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under her wing ii | alexia putelllas

alexia putellas x platonic!reader

Summary - 4 times you maybe had a mother and 1 time you definitely did

Word Count - 24.3k

The restaurant is small and loud in the comfortable way places in Barcelona often are, packed with overlapping conversations and clinking glasses and the smell of garlic and fresh bread drifting through the open space.

You trail beside Alexia as she guides you through the crowded entryway with a hand resting lightly against your upper back, steering you without really thinking about it, the touch casual and familiar enough now that you lean into it automatically.

You’re halfway toward your table when someone calls her name. “Alex!”

Alexia turns immediately, her face shifting into surprised recognition as a woman near the bar stands from her seat with a wide grin already spreading across her face.

“Madre mía,” Alexia laughs softly as they pull each other into a quick hug. “How long has it been?”

Too long, apparently, because the conversation starts moving immediately, fast and overlapping in the way it does when people already know each other well enough to skip all the polite pauses.

Alexia asks about family, about work, about mutual friends whose names mean absolutely nothing to you, and you hover awkwardly at her side for a second before taking a small step back, instinctively trying to disappear from the interaction altogether.

Until Alexia’s hand lands on your shoulder, warm and firm. “And this,” she says easily, her mouth curving into quiet pride as she gently nudges you forward, “is my kid.”

You go completely still as she introduces you. Your eyes snap to her so fast it almost hurts.

But Alexia has already turned back toward her friend, already moving seamlessly into the next part of the conversation like she hasn’t just detonated something directly in the center of your chest.

Her kid. Not the kid I mentor. Not a player from the team. Not even family, which is already enough to make your throat tight every time she says it.

Her kid.

The words settle somewhere deep and immediate. They ping around your chest in a way that makes it difficult to focus on anything else for the rest of the conversation happening around you.

You barely hear the rest of it, only catching fragments while Alexia and her friend continue talking easily beside you, her hand still resting absently against your shoulder the entire time like she doesn’t even realize she’s keeping you anchored there.

She calls a lot of people affectionate things. You know that.

She calls Vicky hermanita. She calls Patri hermana. She says those words casually, affectionately, naturally, like they belong perfectly to the person she is assigning them to.

But this feels different. Your relationship with Alexia is different.

They don’t wake up in her house every morning and fall asleep there every night. They don’t rely on her for rides and meals and doctors appointments and reassurance after nightmares they pretend not to have. They don’t know where she keeps the extra blankets or which tea she makes when someone can’t sleep or how she hums quietly under her breath while cooking dinner when she thinks no one is listening.

They don’t know the version of her that pads downstairs half-awake in oversized sweatpants to make sure you took your pain medication for your broken foot at three in the morning. They don’t see the way she checks the weather before your appointments so she can hand you the right jacket without asking, or the way she bought you those jackets to begin with after quietly realizing the warmest thing you owned was a worn-out hoodie that barely counted as winter clothing.

They don’t know how instinctive it has become for her to reach for you in crowded spaces, how automatically she glances over to make sure you’ve eaten enough, how quickly her attention finds you no matter how many people are around her.

You do.

And suddenly the distinction between hermanita and my kid feels enormous.

You always call her Ale. Never Alexia. Just Ale. Other people call her that too sometimes, teammates and old friends and family, but it still feels strangely personal to you, like something that belongs more to the two of you than it should.

You like the way it sounds. You like the way her attention always finds you when you say it, the way her head turns immediately no matter how distracted she is, like your voice reaches her differently from everyone else’s. Teammates can be calling her name directly beside her and she’ll still miss it, but you can mutter “Ale” from across the room and watch her attention snap toward you before you’ve even finished the word.

You’ve never known what to call her beyond that. Not because you don’t feel it. Because you feel too much of it.

Maybe hermana could make sense in theory. Vicky calls you hermanita often enough, usually with an expression that suggests she enjoys watching you turn bright red every single time she says it. But even then, when you try to place the word onto Alexia inside your own head, it feels slightly wrong, slightly off-center, not big enough somehow for whatever this is between you.

Because sisters are equals. And you have never once mistaken the way you lean on Alexia for equality.

You’re so deep in your own thoughts that you barely register the conversation winding down. It’s only when the woman turns fully toward you again that you realize she’s leaving.

“It was very nice meeting you,” she says warmly.

You straighten slightly at the sound of your own existence being acknowledged again, your brain scrambling to catch up with the moment as you offer her a small smile in return.

“Adéu,” you reply politely. “And… yeah, nice to meet you too.”

She smiles once more before disappearing back toward the front of the restaurant, leaving you standing there beside Alexia with your thoughts still spinning in slow circles around something you don’t quite know how to process yet.

Alexia glances down at you then, her expression relaxed and easy again, completely unaware of the crisis currently unfolding in your head, and places a light, guiding hand against your upper back again as she steers you further into the restaurant.

“Wow,” she says lightly, shaking her head with a faint laugh, “what a small world, huh? I haven’t seen her since high school.”

You swallow down the confusion before it can reach your face too obviously, forcing yourself to let it go for now, because the familiar smell of grilled chicken and fried potatoes is already wrapping around you, warm and comforting and distracting enough that your stomach immediately starts paying more attention than your thoughts.

Questions can wait. Food feels more urgent.

So instead of asking what my kid was supposed to mean, you tilt your head toward her and decide to tease her instead.

“Is it really a small world,” you ask dryly, “when you literally know every person in Barcelona… and probably most of the surrounding suburbs too?”

Alexia lets out an offended little scoff, rolling her eyes dramatically before bumping her shoulder lightly against yours.

“That is not true.”

You stare at her flatly. “Ale,” you say with mock seriousness, gesturing vaguely around the restaurant, “you are on a first-name basis with the entire wait staff and the valet.”

“Well, that’s called being polite,” she replies without missing a beat, already steering you toward your usual table. “And it is not my fault this is your favorite restaurant and we come here every week.”

You narrow your eyes at her suspiciously. “I’m pretty sure the waiter started bringing you sparkling water before you even sat down.”

“That’s customer service,” she says easily. “Very normal.”

“The hostess literally called you mi reina.”

Alexia only shrugs, playfully unashamed now. “What can I say? I’m beloved by the people.”

Despite yourself, a real laugh escapes you. Alexia’s expression softens immediately at the sound of it, warmth and quiet relief flickering across her face before she reaches over to ruffle your hair affectionately as you slide into the booth beside her.

And just like that, some of the strange tightness that had been sitting in your chest ever since she introduced you loosens enough for you to breathe around it again.

You’ve been no contact with your foster parents ever since you moved in with Alexia.

You’re still not entirely sure what happened behind the scenes to make that possible.

You had asked Alexia about it once, only once, sometime during that first week after your surgery when the pain medication made you a little braver about asking questions you normally swallowed down. She had gone strangely quiet for a moment after you asked, her expression flattening into something unreadable before she finally told you, very simply, that she had “taken care of it,” and that you did not need to worry about ever going back there again.

There had been something distant in her eyes when she said it, something cold and controlled underneath the softness she usually reserved for you, like she was remembering the hospital room, remembering the way your foster mother had stood over your bed with alcohol and cigarettes still clinging to her breath while she hurled insults at you like they were nothing.

You hadn’t pushed for details after that. Partly because Alexia clearly didn’t want to talk about it. Partly because you weren’t entirely sure you wanted to know.

But you knew she must have gone back to that house at some point, because not long after you moved in permanently, she had shown up carrying the limited possessions you actually owned, your clothes folded neatly in laundry baskets, your old childhood plush tucked awkwardly under one arm like she hadn’t quite known what to do with it.

She never told you what the house looked like when she got there. Never repeated a single thing your foster parents might have said to her.

But you noticed the way she carefully washed every piece of clothing before putting it away, the way she ran your plush through the laundry twice until it no longer smelled faintly of smoke and mildew and instead carried the soft clean scent of her detergent.

You noticed the way her jaw tightened the first time she saw you instinctively flinch at a slammed cabinet door.

You noticed how she quietly started knocking before entering your room, even when the door was wide open, as though she wanted to make absolutely certain you never had to wonder whether your space would be respected.

You noticed a hundred little things like that. Things she never pointed out. Things she never took credit for. Small adjustments made so naturally and consistently that it would have been easy to miss them if they weren’t all designed to make you feel safer.

That had been months ago now and since then, life had settled into something quieter, steadier, the rhythm of school and training and recovery blending together until it almost felt normal. Almost.

Today, training has ended but no one seems particularly eager to leave yet, the late afternoon sun still warm against the pitch as players linger in small groups, stretching or passing balls around lazily before heading inside.

You’re near the edge of the field with Clara, both of you goofing around more than actually training, trying to nutmeg each other in increasingly ridiculous ways while arguing loudly over what should and should not count as a successful attempt.

“That one doesn’t count,” you insist after she barely clips the ball through your stance. “Your first touch was terrible.”

“My first touch was genius,” Serra shoots back, already grinning. “You’re just slow.”

“Please, I’m coming back from injury and still better than you.”

She gasps theatrically at that, clutching her chest like you’ve deeply offended her, before lunging forward to try again, the two of you laughing as you dance around each other near the sideline.

Then you hear it. A familiar raspy voice. Too familiar.

“So this is where you always ran away to…”

Everything inside you stops. The laughter dies instantly in your throat as your body goes rigid, your stomach dropping so hard it feels almost painful, every muscle locking before your brain even fully catches up to what’s happening.

