Chapter 2
Kieren
Ice hummed through the tub, numbing my shoulder and most of my will to live. The recovery room was empty—just me, the drone of the freezer motor, and a clock that ticked like it wanted to fight.
I preferred it this way. No music. No noise. Just the burn behind my eyes and the quiet ache in my body. After ten years in this league, you didn’t bounce back—you crawled.
My phone buzzed against the plastic bench.
I ignored it.
It buzzed again. Then again. Then six more times.
With a sigh, I reached for it, wincing as my muscles protested. Maybe I thought it was an update from the physio team. Maybe I hoped it was my agent with a contract renegotiation or a sponsorship deal.
It wasn’t.
It was her.
Daphne Sommers. Journalist. Nuisance. That voice like sunshine through clenched teeth.
The clip was everywhere.
I tapped one post, volume low.
“Washed-up legend with a god complex.”
I stared at the screen. Blinked.
Smirked.
“Not wrong,” I muttered.
She always did have bite. Even three years ago, when she asked about my red card history on air like she was ordering her coffee—confident, casual, sharp enough to bleed.
I didn’t give her the satisfaction of a real answer then.
And now?
Now she’d lit me up like a bonfire in Times Square.
Another clip autoplayed—a remix, apparently. My voice spliced with hers, set to Beyoncé’s Run the World. The beat dropped right as she said “grumpiest man in the league.”
Someone added slow-mo footage of me glaring at the camera last season. They gave me laser eyes.
I nearly dropped my phone.
“What the hell,” I muttered, scrolling through the carnage.
One TikTok had me listed as MLS’s emotionally unavailable zaddy.
Zaddy.
I needed a drink. Or a lobotomy.
Storm HQ was already buzzing when I walked in. The scent of fresh turf, muscle rub, and bad decisions hung in the air like usual.
Cam spotted me first, grinning like a jackal. “Heads up! God complex incoming!”
