All Is Fair: A Trent Alexander-Arnold x Kylian Mbappè x Original Character Erotic Series.
18+ Minors DNI
Chapter 23
The grey cloud trailing Trent for most of the week was no longer something he fought—it was something he wore. A quiet, fitting punishment. After weeks of arguments stretched thin and words that cut too deep, he and Charlotte had finally conceded defeat. Space, they’d agreed, was better than the relentless back-and-forth that had hollowed them both out.
But distance hadn’t brought silence, it made noise.
What began as a need for breathing room quickly spiralled into blog-worthy spectacle, courtesy of Charlotte. One Instagram story was all it took: her, too close to her ex-boyfriend—the polished son of a French businessman, heir to a quiet empire. The internet did the rest, feasting on the image, dissecting it, twisting it into a narrative. Speculation spread like wildfire. How had it ended so abruptly? Who had walked away? Who had been replaced?
Trent didn’t need the headlines. He felt the answer in his chest.
Charlotte might have dominated the noise, but it was Rosa who owned the silence. She had settled into his thoughts, uninvited and immovable, ever since Kayla told him the truth about what had happened with Theo. Since then, Rosa wasn’t just a memory—she was a presence, lingering in every quiet moment he couldn’t escape.
The Spanish sun bore down on Trent and his teammates, relentless, unforgiving—promising summer while offering no relief. Training had been brutal, the kind that stripped you down to instinct and exhaustion, yet still his mind wandered where it shouldn’t. The international break loomed, but his name wasn’t on the list. A string of injuries had seen to that.
It stung more than he cared to admit.
Still, in the midst of disappointment, there was something else being offered; time. Unwanted, unstructured, dangerous time. Time to think. Time to dwell. Time to attempt to make a change.
Trent moved on autopilot as he peeled off his clothes to shower, paying no mind to the men who moved around him as he bathed himself. Once clean, Trent made his way into the dressing room, slinging a towel over his head as he took a seat at his spot.
Closing his eyes as he let out a breath he had no idea how long he’d been holding, he allowed himself a moment's peace, the pause brought to an end by the swinging of the changing room doors.
Opening his eyes to find Kylian shuffling into the room, he sat up and began getting dressed, the words on the tip of his tongue scrambled as he thought about how to bring up the topic he'd been biting down on since finding out.
Slipping on his socks before standing so he could pull on his sweats, Trent grabbed his t-shirt before turning to look at Kylian who sat scrolling through his phone.
“Have you spoken to Rosa recently?”
Kylian's thumb paused mid-scroll. He looked up slowly, something wary flickering across his face before he smoothed it into neutrality. "Rosa?" He set the phone facedown on the bench. "Not since vacation."
Trent pulled his shirt over his head, buying seconds, the fabric muffling the air between them. When his face emerged, he found Kylian watching him with a particular stillness—the kind that meant he was calculating, fitting pieces together.
“But I don't think you should, she deserves better,” Kylian continued.
“So you get to decide what's best for her?” Trent snarled, his eyes locking with Kylian's across the dressing room.
“Have you ever cared?” Kylian asked firmly, his refusal to back down evident. “Because from the outside looking in her feelings have never mattered to you,” he continued, his French accent thickening around certain words.
“And you care more?” Trent scoffed.
“I care enough to acknowledge her feelings,” his teammate bit back.
Trent's jaw tightened, the muscle working beneath his skin like something alive and angry. He took a half-step forward, close enough that Kylian could smell the stale coffee on his breath, the nervous sweat underneath his cologne. "You don't know a fucking thing about her and me."
"Then tell me," Kylian said, not moving, not yielding the inch of floor he'd claimed. "Why was your brother allowed to tell her how low he thinks of her and give his opinions?"
“I handled Marcel, I don't ask you your business concerning her; so don't ask mine. But tell me since you care so much, what have you done to protect her since her ex assaulted her?” Trent asked, watching as the fight drained from Kylian's features.
“Her what?” he frowned.
“Exactly,” Trent spat. “I’m leaving here and getting on a jet to New York because I fucking care. Kylian because I fucking lo-,”
Trent clamped his mouth shut, the words curdling behind his teeth. He turned away, yanking his duffel bag from the locker with more force than necessary, the metal clanging like a struck bell. The silence stretched between them, thick with everything unsaid.