Your foster father stands just outside the fence surrounding the training ground, one hand hooked lazily through the metal bars like he belongs there. He’s wearing a collared shirt you didn’t even know he owned, the fabric wrinkled but cleaner than anything you ever remember seeing him in, and his usually greasy hair has been combed carefully to one side in a way that feels deeply unsettling, like someone trying too hard to look respectable.

Beside him, your foster mother stands stiffly with her purse tucked under one arm, her chin tilted upward slightly as she stares directly at you, her eyes narrowed like she’s daring you to ignore them.

Your blood turns cold.

Beside you, Serra finally manages to knock the ball cleanly through your planted feet.

“Yes!” she celebrates, throwing her hands up triumphantly before noticing you haven’t reacted at all. The smile drops from her face almost instantly.

You are completely frozen. Your expression has gone blank in that terrible, distant way she’s never seen before, your shoulders tense, your breathing suddenly too shallow.

Serra follows your line of sight toward the fence, her own posture straightening slightly as she takes in the unfamiliar couple standing there.

“Can I help you?” she asks cautiously, stepping half a pace closer to you without even realizing she’s doing it. “This is a closed practice.”

You could kiss her for speaking because your own voice feels trapped somewhere far away from your body.

Your foster father sends Serra a fake smile, the kind that never quite reaches his eyes, before dismissing her entirely with a lazy flick of his gaze.

“Oh no, sweetheart,” he says smoothly, his voice dripping with false warmth. “I don’t need any help from you. Just from my beloved foster daughter here.”

Serra’s expression changes instantly when the words click into place, her eyes darting sharply toward you, panic and understanding colliding there all at once.

You don’t actually know how much the girls know. You had told Serra and Vicky pieces of it over time, small fragmented explanations about why you had moved in with Ale, enough to satisfy their concern without fully opening the door to everything behind it. But judging by the horrified look spreading across Serra’s face now, Alexia must have filled in a bit more of the gaps at some point, enough that she understands this is not a normal family visit.

She turns on her heel without hesitation.

“Alexia!!” she shouts across the pitch, her voice loud enough to cut cleanly through the noise of training.

Alexia looks up immediately, her attention snapping toward the panic in Clara’s voice before her eyes even fully locate her. Her gaze sweeps across the field quickly, searching, and the second she spots your rigid posture near the fence she drops the ball at her feet and starts running toward you without another thought.

Halfway there, she realizes who is standing on the other side of the barrier. Her expression instantly changes from worry to anger.

“This is a closed practice,” she says sharply as she closes the distance, stepping between the girls and the couple at the fence without even seeming to think about it. “How did you get in here?”

Serra instinctively shifts farther behind Alexia the moment she reaches you, clearly unwilling to stand anywhere near the people who have managed to make their captain look this furious.

You still haven’t moved. But Alexia notices the way your hands have begun trembling at your sides, subtle enough most people would miss it, violent enough that she catches it immediately. Something in her posture hardens even further.

“So good to see you again, Ms. Putellas,” your foster mother says sweetly, her tone dripping with something artificial and ugly beneath the mock politeness.

Alexia ignores her completely. Instead, she turns slightly toward Clara, her voice dropping into quiet, urgent Catalan. “Take her away and tell Pere to call security.”

That finally jolts you out of your frozen haze. Your hand shoots out, grabbing onto Alexia’s arm before Clara can move you anywhere, your fingers tightening around her sleeve hard enough to wrinkle the fabric.

Your eyes drag desperately to hers, panic finally surfacing fully there as you try to communicate something you cannot possibly say out loud in front of them.

Please don’t leave me here. Please don’t make me deal with them alone. Please protect me.

Alexia’s entire expression softens the second she looks at you. Her hand comes up to cover yours where it grips her arm, squeezing once, firmly, grounding you. Her eyes hold yours for a long moment, steady and reassuring despite the fury still simmering underneath them. Then she nods very slightly. A promise.

She turns back toward Clara, gesturing more gently this time for her to take you away from the fence. You let yourself be guided backward then, your legs unsteady beneath you as Clara carefully pulls you toward the rest of the team clustered farther down the pitch.

As you approach, Patri and Irene brush past you, each squeezing your shoulder gently as they move by, silent reassurance before taking up positions on either side of Alexia like some terrifyingly beautiful version of the queen’s guard.

“Security is on their way,” Patri says coldly, her arms folding across her chest as she fixes your foster parents with a stare sharp enough to cut glass.

“Oh perfect,” your foster mother replies smoothly. “Perhaps they can escort us to your legal department. Or should it be the financial department?” She glances toward your foster father with faux thoughtfulness. “Which do you think, dear?”

“Better to be safe and stop by both,” he replies with a grin.

Alexia’s shoulders go rigid. “What business do you have here?” she asks, her voice low and dangerous now, every word edged with barely restrained fury.

Your foster father gives a lazy shrug. “Well, when a football club breaches the terms of a foster arrangement and effectively steals a child from a legal guardian…” he says casually, “there are usually financial consequences attached to that.”

Your stomach twists violently.

Your foster mother reaches into her purse and pulls out a folded newspaper. Even from across the pitch, you recognize it immediately. The cover story from after the Clásico.

A giant photo of you and Alexia celebrating your brace together, her arms wrapped around you while you laughed breathlessly into her shoulder beneath the stadium lights.

The Heir to the Throne? the headline had read in massive letters across the front page.

You had been mortified when you first saw it. Alexia had been delighted. She’d brought it home grinning like she’d won another Champions League and hung it proudly on the fridge despite your dramatic complaints about how embarrassing it was. You remember eventually grinning right back at her anyway because she’d looked so impossibly proud of you.

Alexia clearly recognizes it too. You can see it in the way her back stiffens even more.

“Imagine my surprise when I saw this on the way to work yesterday,” your foster mother says lightly, shaking the paper once for emphasis. “Who would’ve thought our little girl was such a big star?”

Her gaze drifts over Alexia’s shoulder until it lands directly on you. Her lips curl slightly as she raises her eyebrows mockingly.

“Well,” she says sweetly, “at least now we understand why everyone suddenly wanted to play hero.”

Alexia moves forward so quickly it surprises even Irene and Patri.

One second she is standing between them and the rest of the team, controlled and rigid with anger, and the next she is directly in your foster mother’s space, forcing the woman to tilt her head back slightly just to maintain eye contact.

“She is not yours,” Alexia says, her voice low and sharp enough to slice cleanly through the entire pitch. “She has never been yours.”

She doesn’t shout. Doesn’t shove or push, even if every instinct in her body clearly wants to. She just stands there with the full weight of her captain’s authority pressing down around her, shoulders squared, expression cold in a way you have never seen directed at anyone before.

“I saw the way you treated her,” she continues, her tone turning even harsher. “Do not stand here and pretend you have ever cared about her.”

“Watch your tone,” the husband snaps suddenly, stepping forward as he yanks his wife backward by the arm hard enough to make her stumble.

Several of the girls tense immediately. Alexia doesn’t even flinch. If anything, she steps closer.

“No,” she says coldly, her eyes locking onto his with terrifying steadiness. “You watch your tone.”

The entire field has gone silent now.

Alexia’s voice never rises, but somehow that only makes it more frightening, every word deliberate and controlled in a way that feels infinitely more dangerous than yelling ever could.

“I could ruin you,” she says plainly. “I have eyewitnesses, doctor’s reports, photographs. I have everything.”

Your foster father’s expression flickers for the first time.

“The only reason I haven’t filed a police report already,” Alexia continues, “is because that girl over there is finally happy, and dragging her through a court case after everything she has survived would hurt her more than it would help her.”

Her jaw tightens visibly then. “But if either of you ever come near her again,” she says quietly, “I will make absolutely certain you regret it.”

The husband and wife both go still. Your foster mother swallows hard enough that you can see it even from a distance.

“You’re bluffing…” she whispers finally, though the confidence from earlier has completely drained from her face.

Alexia tilts her head slightly. “Do you really want to test that theory?” she asks. “Against me, my legal team, and my mountain of money?”

That lands. You see it right away in the way both their expressions shift, the realization finally settling in that this is not the scared little girl they used to corner in cramped hallways anymore, and more importantly, that she is no longer alone.

Alexia steps forward once more, fury simmering just beneath the surface now. “You disgust me,” she says, every word filled with quiet contempt. “Not only did you abuse her for years, but the second she experiences even an ounce of the joy and success she deserves from her hard work, you show up like vultures looking for more to take from a literal child.”

Her eyes narrow slightly as her lip rises in a snarl. “You are not worthy of cleaning the dirt off her boots.”

Beside her, Irene finally reaches out and catches Alexia lightly by the arm. “Ale,” she says quietly, her tone gentler now. “Security’s here. Let them handle it.”

Alexia’s chest rises sharply once before she finally breaks eye contact, glancing toward the three security guards now approaching quickly from the far entrance to the pitch.

“These people are trespassing,” she tells them, her tone clipped and commanding again as she gestures toward your foster parents. “Please remove them from the premises and take their photographs. They are never to be allowed back here again.”

“Sí, capitana,” one of the guards replies without hesitation. They move forward, taking hold of your foster parents’ arms despite their immediate protests.

“This is ridiculous-” your foster father starts loudly.

