The Striker's Forbidden Love

n for a long, useless moment befor

arking lot, catching her and Daniel from behind as they'd talked outside hi

g, her hand briefly touching his arm as she said somet

t also looked, if you wan

he made herself stop. Each time it looked a little worse, somehow, even though nothing in the footage actually changed, just her own im

o one, to the empty street. "Okay

lieve herself

zed again bef

ed say

thing,

up, and marched straight back inside to do the one thing she'd

on the first

breathless, words tumbling out

t, after the office. You can't hear a

ce tight, all business now, the s

breathing, could practically hear him thinking, could picture exactly the expression he proba

ad." He sa

iately regretted the sharpness in her own voice, but the fear underneath it n

ant it. "I'm not... I'm not great under pressure when

most of the time." Mia said, some of the tension

res." Daniel said, and there wa

nic in front of their team. D

d folder-carrying, you're just as freaked out as I am right now?"

t a career and a reputation. I spent six years of pro ball and five years o

ver from a bad season. I'm thirty-three and one

as carrying, he was carrying something heavier and longer, a whole career's worth o

o put all on you."

fair. Doesn't mean it i

down on her own kitchen floor for the second time that week, phone

k it is?" She as

rs, anyone who was at the ground both times these photos got taken. It's a

le for saying it out loud, hated how disloyal it felt even thoug

ing not to let her run too far down that road without more to sta

ook at everyone differently right now. Like I'm starring

might have been the beginning of a smile in his voice, "you'd

uring a crisis?" Mia said, hal

e he was smiling, wherever he was, and something about that st

ether reporting it risked confirming there was something worth reporting in the first place. It was a strange, careful kind of intimacy, the two of them s

s to." Daniel said. "An anonymous account and two blurry photos isn't proof of anything except th

wait."

to report, or until it stops." Daniel said. "I

ed a little despite herself, the exhausted kind of laugh that c

she'd expected. "You've got a match in two days. What

p schedule?" Mia asked, half teasing,

niel said, and it landed somewhere warm and unguarded in her

and hung up before her voice c

ion instead of the video for once the joke about the movie, the honesty about performance and panic, the w

the phone than about the video sitting in her messages, or the burner accounts, or the very real possibility that th

uzzed one final time that night. Not the bur

my office first thing t

blurred slightly, until the word important stopped meaning anything specific and just sat there, heavy and vag