“Say it,” she muttered hoarsely, voice wrecked.
I took another bite of my taco, savoring it slowly. “Say what?”
“That I shouldn’t have ordered it.”
I smirked. “Nah. Watching you suffer is better.”
She flipped me off, which only made me laugh harder.
For a while, we ate in silence. Real silence. The kind that didn’t need filling. The kind I hadn’t had with anyone in a long time.
No cameras. No agents. No teammates trying too hard to bond. Just the scrape of plastic forks and the occasional hiss of meat hitting the grill behind us.
She looked up at me between bites, her ponytail falling loose in the breeze.
“This is actually good,” she admitted, like it hurt her pride to say it.
“I know.”
“I still hate you.”
“You’re allowed.”
She rolled her eyes, but the smile tugging at her lips didn’t go away. And maybe it was the sun or the spice or the way she looked right then—comfortable, real—but for one strange moment, I forgot we were faking anything at all.
And that scared the hell out of me.
On the way back, we passed a high school I hadn’t thought about in years.
The field behind it was still there—mostly. Patchy grass, crooked goalposts, chain-link fence bowing in like it wanted out. It was the fields the South West Michigan Kickers team used. I used to train here before anyone knew my name. Before I was anyone worth marketing.
I slowed down. Then pulled over.
Daphne looked up from her phone. “What are you doing?”
I shifted into park. “You said this wasn’t a real date. So I figured we’d do something dumb and pointless.”
Her brows lifted. “More dumb than melting my taste buds off for street tacos?”
I ignored that. Got out, went around to the bed of the truck, and tossed her a scuffed soccer ball that had been rolling around back there for months.
She caught it with both hands, surprised. “You just have this lying around?”
“It’s my emergency therapy ball.”
She got out and followed me through the gap in the fence. “And this therapy involves what, exactly? Crying in the net?”
I dropped the ball onto the grass, bounced it with one knee, then passed it to her. “Trash talk from someone who couldn’t even handle salsa.”
She rolled her eyes and kicked it back—decent aim, actually.
The sun was lower now, cutting gold across the empty field. No crowds. No cameras. Just the distant hum of a lawn mower and the steady thump of the ball between us.
“I used to come here after school,” I said without thinking. “Before club practice. Just to clear my head.”
She didn’t answer right away. Just nudged the ball with the side of her foot, like she was considering how much she wanted to say.
“Why’d you stop?”