“You can’t seriously-” your foster mother adds over him.

But their voices sound weaker now, smaller.

The moment security begins escorting them away, Alexia immediately turns toward you. Like the rest of the world stops mattering the second they are no longer a direct threat.

You hadn’t even realized tears were running down your face until she reaches you, her expression changing the closer she gets, all that cold fury melting into something softer, steadier, protective in a way that nearly undoes you completely.

“Hey,” she says gently the moment she reaches you, both hands coming up to cradle your face without hesitation. “Hey, look at me.”

You try. God, you try. But your breathing is uneven now, panic and adrenaline crashing together so violently inside your chest that it feels impossible to steady yourself.

Alexia notices immediately. “Okay,” she murmurs softly, her thumbs brushing beneath your eyes as she guides you a little farther away from the fence. “That’s okay. Just breathe for me, mi amor. They’re gone now. You’re safe.”

Safe. The word hits something deep inside you, something bruised and terrified and far younger than sixteen.

Your hands grip the sleeves of her training jacket tightly before you even realize you’re doing it. Alexia lets you. Of course she does.

Behind her, you can vaguely hear Patri telling the coaches to cancel the rest of training while Irene quietly herds the younger girls farther away to give you privacy.

But all of that feels distant compared to the way Alexia is looking at you right now. Like you matter more than any of it. Like she would burn the entire world down before letting them touch you again.

Your fingers twist tighter into the sleeves of her jacket as another shaky breath catches painfully in your chest, the adrenaline still tearing through you too fast for your body to keep up with.

“I thought…” Your voice breaks, forcing you to swallow hard before trying again. “I thought they were going to take me from you.”

The words come spilling out after that, messy and frightened in a way you usually work so hard to hide.

“I don’t care about the money or whatever they wanted,” you rush out quietly, your eyes fixed somewhere near her collarbone because looking directly at her suddenly feels too vulnerable. “I don’t care about any of that, I just…” Your throat tightens again. “I just want to stay with you.”

Alexia’s expression changes so quickly it almost hurts to look at, something fierce and heartbroken flashing across her face all at once before she pulls you even closer against her, one arm wrapping tightly around your shoulders while her other hand cradles the back of your head protectively against her neck.

“Petita,” she says, her voice firm in a way that cuts cleanly through your panic. “You are not going anywhere.”

Her grip tightens slightly, like she’s emphasizing every word through touch as much as speech. “No one could ever take you away from me,” she says again, slower this time, making absolutely certain you hear her. “No one.”

Something inside you cracks open completely at that. You bury your face against her shoulder with a small, broken sound before you can stop yourself, your body finally giving in to the panic you’d been holding rigidly at bay since the moment you heard that terrible voice at the fence.

Alexia just holds you tighter as you sob into her neck. One of her hands slides slowly through your hair while the other stays firm against your back, grounding you against her as she presses a lingering kiss against the side of your head, then another, murmuring soft reassurances between them so quietly only you can hear.

“I’ve got you.”

“You’re safe.”

“You’re mine and you’re not going anywhere.”

Your breathing stays uneven for a while, hitching painfully every few seconds despite your attempts to calm down, but Alexia never rushes you, never loosens her hold or asks you to pull yourself together. She simply stands there in the middle of the training ground, holding you like protecting you is the most obvious thing in the world.

Eventually, slowly, your breathing begins to settle against her shoulder. And even then, she doesn’t let go.

You’re not someone who shows pain easily.

You learned a long time ago that discomfort was something to survive quietly, that weakness only became dangerous once other people could see it, so you got very good at swallowing it down before anyone noticed. Bruises, exhaustion, hunger, fear - it all gets tucked away behind clenched teeth and stubbornness until it eventually passes or breaks you, whichever comes first.

It is almost certainly a trauma response. You know that. And you are fairly confident your new therapist is eventually going to have a field day unpacking it once she notices the pattern, but thankfully the conversation hasn’t quite gotten there yet.

Still, now that your life has become something steadier, safer, warmer in ways you’re slowly beginning to trust, it feels like some hidden switch inside you has flipped without permission. Because suddenly there is someone you’re allowed to lean on. Someone who doesn’t recoil from it.

And apparently, once your brain realized that, it decided to overcorrect dramatically. Which is why being sick has transformed you into the most pathetic version of yourself imaginable.

Affection is not something Alexia withholds from you even under normal circumstances. She hugs you constantly, ruffles your hair whenever you walk past her, presses absent-minded kisses to your forehead while talking to you like it’s second nature.

But you almost never initiate it yourself. It’s not like you don’t want to. There’s just some deeply ingrained part of you that still feels like you need a reason first, an excuse solid enough to justify asking for comfort out loud.

So most of the time you wait for moments that already leave you cracked open enough to make the reaching unavoidable - after big matches when the adrenaline is still humming through your veins and you throw yourself into her arms without thinking, after nightmares when you wake up shaking and find yourself drifting toward her room before your pride can stop you, after injuries or panic attacks or bad days when the need outweighs the fear of being too much.

Those are the only times it feels acceptable to you, like there has to be a visible wound before you’re allowed to ask to be held. And even now, after everything, there is still a tiny hesitant part of you that waits for permission before reaching too far.

Except today you have an excuse. And you intend to exploit it fully.

You wake up feeling awful, your body heavy and achy beneath the blankets, your skin too hot while somehow still leaving you shivering hard enough to make your teeth chatter slightly.

By the time you make it downstairs, wrapped dramatically in one of Alexia’s oversized hoodies, you apparently look rough enough that Alexia takes one glance at you from the kitchen and immediately abandons the coffee she’s making.

“Oh, no,” she murmurs, crossing the room quickly.

Her palm settles against your forehead first, cool enough that you practically melt into it on instinct, your eyes fluttering shut as your overheated body chases the relief.

“You need to go back to bed,” she says gently, her brows pulling together in concern. “You have a fever.”

You lean farther into her hand shamelessly, your body practically draped against hers now as she moves her other hand to the back of your neck, checking there too with the same careful focus she uses for injuries.

“Mhm,” she hums softly. “Definitely a fever.”

You groan weakly in response, mostly for dramatic effect.

“No training today,” she continues firmly, already slipping fully into caretaker mode. “Your body is fighting something and you need to rest, okay?”

Instead of answering properly, you let out a miserable little whine and throw your entire body weight against her dramatically, nearly folding yourself straight into her chest.

Alexia immediately smiles, because despite your theatrics, she knows exactly what this is.

The clinginess. The deliberate helplessness. The fact that you are absolutely milking this illness for every ounce of affection possible.

And unfortunately for her, she finds it deeply endearing.

“Ay, petita,” she laughs softly, pressing a kiss against your sweaty temple before rubbing a soothing hand up and down your back. “Come on. Let’s get you back upstairs.”

You make absolutely no effort to move. In fact, you go limp on purpose, forcing her to support most of your weight while you cling dramatically to her shoulders like a very sickly koala.

Alexia snorts out a laugh. “You are unbelievable,” she mutters affectionately, half carrying and half dragging you toward the stairs while you continue pretending your illness has rendered your legs entirely useless.

“If I have to go back to bed,” you mumble against her shoulder, “can I at least lay in your bed?”

Alexia glances down at you suspiciously. “Why do you want to be in my bed?” she asks, amused already. “Is something wrong with yours?”

You shake your head quickly, suddenly a little embarrassed now that you’ve actually said it out loud, but also painfully aware that in your current fragile, feverish state, Alexia would probably hand you the moon if you asked convincingly enough.

“Noooo,” you whine softly. “But yours is more comfy.” You tilt your head back just enough to hit her with your best miserable puppy eyes. “And I think it’ll make me feel better.”

Alexia stares at you for a long moment, clearly trying and failing not to smile too much.

“You’re such a princess,” she informs you finally, though her voice is fond enough to ruin the accusation entirely.

“Please?” You grin weakly.

She shakes her head affectionately, already defeated. “Okay,” she sighs dramatically. “But you go upstairs now and get cozy while I bring you medicine and a cold cloth, alright?”

You nod immediately, suddenly cured enough to become energetic again as you peel yourself off her and start hurrying toward the stairs.

Well “hurrying” might be generous. You bound up the first three steps with surprising enthusiasm before your feverish body immediately reminds you that you are, in fact, sick, your legs turning heavy and achy fast enough that you slow to a sluggish climb while Alexia watches from below with deeply entertained concern.

“There she is,” she calls up dryly. “Miraculous recovery lasted almost seven seconds.”

You glare weakly at her over the railing. “I’m fighting for my life.”

Alexia laughs softly to herself as she watches you continue your painfully dramatic ascent upstairs.

You enter her room slowly, pausing briefly in the doorway as your eyes sweep across the familiar space with a strange sort of caution, like you’re stepping into somewhere important.

You’ve been in here before, of course. Tentatively wandering in while she finished getting ready in the bathroom, sitting carefully on the edge of her bed while she did her makeup and talked to you about training or school or whatever ridiculous thing Alba had texted her that morning. Sometimes you would lay on the rug near the window while she folded laundry, listening to her hum absentmindedly under her breath while she worked.

But you’ve never really been in here without her.

Privacy is still something that feels oddly sacred to you, mostly because before Alexia you’d never actually had any. Bedrooms had always been shared or temporary or entered without knocking, your belongings touched and moved around whenever someone else felt like it.

