Didn’t defend them.
Didn’t say I was overreacting.
And that was all I needed to know.
Coach Lawson finally spoke, voice low but sharp. “This can’t happen again, Walker.”
I met his gaze.
“We’re not the team with media clout. We don’t have owners with deep political pockets. We’ve only got so much leverage left—and this?” He gestured vaguely toward me, toward the ice pack, toward Daphne. “This drains it.”
Cameron sat back in his chair and exhaled. “The problem is, no one cares why you did it.” He looked directly at me. Then at her. “They care about how it looks.”
The icepack had half-melted against my knuckles when Mara broke the silence like a dropped glass.
“Oh my—” she blurted, phone in hand, eyes wide. “People already think you’re dating.”
I frowned. “Excuse me?”
She spun the screen around. “Look.”
A video clip played, grainy and zoomed in. Me, grabbing the Vultures player by the collar. Snarling. Threatening. The audio was patchy, but the line—Touch her again and I’ll break your fucking jaw—cut through loud and clear.
Underneath, the captions read:
MLS’s new season is already ??????
Protective boyfriend vibes or territorial drama? Either way… I’m feral.
#ShipIt #WalkerAndSommers #MLSbadboy #HeProtects
Thousands of likes. Comments spiraling. A few edits already. Slow-motion, dramatic music, glowing text.
I stared. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Mara pushed her glasses up her nose. “Oh, I’m very serious. The punch? The glare? The jawline? It’s giving ‘grumpy love interest in a Netflix original.’”
Daphne groaned under her breath. “This is ridiculous.”
“You think I planned that?” I snapped. “You think I punched a guy so I could trend on TikTok?”
“No,” Cameron said slowly, his gaze sharpening like it always did when he smelled strategy. “But people already believe it.”
I didn’t like the way he leaned forward. It meant he was about to say something insane.
And useful.
And hard to argue with.
He steepled his fingers. “Kieren, listen. If you assaulted a player in a jealous rage, the league has a PR disaster on their hands.”
I raised an eyebrow. “That’s supposed to help?”
“But,” he went on, “if you were defending your girlfriend—a reporter caught in the middle of a heated moment—it’s not assault. It’s loyalty. It’s romantic. Protective. You’re just a man standing up for the woman he loves.”
I blinked. “I'm sorry, love?”
Daphne made a choking sound. Whether it was offense or laughter, I couldn’t tell.
