Chapter 5

Aurora

My lungs felt like they were lined with broken glass. Every breath was a ragged, burning reminder of the last hour. While the rest of the team had been dismissed to the cooling fans and water stations, I had been kept on the pitch.

“Five more laps, De Luca,” Alexia had said, not even looking at me as she wiped sweat from her forehead. “Your fitness isn’t Barça level. Don’t stop until I see you’ve finished.”

So I ran. I ran until the bright green of the grass turned into a smear of emerald, until my legs felt like lead weights, and until the sun felt like a spotlight specifically designed to punish me. I didn’t say a word. I didn’t complain. But every time I passed the bench where she stood talking to the coaches, I felt that Italian fire in my chest flare up. I wasn’t just tired; I was insulted.

By the time I finally trudged toward the tunnel, my training kit was soaked through and sticking to my skin. My hair was a messy nest, and I was pretty sure I was trembling.

“Hey! Wait up, Italy!”

I slowed down, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. Claudia Pina was jogging toward me, a bottle of blue Gatorade in her hand. She looked remarkably fresh compared to me, her energy seemingly bottomless.

“Here,” she said, thrusting the bottle toward me. “Drink. Before you actually pass out and I have to carry you. You’re heavy, I can tell.”

I took the bottle, my fingers brushing hers. “Grazie… thank you,” I wheezed, taking a long, desperate gulp. “Does she… does she always do that?”

Pina fell into step beside me as we entered the quiet, shaded hallway leading back to the lockers. She sighed, her expression softening into something sympathetic but weary.

“Alexia? She’s… intense,” Pina said, choosing her words carefully. “Especially now. Since she came back from the injury, she’s like a bowstring pulled too tight. She thinks if she isn’t perfect, and if we aren’t perfect, everything will fall apart again.”

“She hates me,” I muttered, looking down at my dirt-stained boots. “She didn’t even look at me when I finished. She just walked away.”

“She doesn’t hate you, Ora,” Pina said firmly.

I stopped walking, blinking at her. “Ora?”

Pina grinned, that mischievous spark returning to her eyes. “Yeah. Aurora is too long for the pitch. And ‘Italy’ is too generic. So, you’re Ora. It means ‘now’ (= ahora) in Spanish, anyway. Like, you need to pass the ball now!” She mimicked Alexia’s barking voice, making me let out a small, involuntary huff of a laugh.

“I don’t think I have a choice, do I?” I asked, a tiny smile finally tugging at the corners of my mouth.

“Nope. It’s settled. You’re Ora,” she said, bumping her shoulder against mine. “And look, about Alexia… it does get better. She’s testing you. She wants to see if you’ll break. In Manchester, maybe they hugged you when you missed a pass, but here? Here, they push you until you either fly or fall. Don’t let her see you fall.”

We reached the locker room door. I could hear the muffled sounds of the other girls inside, the splashing of showers, the loud music.

“I’m not going to break,” I said, my voice sounding a little more like my own again. The fire Elena always talked about—the De Luca stubbornness—was finally cooling into a hard, sharp resolve.

“That’s the spirit,” Pina winked, pushing the door open. “Now go get showered.”

“Ok,” I answered tied, but for the first time since I’d landed in Barcelona, the crushing weight on my chest felt a little lighter. I had a nickname, a new friend, and a reason to prove the Queen wrong.

Alexia

The hum of the city usually acted as a buffer between the intensity of the pitch and my private life, but today, the silence in the car felt heavy. Beside me sat Mapi. If anyone else had been in the passenger seat, I probably would have snapped at them to stop breathing so loudly. But with Mapi, it was different. We had been through everything together—trophies, heartbreaks, and the long, grueling months of my rehab. She was the one person who didn’t need me to be La Reina every second of the day.

We walked into our usual cafe, a quiet spot tucked away from the main tourist drags where the owner knew to keep the music low and the coffee strong.

“Two cortados, Jordi,” Mapi said with a wink, sliding into the booth opposite me.

She started talking immediately—something about a new tattoo design she was thinking about, followed by a hilarious rant about Ingrid losing her keys for the third time this week. I nodded in the right places, staring into the dark swirl of my espresso, but my mind was stuck on the pitch. I could still see the Italian girl’s face—flushed, sweating, and that stubborn set of her jaw as she finished those extra laps.

“You’re doing it again,” Mapi said, her voice dropping an octave.

I blinked, looking up. “Doing what?”

“You’re vibrating,” she said, leaning back and crossing her arms. “The ‘Alexia Cloud’ is hanging over the table. Talk to me. It’s the new girl, isn’t it? De Luca?”

I let out a sharp, frustrated breath. “She’s soft, Mapi. She looks like she’s going to cry every time the ball is played too hard. This isn’t a developmental league. If she can’t handle a bit of ‘intensity’, she shouldn’t have signed the contract.”

“She’s twenty-two, Ale,” Mapi said gently, though her eyes remained sharp. “And she moved countries alone. You were hard on her today. Even for you. Five extra laps after a double session in this heat? That’s not ‘intensity,’ that’s a grudge.”

“It’s not a grudge,” I snapped, the defensiveness rising in my chest like a wall. “It’s the standard. I’m not going to apologize for holding people to the standard that won us the treble.”

Mapi watched me for a long beat. She knew me better than I liked to admit. She saw the way I adjusted my knee brace under the table, the way I hadn’t truly relaxed since the whistle blew. She knew that my anger toward the girl was mostly just my own fear reflecting back at me—the fear that the team was changing, that I was getting older, and that I couldn’t control every variable anymore.

“Okay,” Mapi said softly, raising her hands in a peaceful gesture. She knew exactly when to push and when to let me simmer. “Standard is standard. Just don’t break the toy before we get to play the first game, eh?”
I looked away, staring out the window at the Barcelona sun. “I won’t break her. But I won’t carry her either.”

Mapi reached over, giving my hand a quick, grounding squeeze before changing the subject back to something light. I appreciated the silence she gave me after that. She was the only one who understood that behind the captain’s armband was a woman who was still trying to figure out how to be herself again.