So even now, after finally feeling settled, you try carefully not to intrude on spaces that belong entirely to her, the same way she has always been so deliberate about respecting yours.

But now you have permission and apparently being feverish has dissolved whatever remaining boundaries your pride normally clings to.

You wander farther into the room slowly, your neck craning slightly as you take everything in with fresh eyes. The large landscape paintings above her bed, all soft blues and golds and coastlines. The oversized cream chair tucked near the windows where she sometimes sits to read scouting reports. The walk-in closet slightly ajar, revealing rows and rows of neatly organized clothes, more than you think you could realistically wear in five lifetimes.

Your gaze drifts toward the chest of drawers against the far wall, lined with framed photographs.

There’s the picture of Alexia and Alba as children missing half their front teeth while grinning at the camera with grass stains all over their knees. A photo of her father with his arm around her shoulders that you’ve seen before because she pauses at it sometimes when she thinks no one notices. Another of her mom and Alba smiling on some beach vacation somewhere impossibly beautiful.

Then your eyes catch on one you don’t recognize. You stop moving entirely.

It’s a picture Alba took after the Clàssic a few weeks ago, sometime during the celebration after the final whistle when everyone had still been riding the high of the win. Alexia’s arm is wrapped securely around your shoulders while she presses a kiss against your forehead, and you’re looking directly at the camera with this huge unguarded grin that almost startles you to look at now, because you look so undeniably happy in it.

Happy and safe and loved.

You stare at the photograph for a long moment, your chest tightening strangely when you realize she didn’t just save it on her phone somewhere. She printed it, framed it, and put it here. In her room. Among the people she loves most.

Your stomach erupts into butterflies so violently it’s honestly embarrassing, and you quickly force yourself to look away before your tired brain spirals into something unbearably emotional about it.

You eventually drift toward the bed and sit down carefully near the edge.

It’s perfectly made, obviously, the duvet smooth and crisp enough that it looks like it belongs in a magazine because perfectionist Alexia is physically incapable of leaving a bed messy.

You sit there for a second debating with yourself. Going on the bed feels normal enough. Going under the covers somehow feels far more intimate. Too much, maybe.

Your brain briefly considers staying politely on top of the blankets like a civilized person. Then another violent shiver wracks through your body hard enough to make your teeth chatter.

Yeah. Forget civilized.

You pull back the duvet clumsily and shimmy beneath the soft sheets with absolutely zero dignity, immediately sinking into warmth that smells faintly like Alexia’s detergent and vanilla and something else distinctly her. You let out a small, involuntary sigh the second your head settles against her pillow.

A few minutes later, Alexia nudges the bedroom door open carefully with her hip, balancing a steaming mug of tea in one hand while the other holds a damp cloth, a bottle of medicine tucked securely beneath her arm.

She pauses when she sees you fully cocooned beneath her blankets, only the top half of your face visible above the duvet, your fever-flushed cheeks pressed into her pillow. The look that crosses her face then is so openly fond and tender it makes you blink.

“What?” you mumble suspiciously, your voice rough and scratchy from sleep and fever as you squint at her from beneath the blankets.

“Nothing,” she says quickly, though the smile tugging at her mouth makes it obvious it’s absolutely not nothing. She shakes her head lightly as she walks toward the bed. “You’re just very cute, petita, and I love you a lot.”

Something warm and embarrassingly emotional unfurls in your chest immediately.

“I love you too,” you mumble back automatically, already burrowing deeper into the pillow afterward like hiding inside her bedding might somehow protect you from the vulnerability of saying it out loud so easily now.

Alexia’s expression softens even further at that, though thankfully she decides not to make a big deal out of it. Instead she sets the tea carefully on the bedside table before moving closer, one hand sliding gently behind your shoulders.

“Okay, sit up for me a little,” she murmurs.

You immediately groan in protest. “Noooo.”

“Yes,” she counters calmly, already helping guide you upright despite your dramatic suffering. “Medicine first, then you can go back to being tragically ill.”

You grumble something deeply pathetic under your breath while she laughs quietly, steadying you carefully against her chest as she hands you the pills and then the tea.

“Take it, okay?” she says gently. “It’ll help with the fever.”

This time you obey without argument, mostly because your head feels like it’s being split open from the inside and your bones ache in a way that makes existing feel exhausting.

Once you finish, Alexia takes the mug from your hands and helps lower you carefully back against the pillows, fussing with them afterward until they’re arranged exactly how she wants, fluffing one beneath your neck before tucking the duvet securely beneath your chin.

“There,” she murmurs approvingly. “Better.”

Her fingers brush gently through your hair, sweeping the damp strands back from your forehead before she places the cold cloth there with careful hands. Relief floods through you instantly. You let out a small sigh, your eyes falling closed as the coolness settles against your overheated skin.

“Gràcies,” you mumble weakly.

“Of course, bebé.”

You stay still for a moment after that, hovering somewhere between awake and asleep while the medicine slowly begins dulling the sharp edges of your fever.

Eventually you feel the mattress shift beside you and your eyes shoot open. Alexia pauses halfway into climbing onto the bed, clearly catching the surprise on your face.

“Is it okay if I lay with you?” she asks softly, one knee still pressed into the mattress while she watches you carefully. “Or would you rather rest alone?”

“Yes,” you answer so quickly it almost overlaps her question. Then you blink, suddenly aware of how eager that sounded. “I mean…” you mumble awkwardly, tugging the blanket slightly higher. “It’s your bed.”

Alexia smiles, warmth flickering across her face at your obvious embarrassment, but mercifully decides not to tease you for it. Instead she settles beside you carefully, laying on her side with one arm tucked beneath her head so she can look at you properly.

Her hand reaches out to adjust the cold cloth slipping crookedly across your forehead, her fingertips brushing softly along your cheek afterward. You lean into the touch without even thinking about it, fever and exhaustion stripping away whatever pride normally slows you down. The corners of her mouth twitch upward faintly at that.

“Come here, carinyo.” She opens her arms toward you slightly and that’s all the invitation you need.

You immediately curl toward her, pressing yourself against her chest while she wraps both arms securely around you, one hand sliding up into your hair while the other settles warmly between your shoulder blades. Somewhere in the process you tug the now-warm compress off your forehead and let it fall forgotten off the bed because honestly this feels infinitely more healing anyway.

You burrow closer instinctively, your cheek pressed against the soft fabric of her shirt while her fingers continue moving slowly through your hair over and over again, rhythmic and soothing in a way that makes every tight, aching part of you slowly start to loosen.

You breathe in deeply. Vanilla lotion. The soft floral scent of her perfume lingering faintly against her skin. The smell fills your lungs and something in your body finally unclenches completely, your shoulders relaxing against her for the first time all day as exhaustion begins pulling you steadily toward sleep.

Above you, Alexia presses another gentle kiss into your hair and tightens her arms around you slightly, like she can physically hold the fever away if she tries hard enough.

“Sleep, mi vida,” she murmurs against the top of your head, her voice warm and impossibly gentle. “I’ve got you.”

Words of affection are not something Alexia ever withholds from you either.

She tells you she loves you every single day with the same easy certainty other people use to comment on the weather. She calls you every nickname imaginable, each one somehow sounding entirely natural coming from her mouth - petita, bebé, amor meu, carinyo, mi vida. Sometimes she invents new ones on the spot just to make you roll your eyes dramatically at her.

And every single time, something warm blooms inside your chest so quickly it almost hurts. You’ve never really had names for her in return. Not beyond Ale. Because anything else has always felt too big somehow, too vulnerable to say out loud when you still aren’t entirely sure what you’re allowed to call someone who has become this important to you.

But apparently your feverish, exhausted, emotionally defenseless brain has decided that problem no longer matters.

Because right as sleep finally starts dragging you fully under, your body warm and heavy against her chest while her fingers continue combing slowly through your hair, the words slip out completely unprompted.

Soft and sleepy. Barely more than a whisper.

“T’estimo, mama.”

You are already too far gone to really process what you’ve said. Too exhausted to feel the way Alexia’s entire body stills beneath you. Too close to sleep to notice the sharp inhale she takes, or the way her hand pauses in your hair for just half a second before trembling slightly when it starts moving again.

You don’t see the tears immediately gathering in her eyes either, bright and sudden and entirely vulnerable in a way almost no one ever gets to witness from her.

For a long moment, she simply looks down at you curled trustingly against her chest, your breathing finally slow and even now, your feverish face relaxed in sleep while one of your hands still grips loosely at the fabric of her shirt like even unconscious you want to stay close.

Something in Alexia’s expression breaks open completely then. Like some final wall inside her quietly giving way. She lowers her head and presses another kiss into your hair, more delicate than any she’s ever given you before, lingering there for an extra second as her eyes close briefly.

“T’estimo, filla,” she whispers back, her voice thick with emotion. “Moltíssim.” [I love you too, daughter. So, so much.]

You should have known right from the start of the night that it was going to end badly. In hindsight, the warning signs had been everywhere.

You had just won the league, the locker room still buzzing with the kind of happiness that only comes after months of work finally paying off. Music blasted from someone’s speaker, bottles of water had already become makeshift champagne replacements, and every few seconds another player would get dragged into a celebratory hug whether they wanted one or not.

Naturally, Alexia was attempting to maintain some semblance of order. Which, considering the circumstances, was a completely hopeless endeavor.