Kylian stood rooted, his mind catching up syllable by syllable. Assaulted. The word kept hitting him, each time with fresh weight. He thought of her laugh the last time he'd seen her, how it had carried across their villa while on vacation, easy and bright.
"When?"
Trent paused at the threshold, hand on the doorframe. "Last week sometime." He didn't turn around. "But I understand you've been busy,” he continued coldly, alluding to the Spanish-born actress Kylian had been spotted with, the news spreading like wildfire across Spanish media.
Despite the subtlety of Trent's words, they struck Kylian in a way he hadn't anticipated. The moral high ground he stood upon was faltering under his feet, he hadn't spoken to Rosa since returning from vacation with her a few weeks prior and in that time he had found something elsewhere.
While their relationship was one born of convenience and transaction, the fact that he hadn't thought much about her humbled her in a way that was almost uncomfortable to come to terms with.
Trent was stoic as he left Real Madrid’s training ground, he'd been given the green light to travel after informing the team's heads of a personal issue that needed his attention overseas.
The sun hung low over Valdebebas, casting long shadows across the emptying parking lot as Trent sat in his car, the hum of the engine filling the space around him as he scrolled through his phone, thumb hovering over Rosa's number.
The screen lit his face in the dimming car, each digit feeling heavier than the last. He'd deleted and retyped the message four times before closing out of their message thread, tossing his phone into the passenger seat before taking off.
The lights were on when Trent arrived home, each room humming with that particular silence of waiting. He moved through the space mechanically, gathering what he needed. His hands worked while his mind circled the same raw edge he'd touched in the locker room. The word he'd swallowed still sat heavy in his chest, half-formed and dangerous.
He sat on the edge of his bed afterwards, duffel packed and zipped, the darkness pressing against his windows. No television, no music, only the distant sound of Madrid's evening traffic filtering through double-paned glass. An hour passed, maybe two. He watched the digital clock on his nightstand advance minute by minute, refusing to let his thoughts settle into any single one.
A car arrived at midnight, its headlights sweeping across his blinds like a searchlight. The driver handled his bags while Trent settled into the leather seat, pulling the door shut with a soft, expensive thud. They spoke minimally—sir, terminal, weather in New York. Trent nodded at appropriate intervals, his reflection ghosted in the tinted window as they curved toward the private airfield.
The jet waited on the tarmac, small and gleaming. He slept fitfully across the Atlantic, waking to grey morning light over the Atlantic seaboard.
New York smelled different—brine and exhaust and something still from the surrounding water. The car deposited him in front of Rosa's building shortly after two o'clock before continuing to bring his bags to his hotel, the afternoon sun beating against the brick facade. He pressed her buzzer and waited, throat tight with everything he hadn't said to Kylian, everything he still shouldn't say to her.
The intercom crackled. Then silence. Then the lock released with a mechanical thunk, admitting him to the lobby where the elevator waited with its doors open, as if reluctant to watch what came next.
The elevator ascended with a soft mechanical groan, each floor number glowing in the mirrored interior. Trent watched them change, his hands loose at his sides, deliberately empty. At the requested floor, the doors parted onto a hallway he'd only visited once or twice but remembered vividly. Rosa's door stood at the end.
He knocked twice, then waited.
The door swung inward with unexpected force, and Rosa stood framed in the gap, one hand still on the knob, the other suspended mid-gesture as if she'd been interrupted reaching for something. She wore an oversized t-shirt with a coffee stain near the hem, her hair piled into a lopsided knot, and reading glasses sliding down her nose. For a moment, she simply stared, her mouth opening and closing around syllables that refused to form.
"Trent."
His name came out flat, disbelieving, barely a whisper. Her gaze travelled across his face as if mapping unfamiliar territory, searching for the trick, the explanation, the camera crew surely hidden somewhere. The reading glasses caught the hallway light, obscuring her eyes.
"What—" She shook her head sharply, a strand of dark hair escaping its pin. "No. No, you can't—" The door began to close, her shoulder pressing against it.
"Rosa."
