"Two days ago. After we lost to LA." Elise's fingers tightened on her cup. "She sent a text to Mara and Astoria. Said the team deserved better leadership than she could give right now."
"And they accepted it?"
"Mara didn't want to, but Lou insisted. Said she wouldn't change her mind no matter what anyone said." Elise paused, her expression careful. "She hasn't been back to the arena since. Won't answer her phone. Frankie went by her house yesterday—the lights were on but Lou didn't answer the door."
Camille's chest constricted around the ache that lived there now, a permanent weight that made breathing feel like work. She'd done this. Not directly, maybe, but the chain of events led back to her—to them, to whatever they'd been building before it all fell apart.
"How's the team?" The question felt inadequate, but Camille didn't know what else to ask.
"Lost. Confused. We're supposed to play Boston in three days and our best defensive player just quit leadership." Elise's voice was carefully neutral, but the frustration bled through anyway. "The qualification math is brutal now. We'd need to win every remaining game to have a chance, and without Camille scoring goals and without Lou holding the defense together..."
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to.
"I'm sorry." Tears pricked at Camille's eyes beneath the sunglasses. "I never meant for any of this to happen."
"I know you didn't." Elise reached across the table and squeezed her hand. "None of this is your fault. You didn't make Lou pull away. You didn't make the reporters startasking questions. You're just caught in the middle of something that got bigger than either of you expected."
"But if I hadn't—if we hadn't?—"
"If you hadn't what? Fallen for each other?" Elise's expression softened. "Camille, I've known Lou for five years. I've never seen her look at anyone the way she looks at you. Whatever happened between you—that was real. That was important. And it deserved better than how it ended."
The tears broke through, sliding beneath the sunglasses and tracking hot paths down Camille's cheeks. She wiped them away with trembling fingers, grateful for the empty coffee shop, for the anonymity of the corner booth, for Elise's steady presence across the table.
"She ended things via text," Camille whispered. "Twelve words. I can't do this anymore, it's messing with my head. Like everything we shared was just a distraction she needed to eliminate."
"That sounds like Lou being scared, not Lou being truthful." Elise's voice was gentle but firm. "She does this—shuts down when things get too real. Convinces herself she's protecting everyone by pushing them away. It's her pattern, and it's been her pattern for as long as I've known her."
"So what am I supposed to do? Wait for her to work through her issues while my heart breaks and the team falls apart?"
"I don't know." Elise shook her head slowly. "I wish I had answers. All I know is that watching both of you suffer separately is painful. And I don't think either of you is going to get through this without the other."
They sat in silence for a moment, the coffee shop's ambient music filling the space between them—some soft acoustic song that Camille vaguely recognized from a commercial. The espresso machine hissed behind thecounter, grinding beans and steaming milk for customers who had ordinary problems like which latte to order and whether to get a pastry. Outside the window, the Phoenix Ridge sun blazed down on a sidewalk that Camille couldn't walk without being photographed.
A couple of women sat at a nearby table, holding hands across the surface, completely absorbed in each other. The sight made Camille's throat tighten. That could have been her and Lou, in a different world. In a world where Camille had been braver, where Lou had been less afraid, where love didn't come with a price tag attached.
"What about my knee?" Camille asked, changing the subject because she couldn't bear to talk about Lou anymore. "Any word from medical on when I can play? It feels better.”
"They want another scan next week. The MCL is healing, but they're still worried about the meniscus." Elise's expression shifted to something more clinical. "Best case, you might be cleared for the final game of the season. But that's optimistic."
The final game of the season. If the Valkyries had any chance at qualification by then.
"So I'm useless." Camille laughed, but there was no humor in it. "I came here to help this team reach the PWHL, and instead I've wrecked everything. The captain quit because of me. The media is treating us like a circus. My knee is broken. What exactly have I contributed besides chaos?"
"You contributed goals. Leadership. Chemistry with Lou that made the whole offense click." Elise's voice sharpened. "Stop pretending you're nothing. This team was struggling before you got here. You helped make us better. The fact that things have gotten complicated doesn't erase that."
Camille wanted to believe her. Wanted to feel like her presence in Phoenix Ridge had meant something beyond the wreckage scattered around her. But sitting here in disguise, hiding from cameras, separated from the woman she loved by walls neither of them seemed able to break down—it was hard to see anything but failure.
"I don't know what to do next," she admitted. The confession scraped her throat raw. "I've always had a plan. Always known the right move, the strategic choice, the path that would advance my career. When I was seventeen, I mapped out the next decade of my life—what teams to play for, what endorsements to pursue, how to build a brand that would last beyond my playing years."
She laughed, but there was no humor in it.
"Every relationship, every interview, every photo op—all calculated. Even Mario was part of the plan. Date a basketball star, raise my profile, use his platform to boost my own." The words tasted bitter. "But this—" She gestured vaguely at everything. "I don't know how to play this."
"Maybe that's the point." Elise leaned forward, her elbows on the table. "Maybe this is the part where you stop playing and start living. Stop calculating the right move and start feeling your way through."
"That sounds terrifying."
"Most important things are." Elise smiled—a small, sad smile that held years of her own hard-won wisdom. "I spent a long time trying to control my life too. Planning every step, avoiding every risk. And then I fell in love with someone who made all my plans feel meaningless. Best thing that ever happened to me."