“We have a Champions League semifinal in one week,” she reminded everyone for what was probably the third or fourth time that evening, standing in the middle of the locker room with her arms folded across her chest. “So celebrate, enjoy yourselves, have fun, but please try not to do anything stupid.”

Her gaze landed directly on Pina and Cata.

Pina immediately looked offended. “Why are you looking at me?”

“Because speaking from experience,” Alexia replied without missing a beat, “you’re usually involved when something stupid happens… CATAchaça and PINAcolada.”

The locker room erupted into laughter while Pina clutched her chest dramatically. Cata just pointed and laughed, not even trying to defend herself.

Alexia remained completely unmoved. “One week,” she repeated firmly. “That is all I am asking for.”

The problem was that while her attention was fixed on the usual suspects, she was completely missing the real danger. Because on the opposite side of the room, Vicky and Serra had already made eye contact and were wiggling their eyebrows at each other conspiratorially.

Some sort of plan was already forming. You saw it happen and maybe you should have been concerned but instead, you laughed. Which was probably your first mistake.

By the time the official celebrations begin winding down and players start splitting into smaller groups, you have forgotten about the look they shared earlier. You’re standing near your locker packing the last of your gear into your bag when Vicky suddenly appears on one side of you and Serra appears on the other, the coordinated maneuver suspicious enough that alarm bells should probably start ringing immediately.

“We’re going out tonight.”

You blink at them. “What?”

“We’re going out tonight,” Vicky repeats, as though she has just informed you of something obvious.

Your eyes widen instantly. “But Ale just said-”

“What Ale doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” Vicky interrupts, lowering her voice mischievously as a deeply concerning grin spreads across her face.

Beside her, Serra nods with complete confidence. “Exactly.”

You stare at both of them. “That feels very much like the opposite of how that works.”

Neither of them looks remotely convinced.

You hesitate, your mind immediately jumping to all the reasons this is probably a bad idea, the most obvious being that Alexia would absolutely hate it. But when you look between them, both of them watching you expectantly, something warmer pushes against your reservations.

Over the past several months, your friendship with them had grown in ways you never really expected. What had started as occasional lunch invitations and persistent attempts to drag you into conversations had gradually become coffee runs after training, afternoons at the beach, movie nights, and group chats that somehow accumulated hundreds of messages while you were asleep.

For the first time in your life, friendship felt easy.

You didn’t spend every interaction waiting for the other shoe to drop or wondering if people were only being kind because they felt obligated to be. When Clara texted you to come get coffee or Vicky showed up at your door demanding you go watch the sunset with them, it was because they genuinely wanted you there.

They aren’t including you because Alexia had asked them to. They didn’t keep you around out of pity or obligation. Somewhere along the way they had simply become your friends, and you had become theirs.

Maybe that’s why saying yes feels so important.

Because when you look at them now, both practically vibrating with excitement as they wait for your answer, you can’t help feeling excited too. It feels good to belong somewhere, to be wanted without having to earn it first, and for a girl who had spent most of her life expecting connections to disappear the moment she relaxed, that feeling was still a little bit miraculous.

“Okay,” you finally say, a smile spreading across your face despite yourself. “Yeah. Let’s do it.”

The reaction is immediate. Both of them cheer loud enough that several nearby teammates turn to look.

“I’ll go tell Ale,” you say, already turning toward where Alexia is finishing an interview with club media.

You make it exactly three steps before Vicky grabs your arm. “No.”

You look back questioningly, “Why not?”

The look Vicky and Serra exchange makes your stomach drop. Because whenever those two share a glance like that, it usually means they’re about to do something incredibly stupid. And worse, they’re usually very proud of it.

“Because,” Vicky explains patiently, like she’s speaking to a particularly slow child, “if we tell her we’re going out, she is never gonna let you come.”

You huff at that, a little embarrassed to be reminded of your age in front of your cool older teammates.

You’re only a few weeks away from seventeen, but unfortunately that doesn’t seem to matter to anyone. Being the youngest player on the team means everyone treats you like some combination of little sister, mascot, and their mildly accident-prone child. Being known as Alexia’s kid - whatever that meant - certainly doesn’t help matters either.

“It’s all good though,” Serra says, clapping a hand onto your shoulder. “We have a plan.” That sentence immediately makes you nervous. “We’re going to tell her we’re having a sleepover at Vicky’s.”

You stare at both of them. Neither looks remotely concerned by how terrible that plan sounds. Eventually, against your better judgment, you nod and allow yourself to be dragged across the room toward your guardian.

“Hermanaaaa,” Vicky calls dramatically as soon as she’s within earshot.

Alexia looks up with immediate suspicion. You watch her eyes narrow before they slide past Vicky’s shoulder and land directly on you. The look she gives you is unmistakable: What are they doing?

You can only shrug helplessly and point toward Vicky.

Alexia somehow grows even more suspicious and Vicky throws an arm around your shoulders before she can ask questions.

“So,” she begins casually, which is already a terrible sign, “Clara and I were thinking that since we just won the league and everything, maybe we could have a little sleepover tonight. At my apartment.”

Alexia says nothing so Vicky continues talking. Which is another terrible sign.

“You know, just movies and junk food and celebrating.”

Still nothing. Alexia’s gaze slowly shifts toward you. You immediately become fascinated by a nearby wall.

“Uh-huh,” she says.

“We’ll be very responsible.”

“Mm.”

“And try to go to bed early?”

“Mhmm.”

Vicky is starting to sweat. You can tell. Unfortunately, Alexia can too.

The silence stretches long enough to become uncomfortable before Alexia finally sighs and rubs a hand across her forehead.

“Fine.”

Vicky’s entire face lights up. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

Both Vicky and Serra let out triumphant cheers and jump around you.

“But you bring her back in one piece, you hear me?” Alexia says, pointing a warning finger at them.

The girls are already celebrating too hard to listen. Alexia watches them for a moment before her expression softens slightly.

Truthfully, she isn’t entirely convinced this is a good idea. You usually crash hard after big matches, especially emotional ones, and she can already see the exhaustion lurking beneath your excitement. But at the same time, seeing you build friendships with people your own age has been one of her favorite things to watch this season.

For a long time, your entire world had revolved around her. And while Alexia secretly loves that more than she should, she also knows it isn’t healthy for a teenager to spend every waking moment following a thirty-two-year-old woman around. You deserve friends. You deserve people who understand what it’s like to be your age. You deserve a life that exists outside of her.

So she ignores the small voice telling her this is probably a terrible idea.

Vicky and Clara sprint off to collect their things before she can change her mind.

You linger for a moment after the girls disappear, your feet rooted to the floor even as the rest of the room continues moving around you. Alexia notices immediately, as she always does, her attention finding you as naturally as breathing.

“You sure you’re okay going to Vicky’s?” she asks, her voice softening slightly now that the others are out of earshot. “You know you’re allowed to say no, right? They won’t be upset if you’d rather come home.”

The concern is genuine. If you told her right now that you wanted to leave with her instead, she would text Vicky an apology and have you in the car before either of them could protest.

You nod, a small smile tugging at the corner of your mouth. “Yeah, I know.” You glance toward the door where your friends disappeared. “I think it’ll be fun though.”

Alexia studies your face for another moment, making sure you’re telling the truth and not just agreeing because you think it’s what you’re supposed to do. Whatever she finds seems to satisfy her because her shoulders relax and a smile slowly appears.

“Okay then,” she says warmly. “Have fun, and be good.”

Before you can respond, she pulls you into a hug, one arm wrapping securely around your shoulders while she presses a kiss to the top of your head. The affection is so familiar now that you instinctively lean into it.

“I’m very proud of you, petita,” she murmurs.

Something in her voice makes you look up. Her eyes are a little shinier than usual when she pulls back, her hands settling on your shoulders as she holds you at arm’s length for a second, like she’s trying to memorize the moment.

“Your first league trophy,” she says softly, a smile spreading across her face. “I know it’ll be the first of many for you, but the first one is always special, no?”

The pride in her expression is almost overwhelming.

“I still remember mine,” she continues with a quiet laugh. “You spend years dreaming about it and then suddenly it’s real and you’re standing there holding it thinking, that’s it? That’s what all those years felt like?”

You laugh softly.

Alexia’s smile widens.

“Maybe tomorrow we celebrate properly,” she suggests. “Just us. We could get a pizza and take it to the beach, sit by the water for a few hours.”

She says it so hopefully and there is so much pride behind it that your stomach twists painfully with guilt.

Because she’s looking at you like you’ve hung the moon. Because she’s trusting you. And you’re lying to her.

“Yeah,” you say quietly. “I’d like that a lot.”

Something softens immediately in her expression. “Good.”

She pulls you into another hug before you can say anything else, holding you close for a moment while she presses another kiss into your hair.

And as you hug her back, surrounded by her warmth and her pride and her absolute certainty that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be, the guilt settles a little heavier in your chest than it did before.

------

The guilt doesn’t disappear entirely. It just gets drowned out.

First by laughter then by music then by the simple, unfamiliar joy of being sixteen years old and surrounded by people who genuinely want you there.

It's difficult to dwell on guilt when you’re doubled over laughing in the middle of Vicky’s apartment while Serra attempts to explain why her outfit absolutely qualifies as “subtle.”

The evening starts innocently enough.