The latch clicked shut. He heard the chain rattle, then stillness. Somewhere down the hall, a baby fussed behind thin walls. Trent stood motionless, counting his breaths, listening to the silence on the other side of the door as it stretched and thickened between them.
The chain scraped again. The door reopened six inches, her face visible in the vertical view of apartment light, guarded and exhausted and something worse he couldn't name.
"Five minutes," she said. "Then you leave." The widening gap revealed her living room, the space just as perfect and well-kept as the last time he'd visited her place. A time before everything soured.
Five minutes turned into thirty as Trent grovelled and apologised, admitting his flaws and wrongdoing in the way he'd handled her previously. Things which would have pulled at Rosa's heartstrings previously, barely even touch her now.
And still she gave Trent his chance to talk, allowing him the chance to speak before she took the floor.
Baring her own truth.
“Regardless of whether Charlotte was done wrong, it was me who had to live with the hurt and rejection from you and your fucking brother,” Rosa explained, her eyes glossing over with tears as they remained locked on Trent’s. “Her feelings were always protected while mine were abused and discarded.”
“You keep on telling me how special I am to you and how much you care but I've never felt it,” she continued. “I realised from that night in New York, what we had was nothing more than sex and convenience to you and what happened afterwards in England confirmed it.”
“Rosa,” Trent started, taking a single step towards her. His stomach twisted with guilt as her words registered in his head, the reality of her situation shattering his version of events into a million little pieces.
“I never wanted to hurt you, that was never my intention. I'm sorry for making you feel anything but respected,” he went on.
“Seen,” Rosa corrected. “You dangled the idea that you see me in my face and then snatched it away. Every single time. The one thing I never asked you to do was choose between Charlotte and me. I was fucking selling myself to you… If you called I would have come, but you turned this into a situation where I was made to feel like something and nothing all at once.”
Trent’s hand instinctively went up, halting mid-air as he tried to bridge the space between them. He felt a pang of something sharp and unfamiliar in his chest – a genuine ache of regret. Rosa's words were like a physical blow, each syllable landing with painful precision. He hadn't realised, hadn’t seen the depth of her hurt. He'd been so caught up in navigating the complexities of his life, the pressures of his career and… everything else, that he'd blinded himself to the pain he was inflicting.
He lowered his hand slowly, letting it fall to his side. The easy charm he usually wore felt brittle and false now, like something threatening to crack. "You’re right," he said quietly, the words tasting bitter in his mouth.
“Do you know how worthless I felt? You treated me like I was nothing because of an honest mistake. Because I was caught up in the moment with someone I thought cared about me.” Rosa continued, allowing herself to revisit the emotions she felt while they were in the Cotswolds.
Trent swallowed around the lump forming in his throat, thick and insistent as she spoke her truth. The truth he'd been tiptoeing around. “I gave myself to you in a way that goes beyond any transactional sex and I was treated as if I were worthless.”
What made Trent feel sick was knowing he faced no consequence for the lovebite she'd left on his neck, that the breakdown of his relationship with Charlotte was of their own making, and that he could not undo his treatment of Rosa no matter how much he wished he could.
Trent stood there, absorbing the weight of Rosa’s words. He watched her face, the raw emotion swirling in her eyes, and a profound sense of shame washed over him. He hadn't just hurt her; he'd diminished her, reduced her to something less than she deserved.
He ran a hand through his hair, the gesture more anxious than stylish. "You’re absolutely right," he repeated, his voice quieter this time, stripped of any playful inflexion. "I… I haven’t been fair to you. I've been selfish and careless." He paused, searching for the right words, knowing that apologies felt inadequate in the face of such pain. “Seeing you like this… It’s not what I wanted. Never.”
“But it happened, and as pathetic as I sound I don't hate you. I can't bring myself to.” The admission hung in the air between them, heavy and stark. Trent felt a strange mix of relief and dread wash over him. Relief that she was finally articulating the pain he’d been so adept at ignoring, and dread at the realisation of just how deeply he’d wounded her.
Trent stared at her for a moment, the city humming beyond her windows, distant and indifferent. Then he moved—not with the calculated grace he usually displayed, but something clumsy, urgent. He sank to his knees on the hardwood floor of her living room, his hands coming to rest on his sweat-clad thighs as he looked up at her.
