Chapter 23

Alexia

I had driven to her apartment first, my heart hammering against my ribs, only to find the windows dark. Luna wasn’t barking. The silence behind her door felt like a physical rejection.

But then I remembered. The ocean.

I drove to the stretch of beach where she had first dragged me into the water. The moon was a sliver of silver tonight, casting just enough light to see the white foam of the waves. I parked the car haphazardly and stepped onto the sand, my boots sinking into the cool, damp grain.

And then I saw her.

A small, lonely silhouette sitting by the shoreline, her knees pulled up to her chest. She looked so tiny against the vastness of the Mediterranean.

“You’re going to catch a cold,” I said, my voice barely carrying over the wind.

Aurora didn’t jump. She didn’t even turn around. “I don’t get cold.”

I walked closer, stopping a few feet away. The air between us was heavy, charged with the ghost of the day’s silence. “Jenni told me what you said to her.”

Aurora finally looked up, her blue eyes dark and unreadable in the moonlight. “I’m sure she loved it. The rookie who doesn’t know her place.”

“Actually,” I said, taking a step into her space, “she said you were exactly what I needed. Because you’re the only one brave enough to talk back to the ghosts.”

Aurora let out a short, bitter laugh and looked back at the waves. “I’m not brave, Alexia. I’m just… I’m tired. Today was a reminder of how big your world is. Jenni is a part of your history, your legacy. Every time she laughed with you, I felt like a footnote in a book I haven’t even finished reading yet.”

“You’re not a footnote,” I said, my voice cracking. I dropped to my knees in the sand beside her, ignoring the ruin of my clothes. “Aurora, look at me.”

She hesitated, then turned. Her lower lip was trembling just slightly. The “Italian steel” was cracking.

“I haven’t done this right,” I confessed, reaching out to cover her hand with mine. Her skin was ice-cold. “I spent the whole day trying to be the Captain because I was terrified that if I looked at you for too long, everyone would see what you’ve done to me. I thought I was protecting you from the ‘storm.’ But I was just leaving you out in the rain.”

“She knows you so well,” Aurora whispered, her voice thick with the jealousy she was trying so hard to hide. “The way you two talk… it’s like a language I don’t speak.”

“It’s a language of the past,” I countered, moving closer until our knees touched. “But you… you are the only one I want to speak to now. You’re the one who taught me how to stop calculating. You’re the one who makes me want to live in the house instead of just building it.”

I took a deep breath, the salt air filling my lungs. The word I had realized in my kitchen was sitting on the tip of my tongue, heavy and terrifying. I wasn’t ready to say it yet—not while she was still this fragile—but I could show her.

I reached up, cupping her face in both hands. Her skin was damp from the sea spray. “Jenni is a friend. She is family. But she isn’t my heart, Ora. You are.”

Aurora’s breath hitched. “You’re a terrible liar, Putellas.”

“I’m not lying,” I murmured, leaning in until our foreheads rested against each other. “I drove across the city in the middle of the night because the thought of you sitting here alone, thinking you’re a ‘footnote,’ was more painful than losing a final. You are the headline, Aurora. You’re the whole damn book.”

I kissed her then. It wasn’t the fiery, desperate kiss of the gym, or the sweet, domestic kiss of the kitchen. It was a slow, grounding kiss that tasted of salt and forgiveness.

Aurora let out a long, shuddering sigh, her hands finding the hem of my hoodie and pulling me closer, as if she were trying to anchor herself to me. For a moment, the cameras, the fans, Jenni, and the “Standard” didn’t exist. There was only the tide coming in and the heat of her against me.

“Im sorry…,” she whispered against my lips, her fingers tangling in my hair.

“For what? You did nothing wrong,” I said.
She looked at me with her beautiful eyes. „For not trusting you…“

„It is okay“, I answered softly.” From now on, we fight the storm together. Even if we’re at the beach at 1:00 AM like two idiots.”

Aurora laughed, a small, genuine sound that finally broke the tension. “We are idiots.”
“Yeah,” I smiled, pulling her into my arms. “But at least we’re idiots who have each other.”

Aurora

The sand was cold beneath us, but Alexia’s body was a furnace. I was tucked into her side, my head resting on her shoulder, watching the waves swallow the moonlight over and over again. The silence wasn’t heavy anymore; it was fragile, like a piece of glass we were both holding together.

I had been the one to pull away today. I had been the one to build the wall because seeing her with Jenni made me feel like an outsider in a story that had started long before I arrived. But sitting here, I felt foolish for doubting the woman holding me so tightly.

“Ora?”

Her voice was barely a breath, a ghost of a sound against the wind. I shifted, looking up at her. Her jaw was tight, her eyes fixed on the horizon as if she were gathering every ounce of courage she possessed.
“I’m here, Ale.”

She turned her head, her nose brushing mine. “I don’t want to play the game anymore. The distance, the pretending to be strangers… it’s hollow. It’s making us both miserable.” She paused, her thumb tracing the line of my jaw with a reverence that made my breath catch. “I realized something tonight. In my kitchen, after Jenni left. I realized why it hurts so much when you look away.”

She leaned in closer, her lips hovering just an inch from mine.

“I love you,” she whispered.

The world stopped. The waves, the wind, the distant hum of the city—it all went silent. I stared at her, my heart stuttering in my chest. Alexia Putellas, the woman who measured every word and calculated every move, had just said the three words I never thought I’d hear under a night sky.

“Ale…” I breathed, my eyes stinging.

“I do,” she said, more firmly now, a desperate kind of honesty in her voice. “And because I love you, I can’t keep doing this ‘cold’ act on the pitch. I can’t pretend you’re just a number in a formation. It’s not fair to you, and it’s killing me.”

I reached up, my fingers trembling as I touched the back of her neck. “But the world, Ale… the cameras. We have to hide it. We agreed.”

Alexia took a deep breath, and then she said something that made my heart stop for the second time in five minutes.

“Not from everyone,” she said. “I want to tell them. The team. All of them.”

I pulled back slightly, my eyes wide with shock. “The team? Alexia, you’ve spent years making sure your private life is a vault. You always said—”

“I know what I said,” she interrupted softly, a small, sad smile touching her lips. “I said the ‘Standard’ comes first. But you are my standard now, Aurora. I don’t want to hide behind Mapi’s jokes or Jenni’s shadows. I want to be able to look at you during a tactical meeting and have everyone know that I’ve got your back—not just as your Captain, but as your… whatever we are. As the person who loves you.”

She gripped my hands, her gaze intense. “If the team knows, we don’t have to pretend to be ‘angry’ to hide the spark. They can help us protect it. We can be ourselves in the locker room, in the gym, in the places that matter. We keep the world out, but we let our family in.”

I looked at her, truly looked at her. The “Queen” was gone. In her place was just a woman who was tired of being alone at the top of the mountain. She was offering me the ultimate protection: the truth.

“You’d really do that?” I whispered. “For me?”

“No,” she corrected, leaning in to kiss my forehead. “For us. Because I’m tired of fighting everything, Ora. I just want to swim in it with you. Because today I realized how much I love you.”

I felt a tear finally escape, rolling down my cheek. I pulled her down into a kiss that tasted like a beginning. For the first time since I arrived in Barcelona, the weight of the city didn’t feel so heavy.

“Okay,” I murmured against her lips. “And by the way: I love you too.”

She smiled and pulled me in a soft kiss and as we sat there, wrapped in each other’s arms, the Mediterranean didn’t seem so vast anymore. It was just water. And we were no longer just two players lost in the current.

We were a team.