There are bags of chips spread across the coffee table, half-empty boxes of fries balanced on the kitchen counter, and a movie playing on the television that nobody is actually watching because the three of you keep talking over it every thirty seconds.

And technically - technically - nobody has lied yet. You are at Vicky’s apartment. You are having a sleepover. There is a movie playing.

If Alexia suddenly called right now, every word Vicky told her would be true. Mostly. That technicality makes you feel significantly better.

At least until Clara disappears into the kitchen and returns carrying three drinks. Your eyes immediately narrow. Vicky immediately starts grinning.

She places one in front of you before settling back onto the couch. You stare at it for a second. The drink itself isn’t particularly intimidating, but it’s still enough to make you hesitate.

You’ve never really been interested in alcohol before. Between football and school and trying to survive the rest of your life, it simply never felt important enough to think about.

But tonight feels different. It’s not like anyone is pressuring you and you’re not trying to impress anybody. You’re just sitting on a couch with your friends after winning the league and for once there isn’t a single responsibility demanding your attention.

So when Clara lifts her glass toward you, you find yourself lifting yours too.

The first sip makes you wrinkle your nose. The second is considerably better. By the third, you’re laughing again as Vicky dramatically insists the drink tastes sophisticated while Clara informs her that nothing containing that much soda and fruit juice qualifies as sophisticated.

By the time you’re piling into a taxi half an hour later, a warm pleasant feeling has begun spreading through your chest and shoulders, softening the edges of everything around you.

The city lights seem brighter. The music seems better. Your teammates seem even funnier than usual.

Vicky spends most of the ride talking with her hands while Clara argues passionately about something neither of them can fully remember anymore. You jump into the conversation whenever a thought occurs to you, and almost every time you do, the entire backseat dissolves into laughter.

You find yourself smiling constantly.

It’s not even because of the drinks but because you’re happy. Because for the first time in your life, celebrating success doesn’t feel lonely.

For so many years every achievement had been followed by the same thing: going home, sitting quietly with it by yourself, and trying not to think too hard about how nobody was waiting there to be proud of you.

Tonight is different. Tonight there are people beside you who understand exactly how hard you’ve worked for this. People who were there for the early mornings and the extra sessions and the tears and the setbacks. People who know exactly what this trophy cost.

And they want to celebrate it with you.

The realization settles warmly in your chest as the taxi turns a corner and the club finally comes into view.

The place is absolutely packed. Music pours into the street every time the front doors open, bass vibrating through the pavement beneath your feet while colorful lights flash across the crowd gathered outside. A line stretches halfway down the block, groups of people talking and laughing beneath the glow of the signs overhead.

You can’t stop yourself from staring. Even from here you can feel the energy rolling out of the building.

Vicky notices immediately, a grin spreads across her face. “First club?”

You shoot her an unimpressed look. “You know it’s my first club.”

“Fair.” She looks entirely too pleased by that fact.

The three of you make your way toward the entrance, weaving through clusters of people who instantly begin recognizing them. Congratulations are called out from several directions. Someone asks for a photo. Another person shouts something about the league title that makes Clara laugh. None of it seems unusual to either of them.

When you finally reach the front, the bouncer takes one look at Vicky and immediately breaks into a smile. “Well, if it isn’t our champions.”

Vicky bows dramatically. “Thank you, thank you.”

He rolls his eyes before stepping aside. “Congratulations on the league. Let’s bring home that European title too, ok?”

As he opens the rope, his gaze drifts briefly toward you. Recognition flickers across his face and his eyebrows rise slightly.

“Look at that,” he says with an amused smile. “They even brought Alexia’s kid.”

Your stomach does a strange little flip and heat rushes to your face. Because apparently even here, miles away from the training ground and Alexia’s watchful eyes, everyone still knows exactly who you are. Or maybe more accurately - whose you are.

Before you can formulate any sort of response, Vicky hooks her arm through yours and begins dragging you toward the entrance.

The club is unlike anything you’ve ever experienced before. Hundreds of people move together beneath flashing lights that change color every few seconds, washing the crowd in alternating shades of blue and pink and purple. The bass is so loud you can feel it vibrating through your ribs, while somewhere above the dance floor a DJ stands on an elevated platform, one arm raised triumphantly as the crowd roars back at him.

It’s overwhelming and somehow energizing at the same time.

You’ve never really been the type for house parties, partly because nobody ever invited you to them and partly because spending your weekends training had always felt more important than sneaking around looking for trouble. Left entirely to your own devices, you probably never would have found yourself somewhere like this.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on who was telling the story, you have Vicky and Clara.

The two of them immediately hook their arms through yours as soon as they notice your attention wandering, creating a human chain as they guide you through the crowd.

“We’re not losing you in here,” Clara informs you.

“Stay between us, rookie.” Vicky squeezes your arm affectionately.

The three of you weave through the sea of people until you finally reach the bar, where Vicky turns toward you with an expectant look. “Do you want water?”

You glance at the drinks everyone around you seems to be holding.

“No,” you decide. “I’ll just have whatever you guys are having.”

Vicky’s grin immediately becomes concerning. “Excellent choice.”

It turns out their choice is tequila. A decision you regret almost instantly.

The shot burns all the way down, your face scrunching up dramatically as you cough and grab for the nearest glass of water.

“Oh my god.” Your eyes begin watering immediately. “That is disgusting.”

They double over laughing while you glare at them through watery eyes.

“You looked so confident,” Clara manages between laughs.

“I was confident.”

“Clearly...”

“I thought it would taste better.”

That only makes them laugh harder.

Vicky slings an arm around your shoulders. “We’re teaching you how to do that properly.”

“No.”

“Hmmm… yes!”

She and Clara exchange another one of those eyebrow wiggles that have never once led to anything good.

You immediately decide you don’t want to know what they’re planning.

Fortunately, the conversation dies when a new song starts and the crowd erupts around you. Vicky lets out an excited gasp. Clara points dramatically toward the dance floor. And before you can object, both of them are dragging you back into the crowd.

The next hour passes in a blur of music and laughter.

Your hands are in the air more often than not. Your hair sticks to your face. Your cheeks hurt from smiling.

At one point Vicky nearly falls over trying to spin Clara. At another, Clara accidentally elbows three people around them and spends the next five minutes denying it happened despite multiple eyewitnesses.

You laugh until your stomach hurts. You dance until your legs ache. And somewhere in the middle of all of it, surrounded by music and flashing lights and your friends singing lyrics they barely know, a warm feeling settles in your chest.

For so much of your life, happiness had always come with conditions attached to it. There was always something waiting on the other side - a problem to solve, a consequence to avoid, a voice reminding you not to get too comfortable because good things never seemed to last very long.

But tonight feels different. Tonight there is only the music vibrating through your ribs, Clara nearly losing a shoe in the crowd, Vicky screaming every chorus directly into your ear, and the strange, wonderful realization that nobody here expects anything from you besides showing up and having fun.

You think maybe this is what being normal feels like. The thought makes you smile.

Vicky is in the middle of passionately explaining why she should be the team DJ and not Patri when her eyes suddenly slide past your shoulder.

Her sentence cuts off and her expression changes. A grin begins spreading across her face.

“Oh.”

“Oh what?” you ask.

Vicky doesn’t answer. Instead, she grabs your arm and physically pulls you closer, lowering her voice like she’s about to reveal classified information.

“Don’t look now,” she says. “But there is a really pretty girl staring at you by the bar.”

Which, naturally, guarantees that you immediately look. Your head whips around so fast you nearly give yourself whiplash.

Vicky lets out a horrified groan. “Oh my God.”

“What?” you ask defensively.

“You looked!”

“Well how else am I supposed to know what you’re talking about?”

Vicky presses a hand dramatically to her forehead. “Young padawan,” she says solemnly, “I have so much to teach you.”

You ignore her and glance back toward the bar. The girl is still looking at you and now she knows you’ve caught her. Heat rushes into your face.

She smiles. You smile back.

The girl lifts her hand in a small wave. Your stomach immediately does something deeply embarrassing.

Beside you, Vicky makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a proud parent. “Oh she’s cute.”

“Vicky please stop.

“And she’s definitely looking at you.”

You roll your eyes but can’t stop smiling. Unfortunately, that only encourages them.

For the next several minutes they proceed to hype themselves into a frenzy while you repeatedly insist that you are absolutely not going to walk across a crowded club and introduce yourself to a stranger.

Eventually Clara has enough and physically places both hands on your shoulders and turns you toward the bar.

“Go.” Clara punctuates the command with a gentle shove between your shoulder blades before you can come up with another excuse.

You stumble forward a step and immediately turn back to glare at them. “Traitors.”

Neither of them looks remotely guilty. In fact, they look delighted.

“Good luck!” Vicky calls after you, cupping her hands around her mouth like she’s sending a soldier off to war.

Clara is laughing too hard to contribute anything useful, though she does give you an enthusiastic thumbs-up that somehow makes the entire situation feel even more humiliating.

You spend the walk to the bar trying desperately to remember how normal human beings are supposed to interact with attractive strangers.

Unfortunately, this is not a skill you’ve ever really had reason to develop. Football has always made sense to you. Defensive structures make sense. Pressing triggers make sense. The correct weight and angle of a through ball make sense.

This? This feels significantly more complicated.

By the time you reach the bar, you’ve completely forgotten whatever plan you had managed to come up with.

“Hi…” you manage awkwardly, rubbing the back of your neck as you stop beside her.

