I don’t kiss her again. Icould, but I don’t.
Instead, I let her watch me as I walk away - because Iknowshe’s watching.
And I know that, for the first time, she’snotrunning.
Notyet, at least.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Daphne
The following days blur into something strange and unfamiliar.
It’s hardly as though I expected the world to come to a standstill just because I’d slept with one of Italy’s most famous footballers -again. The sun still rises, the team still trains, and I still have articles to write.
But beneath the routine, beneath the illusion of normalcy, there are shifts.
Small, almost imperceptible, but shifts all the same.
Things are mostly the same as they were before, and yet, some things feel different. Some things feelnew.
Matteo still lingers too long in post-match interviews, but now there’s something knowing in his gaze, something almost expectant.
He still finds ways to infuriate me with his smugness, but now his teasing is layered with something else. Something warmer, something charged.
It’s the way he leans in closer than necessary. The way his fingers graze mine when he hands me my recorder.
It’s the way his eyes track me across the room, the way hissmirk tugs at the corner of his mouth when he catches me watching him first.
It’s the subtle, nearly imperceptible touches - his knee bumping against mine during an interview, his hand brushing my lower back when he passes by in the tunnel.
The way his voice softens sometimes, when he says my name.
I tell myself it’s nothing. That it doesn’t mean anything.
But I’m a writer, and writers live for details.
And there areSo. Many.Details.
Like when he shows up to training one morning when I’ve been sent to write a piece on the team’s routine, handing me a coffee without so much as a word.
I blink down at it, confused.
"What’s this?"
Matteo shrugs, expression infuriatingly casual.
"You looked like you needed one."
"Did you put something in it?" I frown.
"Just caffeine," he says, the picture of innocence. "And maybe a little love."
I nearly throw the cup at him.
Then there’s the press conference, where one particularly obnoxious journalist starts taking digs at him, picking apart his performance despite the fact that he’s been one of the best players of the season.
"Some would say that with the money you earn, you should be scoring more goals," the journalist says, voice oily with condescension.