The angle shifted everything. From this view, she loomed, backlit by the pale afternoon streaming through her curtains. He could see the frayed hem of her socks, the softness of her petite frame, hidden beneath a hoodie too large for her. The faint bags under her eyes, and the way the light caught them. Something almost imperceptible unless you knew her well enough to notice. Small intimacies he had never earned.
"I'm sorry," he said, and the words felt insufficient, like throwing a single stone into a canyon and expecting an echo. He tried again, his voice rougher. "Rosa. I'm sorry for the Cotswolds. For how I spoke to you, how I made you feel—" He stopped, jaw tightening, because the full inventory of his sins kept unfolding, each memory another small cruelty he'd dressed up as practicality. "For making you feel worthless when you were giving me something precious."
His hands opened on his thighs, palms up, an unconscious posture of surrender. "I told myself it was complicated. That I was protecting Charlotte, protecting… something. But I was protecting myself. My convenience. My image." He laughed, hollow, brief, and pathetic by his own standard.
A car horn blared stories down. Neither of them flinched.
"I don't expect you to forgive me," he continued, quieter now. "I don't deserve a response. But I needed you to know I see it now. What I took from you. What I broke."
He remained there, knees against her floor, waiting.
“Please, don't say anything you don't mean,” Rosa said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Don’t say anything because you think it's the right thing to say.”
“Rosa I meant every last word,” Trent affirmed, reaching out for her and gently wrapping his hand around her wrist, so he could pull her closer. “From the moment we met in Miami, the connection we had, none of it was a lie.”
“If I knew then what I know now, I would've never even looked in your direction,” Rosa smiled weakly.
“But you did and we are here now,” Trent pointed out softly, taking another singular step towards her. “I will never not want you, I will never not need you, and I will never stop-,”
“Please don't say that,” Rosa cut him off, her free hand rising to press against his chest, not pushing, just stopping the distance from closing further. The contact burned through the thin cotton of his shirt. She could feel his heartbeat, rabbit-quick, and hated that she noticed.
"You don't get to say that," she said, and her voice cracked on the last word, betraying her. "Not now. Not after—" She shook her head, unable to finish the sentence, unwilling to give life to the hurt she'd worked hard to bury.
Trent's hand tightened on her wrist, not enough to hurt, enough to anchor. "Then tell me what I do get to do. What I'm allowed to say.”
The question hung between them, heavy and unearned. Rosa looked down at him, at the man who had once made her feel like a secret worth keeping, then like a secret best forgotten. His hair had grown a little longer, she noticed. There was a new singular grey on his right temple. She wondered if she'd put it there.
"You get to leave," she said finally. "You get to walk out that door and let me—" She stopped, swallowed. "Let me figure out if any of this was real, or if you're just lonely, or guilty, or—"
"I'm here," he said, desperation dripping from his words. "That's real."
"For how long?" The words came out sharper than she intended, years of disappointment sharpening their edge. "Until Charlotte comes back? Until your schedule shifts? Until it gets complicated again? Or your brother decides to tell me what a worthless whore I am?”
She pulled her wrist free then, and he let her. The loss of contact felt like a small death to them both.
"I'm not the right person for you," Rosa said, quieter now, the fight draining out of her like water through fingers. "We don’t align."
"You know we do."
"Do we? The prostitute and the golden boy clean-cut footballer?"
Rosa’s words landed like a physical blow, stealing the air from Trent’s lungs. He felt a familiar pang of frustration, the urge to argue, to defend himself, to defend what they had. But he bit it back, recognising the futility of it. He had earned this. He had built this wall between them with his carelessness and his selfishness.
He watched her, really watched her, for the first time in a long time. Not the curated version of Rosa she presented to the world—ever glamorous and put together, witty and alluring—but the woman beneath it all. The woman who carried a quiet sadness in her eyes, a vulnerability she tried so hard to conceal.
He saw the tremor in her hand as she spoke, the subtle tightening of her jaw that betrayed her effort to remain composed.
“You're so much more than that, you're so much more than me. You are everything right. You're beautiful, and caring, simple and fucking complicated. Even when you're scared you will fight with everything in you not to let it show…” Trent trailed off, his eyes warming as he felt himself becoming overwhelmed with emotion. With regret.