The girl’s entire face brightens immediately. Up close she’s somehow even prettier than she looked from across the room. Her features are softer than you’d realized beneath the flashing club lights, and she looks younger too, probably close to your own age rather than the university student you’d imagined from a distance.

“Hi,” she says warmly, like she’s genuinely happy you walked over. “I’m Lia.”

You tell her your name.

Her smile widens. “I know.”

That should probably register as strange. It should probably make you wonder how she knows who you are. Instead, your brain becomes completely occupied with the fact that she’s smiling at you.

The conversation starts easily after that, which surprises you almost as much as it relieves you. You’d expected awkward pauses and forced small talk, but somehow neither ever arrives. Lia has an effortless way of keeping conversations moving, jumping between topics so naturally that before you realize it the two of you have been talking for nearly half an hour.

Even more surprisingly, she somehow gets you talking. Usually you’re content to let other people carry conversations while you listen from the sidelines, but Lia keeps asking questions that are easy to answer and then actually seems interested in what you have to say. Before long you’re talking about music and school and football and the absurd things your teammates do on a daily basis.

Somewhere along the way she offers to buy you a drink. You agree without thinking much about it. Then later she offers another. And later still, another.

You don’t really notice the pattern forming. You’re too busy enjoying yourself.

The warm buzz that had started earlier is becoming stronger now, making everything feel a little softer around the edges. The music seems better. Your jokes seem funnier. Lia’s smile seems brighter every time she directs it your way.

Which is probably why it takes you much longer than it should to notice when the questions start to shift, drifting away from the playful, harmless things you’d been talking about earlier.

At first it doesn’t seem strange.

“So what’s it actually like playing for Barça?”

You shrug and answer. You tell her about training and travel and how surreal it still feels sometimes when you walk into the locker room and realize you’re surrounded by the players you idolized as a child.

She laughs in all the right places. Nods attentively. Seems genuinely interested. A few minutes later she asks another question.

“What’s Alexia really like?”

That one feels normal too. Everybody asks that. Fans ask it. Reporters ask it. Even your classmates ask it whenever they find out who you live with. Any connection with one of the most famous footballers in the world means that sooner or later every conversation circles back to her.

So you smile and say, “She’s great.”

Lia laughs. “That’s the boring answer.”

You grin despite yourself. “She’s also bossy.”

“There we go.”

You tell a story about Alexia confiscating your phone during a movie because you’d been playing some ‘stupid game’ instead of paying attention. Lia laughs hard enough that you find yourself relaxing again.

For a few moments the conversation continues comfortably. Then Lia tilts her head.

“She’s basically your mom, right?”

You blink. The question catches you so off guard that you genuinely don’t know how to answer for a second.

“What?”

Lia shrugs lightly before taking another sip of her drink. “I mean, everyone says you’re her daughter.”

You let out an awkward laugh. “No.”

The answer comes automatically. It’s the same answer you’ve given a dozen times before. But this time you hesitate. Because that isn’t entirely true either... not anymore. Not after everything that’s happened.

Not after hospital rooms and physical therapy appointments and sleepless nights spent sitting beside your bed. Not after being tucked into blankets when you were sick or picked up from school when it rained or scolded for skipping breakfast before training. Not after being loved so thoroughly and consistently that somewhere along the way you stopped feeling like a guest in her life and started feeling like you belonged there.

The simple answer should still be no. And yet it doesn’t feel quite that simple anymore.

“Well…” You run your fingers through your hair awkwardly. “Not really.”

Lia leans forward slightly. “Not really?”

You shrug. “I live with her. She’s my guardian.”

The words feel strangely inadequate. Like they leave out all the important parts.

Because guardian is technically correct. Guardian is what the paperwork says. Guardian is what the lawyers and social workers and club officials call her. But guardian doesn’t really explain why she kisses your forehead when you’re tired or why she still checks that you’ve eaten after training or why hearing her call you petita feels more like home than any place you’ve ever lived.

Still, it’s easier than trying to explain all of that to a stranger.

Something flickers across Lia’s face. It’s gone so quickly you almost miss it. Interest.

But not the warm kind she’d been looking at you with earlier. It’s sharper and more focused. Like a person who has just stumbled across a detail they weren’t expecting and suddenly wants to know everything about it.

A small knot has begun forming somewhere deep in your stomach, tightening a little more every time she asks another question.

At first you try to ignore it. Maybe it’s the alcohol or you’re overthinking things or maybe you’re just not used to talking to pretty girls and your brain is finding new and creative ways to embarrass itself. But the feeling refuses to go away and the questions keep coming.

She doesn’t ask about music anymore or about school or even really about you. The questions keep circling back to Alexia, to the team, to your life in ways that feel increasingly specific.

You try to pivot and move the conversation forward, but it’s almost like each answer is leading to the next question rather than satisfying it.

You glance down at your drink then back at Lia then down again. Trying to figure out exactly when the evening changed. Trying to figure out why you suddenly feel so exposed. Like you’ve accidentally said too much. Like you’ve wandered into a conversation without understanding what it was actually about.

The music feels louder now. The lights harsher. The alcohol no longer warm and pleasant but heavy and dull. And for the first time since you sat down at the bar, you find yourself wishing you were back on the dance floor with your friends.

Because this doesn’t feel like flirting anymore. It feels like an interview.

You glance around the room, your eyes moving over the sea of strangers and flashing lights until they finally land on Vicky across the dance floor.

The panic on your face must be far more obvious than you realize because her smile instantly vanishes at your eye contact. One second she’s laughing at something Clara is saying, and the next her attention is completely focused on you. Her eyebrows draw together slightly as she follows your gaze back toward the table, taking in Lia, your half-finished drink, and the uncomfortable way you’re sitting in your chair.

You watch understanding settle across her face.

Without hesitation, she reaches out and grabs Clara’s arm. Clara stumbles slightly, looking annoyed for all of half a second before Vicky points in your direction. Whatever expression is on her face must explain everything because Clara’s posture immediately changes too.

The two of them start quickly moving toward you. The relief that floods your chest is so immediate it almost makes you dizzy.

“There you are!” Vicky announces brightly the moment she reaches the table, sounding exactly like someone who has been searching for you for hours rather than dancing twenty feet away the entire time.

The lie is so blatant that under normal circumstances you might have laughed. Right now you’re too grateful to care.

“We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Lia’s eyebrows lift slightly. You don’t miss the way Vicky positions herself beside your chair, close enough that her shoulder brushes yours, creating a subtle barrier between you and the conversation. Before anyone can respond, she reaches down and takes your hand. The simple gesture feels strangely grounding.

“Come on,” she says. “Clara needs to go to the bathroom.”

Clara blinks. For a brief moment she looks completely confused before realization dawns.

“Oh.” A beat passes. “Right.” She nods seriously. “I do.”

Vicky gives her an approving look before turning back to you. “Can you come with us?”

The answer leaves your mouth immediately. “Yeah.” The relief is so overwhelming that you don’t even attempt to hide it.

You offer Lia a small apologetic wave before allowing yourself to be pulled away, stumbling slightly as Vicky immediately increases her pace and starts weaving through the crowd with Clara close behind.

The second you’re far enough away that the music and bodies swallow the table from view, Clara turns toward you with wide eyes.

“What the hell was that about?”

You let out a long breath, running both hands through your hair as you try to organize your thoughts through the haze of alcohol and the lingering discomfort still crawling around in your stomach.

“I don’t know,” you admit honestly. “She was cool at first. Like really cool. We were just talking about music and school and random stuff, and then…” You trail off, frowning slightly as you try to pinpoint exactly when the conversation changed. “I don’t know. Suddenly she started asking me all these weird questions.”

“Weird how?” Vicky asks immediately.

You shrug. “Just… invasive, I guess. About Alexia. About where I live. About the team. About contracts and who hangs out with who and what everyone is like behind closed doors.” The more you list them, the stranger it sounds.

Clara’s face twists in distaste. “Yeah, that’s weird.”

“Right?” You point at her emphatically. “That’s what I thought.”

“That’s not flirting.”

“No!”

“That’s legit an ESPN exclusive.”

The three of you burst out laughing. Some of the tension finally leaves your body.

Vicky wraps an arm around your shoulders and squeezes. “Well congratulations.”

“For what?”

“You survived your first fan girl. The first of many I’m sure.”

You groan dramatically. “Please never let me do that again.”

“Oh don’t worry,” Clara says. “We’re screening all future applicants.”

“You don’t get applicants.”

“I absolutely do!”

“You looked at one pretty girl and immediately got trapped for thirty minutes.”

You bury your face in your hands while both of them laugh.

The embarrassment lasts all of thirty seconds before the music from the main room swells again and Clara grabs both of your wrists. “Okay, enough of that. We came here to celebrate!”

The reminder settles something inside you. Because she’s right. You didn’t come here for some girl.

You didn’t spend the entire season training and fighting and sacrificing and pushing through injuries just to spend your night answering questions from a stranger.

You came here with your friends, people who wanted to celebrate with you.

When you look at Clara and Vicky now, both smiling at you expectantly, the lingering weirdness of the conversation suddenly feels insignificant compared to that.

“Come on then,” you say, grabbing both of their hands. “Let’s go dance.”

Within minutes you’re back on the dance floor, laughing hard enough that your stomach hurts while Clara nearly starts another incident by repeatedly stepping on strangers’ feet.

