.
I drink more water, too fast.
Ava appears at my shoulder. “That’s the Kings, right?”
“Yes.”
“Global Cup champions.”
“That is what the confetti suggested.”
Ava laughs, but her eyes stay fixed on the adjacent pitch. “Nathan Bellows is taller in person.”
I nearly inhale my water.
Instead, I lower the bottle and keep my face so still it should win a national award.
“He’s a centre back, Ava. They grow them in doorframes.”
She grins. “You know him?”
There it is.
The smallest possible question with the worst possible aim.
I recap the bottle. “We played at the same regional development camp years ago.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s enough for one hydration break.”