“Why didn't you tell me I was hurting you the way I was?” he asked helplessly. “I would've done something.”
“Because if you cared you would have realised you were yourself, not because of something I said. And walking away with what little pride I had left felt better than admitting to myself you didn't realise because you didn't care,”
Rosa's breath caught in her throat, the confession hanging between them. She hadn't meant to say so much, to lay herself bare like this. The kitchen clock ticked audibly, marking seconds she couldn't reclaim.
"I did care," Trent said, voice rough. "I do. I just—" He dragged a hand through his hair, disheveling the tangled coils. "I was stupid. Scared of what it meant, wanting someone I wasn't supposed to want."
"And now?"
He stepped closer, close enough that she could smell the faint trace of his cologne, something clean and soft that reminded her of mornings after, of sheets tangled and sunlight slipping through blinds. "Now I'm terrified you're going to force me to walk out that door and I'll spend the rest of my life knowing I had something real… that I let one of the most beautiful people slip through my fingers because I'm selfish.”
Rosa felt her resolve wavering, that dangerous hope creeping in at the edges. She thought of every woman she'd known who had loved men who couldn't love them back completely, her mother included. She thought of herself at sixteen, believing she could do anything and be whoever she wanted to, when she still believed life to be kind.
"I can't be your secret again," she whispered. "I won't. I can't be your relief at the expense of my own sanity.”
"Never." The word came out fierce, certain. Trent reached for her hand, and this time she didn't pull away. His palm was warm, slightly calloused from the gym, grounding.
"Don't make promises you can't keep."
"I'm not." He squeezed her fingers, his eyes holding hers with an intensity that made her chest ache. "I'm asking for a chance to prove to you that I see you.”
“I can't afford to be proven right,” Rosa said, her voice cracking with pain. A deep ache that didn't need to be tangible to be felt. “I don't know if I’ll be able to pick myself up again,” she whispered as the tears she'd fought to hold back finally spilt over, warming her cheeks as they fell. Trent's thumb caught one before it reached her jaw, the gesture so tender it hurt worse than cruelty would have.
"Then let me be the one who picks you up," he said. "If it comes to that. Let me try."
Rosa laughed, wet and broken. "You say that like it's simple, like you haven't made me feel like I'm nothing. Like the people around you don't see me as less than nothing.”
“Marcel and I argued, he…” Trent's jaw tightened, muscle jumping beneath the skin. "I should have protected you more, I know that now. I was so busy hiding that I left you exposed to everything I was afraid of." His hand remained on hers, thumb tracing slow, uncertain circles across her knuckles. "Marcel said things. I should have shut it down, should have—" He broke off, shaking his head. "It doesn't matter what I should have done. What matters is whether you'll let me try now."
Rosa stared at their joined hands, at the contrast of his long fingers intertwined. "Trying isn't the same as doing," she said quietly. "And even doing doesn't mean succeeding."
"I want to learn how." Trent's voice dropped lower, almost rough. "Tell me what you need. Tell me what I have to do to earn back even a fraction of what I threw away."
She looked up at him then, really looked, searching for the catch, the moment when his certainty would crack and show its hollow centre. But his eyes held steady, the same green she'd dreamed about, the same green she'd resented for months. "I need you to be patient," she said slowly, each word costing her. "I need you to understand that I might not believe you tomorrow, or next week. That I might pull away without warning because I'm scared."
"I can be patient." He released her hand only to cup her cheek, his palm warm against her tear-damp skin. "I can do scared. I just can't do nothing, Rosa. Please."
Turning away from Trent, Rosa ran her hands through her hair in frustration, causing her shirt to lift and revealing the stale bruising on her back — bruises she had almost forgotten were there until she heard Trent's voice.
“I…is this what-did this happened with your ex?” he asked, voice laced with shock that curdled into something darker, something Rosa recognised immediately as anger restrained by sheer will.
"Don't," she said, turning around, her shirt falling back into place. "Don't look at me like that. I don't need your pity, Trent."
"It's not pity." His hands had curled into fists at his sides, knuckles white, but his voice stayed soft, controlled.
He'd been told over the phone by Kayla that something had gone down between Rosa and her ex, but to see the evidence of it, the blotched purple blooming across her skin—
"I should have been there," he said, the words barely audible. "I should have—"
"You weren't." Rosa's voice cut sharply, final. She tugged her shirt down with deliberate hands, refusing to hide her face though heat burned her throat. "These bruises are just proof of another man who never actually cared for me.”
Trent's jaw tightened, a muscle jumping beneath the skin, but he didn't reach for her again. The silence stretched between them, filled with the distant murmur of traffic and the refrigerator's mechanical hum. He exhaled slowly, deliberately, as if counting backwards.
"I'm not him," Trent said finally. "I know that sounds—" He stopped, shaking his head. "No. I'm not going to tell you what I am or aren't. I'm going to show you. But I can't leave you in New York, not alone like this."
“I’ve been alone, I'll be fine,” Rosa said as she crossed her arms, the gesture small and defensive against the kitchen's pale light.
Her fingers found the edge of the counter behind her, anchoring her in place. Trent watched the movement, marking it, his own body still held with a coiled restraint.
"Fine isn't the same as safe," he said. "Fine isn't—" He broke off, running a hand over his hair, the first definitive crack in his composure she'd seen. "I can't go back to Madrid and leave you here.”
“Trent I'm not going to Madrid,” Rosa said, and the finality in her voice landed between them.
Trent's shoulders dropped, not in defeat but in recalculation. He studied her face—the set jaw, the defiant angle of her chin—and something shifted in his expression, a decision made without words. "Then I stay here," he said.
"You can't just—" Rosa started. “Your career, the club?”
"I can." He moved past her to the window, pulling the curtain aside with two fingers to scan the street below. "My contract has a force majeure clause. Family emergency." He glanced back at her, the corner of his mouth lifting without humour. “You're a lawyer, you know."
Rosa stared at his profile against the grey afternoon light, the straight line of his nose, the tension visible in his neck. "You planned this before you came here?"
"I planned contingencies." He let the curtain fall. "I plan to keep you safe. There's a difference."
“I don't want your pity,” she said, the words scraped raw against her throat. She felt the weight of them, how small they sounded, how desperate. "I don't want anything because you feel—" She stopped, unable to name what she thought he felt, terrified of being wrong.
Trent turned from the window. His eyes held hers without the softness of pity, only something harder, more enduring. "Good," he said. "Because it’s not pity that made me fly from Madrid to New York." He took one step toward her, then stopped, respecting the distance she'd claimed. "You want to know what I feel?"
Rosa said nothing, her breath shallow against her ribs.
“You have so much more of me than pity,” he told her truthfully, baring his soul. “I can't leave you here, not like this.”
He saw through the mask she wore.
“I stay here, or you come back to Madrid with me. There is no other option,” Trent continued firmly, though his voice lacked any real bite.
Rosa's laugh came out sharp, almost wounded. "You're insane."
"Probably." Trent didn't smile back. He watched her with the patience of someone who had waited through injury timeouts, through extra time, through matches that stretched past midnight and into penalty shootouts. "But I'm not wrong about this."
The refrigerator hummed behind her, a domestic sound that made the conversation feel more absurd. Rosa pushed off from the counter and walked to the sink, needing motion, needing to turn her back on him long enough to think. She ran water she didn't need, watching it spill down the drain.
“And then what?” Rosa asked.
Trent didn't answer her immediately. He joined her at the sink, standing close enough that she could smell the faint notes of him—cabin air, rich cotton, the musky undertone of travel. He turned the faucet off with two fingers, silence rushing in to fill the space where water had been.
"And then we figure out what comes next," he said. "Together. Not me deciding for you. Not you pushing me away before I've earned it."
“What if you don't deserve the chance?”
“That doesn't mean I will ever stop trying to,” Trent answered, his entire being humming with despiration. “For now I just want to keep you safe. Please let me keep you safe.”
Rosa stared at the faucet handle, at Trent's fingers still resting there, pale against the brushed nickel. The tiny scar across his knuckle—she'd noticed it once, watching him sign autographs.
"I don't know how to do this," she whispered.
"Neither do I." He withdrew his hand slowly, as if sudden movement might startle her back into refusal. "But I promise I won't hurt you.”
“What if you’re already too late?”