And little by little, Lia fades from your mind entirely.

What you don’t know is that she hasn’t forgotten about you.

Earlier in the night, while you and your friends had been dancing beneath the flashing lights, she’d quietly taken photos. Photos of the three of you celebrating, of you laughing, of you with drinks in your hands.

And later, after you’d left the table, she posted them.

Alongside those photos came a short series of tweets recounting parts of your conversation, including the casual admission that Alexia was your guardian and that you lived with her.

Within an hour, the posts have begun spreading.

The Barça Femení fanbase has been speculating about your relationship with Alexia for months. About how close you two seem. About why she looks after you the way she does. About why everyone on the team treats you like her child.

Now, for the first time, they think they have confirmation.

And to make matters worse, the photos show exactly where you are. At a club. On a night when Alexia believes you’re safely sleeping at Vicky’s apartment.

The posts begin spreading long before the night is over.

And with every share, every repost, every comment and screenshot, they move a little closer toward the one person you least want to see them.

------

An hour later, you are definitely drunk.

Not dangerously drunk or stumbling-unconscious drunk, but drunk enough that the world feels pleasantly softened around the edges, drunk enough that dancing has gradually devolved into jumping and yelling lyrics that none of you actually know, and drunk enough that every joke Vicky makes somehow feels like the funniest thing you’ve ever heard in your entire life.

Your feet ache from spending hours on the dance floor and your cheeks hurt from smiling so hard, but neither sensation is enough to dampen your mood. If anything, they feel like proof of how much fun you’re having.

The three of you are gathered around Vicky’s phone near the edge of the dance floor, supposedly trying to order an Uber home, though the process is moving significantly slower than it should because Clara keeps offering increasingly terrible suggestions while you provide enthusiastic support for all of them.

“No, look at that one,” she insists, pointing vaguely at the screen. “We should definitely get an XL.”

You immediately nod. “That’s what I was thinking.”

Vicky stares at both of you like she’s questioning every life decision that led her to this moment.

“There are only three of us, why would we need a car that big?!”

You and Clara promptly dissolve into more laughter.

The night feels perfect. Messy and loud and ridiculous, but perfect. The sort of night that you’ll all spend years talking about afterward.

Which is probably why none of you notice the shift in the air.

It begins at the edge of the crowd. A subtle ripple of movement that works its way through the room as heads begin turning one after another, conversations faltering as people glance toward the entrance and then glance again.

You barely register it at first. Your attention is still fixed on Vicky’s phone and Clara’s increasingly passionate argument about why party buses should be an option on Uber.

Clara suddenly goes quiet. The change is so abrupt that it catches your attention. You look up just in time to see all the color drain from her face and her eyes widen.

“Oh fuck.” The words are barely audible.

Vicky frowns. “What?”

Instead of answering, Clara grabs her arm. Vicky follows her gaze and immediately freezes. The smile falls off her face so quickly that it feels unnatural.

Your stomach drops before you even turn around. Some internal warning that whatever is standing behind you, you aren’t going to like it. Slowly, you lift your head and the world seems to stop.

Alexia is standing in the middle of the club.

For a brief, disorienting second your brain refuses to process what you’re seeing because it simply doesn’t make sense. Alexia isn’t supposed to be here. Alexia is supposed to be asleep. Alexia is supposed to think you’re curled up on Vicky’s couch watching movies and eating junk food.

Instead she’s standing ten feet away, still dressed in the oversized sweatshirt and gray sweatpants she wears around the house, the sleeves pushed up unevenly and her hair pulled back in a hasty bun that looks like she threw it together while walking out the door.

The expression on her face makes every trace of alcohol evaporate from your system.

You have seen Alexia angry before. You’ve watched her argue with referees. You’ve watched her tear into rivals who commit dirty tackles. You’ve watched her stand in front of cameras after painful losses with frustration burning behind her eyes.

This is different. This is somehow worse. She isn’t making a scene, there is no yelling or dramatic explosion of emotion. Instead all of her anger has condensed into something frighteningly controlled, something sharp and deliberate and impossible to ignore.

The music continues thundering around you, lights still flashing overhead, hundreds of people still dancing and talking and laughing, but it all feels strangely distant now, muffled beneath the pounding of your own heartbeat.

Alexia’s gaze moves slowly between the three of you before finally settling on you.

The look in her eyes makes your stomach twist. Underneath the fury you see the hurt, and somehow that feels infinitely worse.

When she finally speaks, her voice is calm enough that anyone passing by might miss the danger entirely.

“We are leaving.” No one argues. No one even considers it. The authority in those three words is absolute. “Now.”

Then she turns around and starts walking toward the exit.

The three of you follow immediately. Your earlier laughter has vanished completely, replaced by a heavy silence that follows you all the way through the crowd and out into the cool night air beyond the club doors.

Nobody speaks. Not Vicky. Not Clara. Certainly not you. The only sounds are your footsteps against the pavement and the distant pulse of music spilling out behind you.

Alexia doesn’t slow down or look back as she leads you toward her car, parked carelessly at the curb in a place that is almost certainly illegal. The security guards standing nearby don’t seem particularly interested in mentioning that fact, which is probably the smartest decision anyone has made all night.

You can feel her watching you occasionally from the corner of her eye as you walk, tracking every uneven step.

You make a conscious effort to walk in a straight line, carefully placing one foot in front of the other and willing your body to cooperate, but the attempt feels almost laughable. Your head is buzzing, your limbs feel heavier than usual, and every movement requires just a little more concentration than it should.

You know she can tell and normally, if she saw you struggling even a little, she would already be beside you. She would have a hand hovering at your elbow, ready to steady you before you even stumbled, and she would probably be asking whether you’d had enough water or if your feet hurt from standing all night.

Tonight she does none of those things.

She reaches the car first, unlocks it with a sharp press of the key fob, and slides into the driver’s seat without waiting for any of you. The door slams behind her with enough force to make all three of you flinch.

The sound echoes in your chest.

Vicky is the one who helps you into the passenger seat.

The gesture is careful, almost overly so, like she’s afraid that if she moves too quickly she might somehow make the situation worse. Normally she would be teasing you mercilessly by now, making jokes about your terrible flirting skills or your complete inability to handle tequila, but tonight she doesn’t say a word.

As soon as you settle into the seat, you squeeze your eyes shut. Partly because the alcohol is making your head spin slightly. Mostly because you know that if you open them, you’ll have to look at Alexia and you aren’t sure you can handle seeing how angry she is.

The back doors open, then close. You hear Vicky and Clara climb into the backseat, suddenly so quiet that it’s almost unnerving.

The contrast is startling. The drunken giddiness that had carried all three of you through the night has evaporated entirely beneath the weight of your captain’s disappointment.

The car pulls away from the curb. Nobody speaks. Not at the first red light. Not after the second. Not even when Clara accidentally drops something and the noise makes all four of you jump.

The silence stretches longer and longer until it becomes a physical thing, heavy enough that it seems to fill every corner of the vehicle. You have never heard Vicky remain quiet for this long. You aren’t entirely convinced it’s medically possible.

Eventually curiosity gets the better of you. Very carefully, you crack one eye open.

Alexia is staring straight ahead at the road. The dashboard lights cast faint shadows across her face, highlighting the tight set of her jaw and the way her hands are gripping the steering wheel hard enough that her knuckles have gone pale.

The sight makes your stomach sink. Underneath the anger, she looks tired. Exhausted, even. Like she was ripped out of sleep and immediately thrown into the worst possible version of her night.

“Ale…” you start quietly, your voice sounding much smaller than you intended. “It’s not-”

“We are not discussing this right now.” The interruption is immediate and final. The kind of tone that leaves absolutely no room for argument.

Your mouth snaps shut. Your eye closes again.

Very rarely do you find yourself on the receiving end of Alexia’s anger, and even when you do, it is usually brief and contained. She corrects you when you’ve crossed a line, makes sure you understand why, and then moves on because holding grudges has never been part of her nature.

This feels different, heavier. Like she’s still trying to sort through her own emotions before she says something she’ll regret.The realization does absolutely nothing to ease the knot growing in your stomach.

Five minutes pass. Then ten. The silence never breaks. The only sounds in the car are the hum of the engine, the occasional click of a turn signal, and the distant noise of the city drifting past outside the windows.

Eventually Alexia pulls up in front of Clara’s parents’ house. The car sits idling at the curb while Clara gathers her purse with shaking hands.

For perhaps the first time since you’ve known her, she looks genuinely nervous.

“I’m really sorry, Ale.” The apology comes out barely above a whisper.

Alexia keeps her eyes on the windshield for several seconds before finally giving a stiff nod.

She doesn’t tell Clara it’s okay. She doesn’t reassure her. She doesn’t soften the blow. And somehow that hurts worse than a lecture ever could.

Clara swallows hard. “Goodnight.”

Alexia nods again. Nothing more.

Clara climbs out of the car and shuts the door quietly behind her. Alexia waits until the front door opens and Clara disappears safely inside before putting the car back into drive.

The drive toward Vicky’s apartment somehow feels even worse. Without Clara there to absorb some of the tension, the atmosphere inside the car becomes almost unbearable.

You can practically feel Vicky’s anxiety building behind you.

“Ale, porfa,” Vicky finally says from the backseat, her voice sounding much smaller than usual after nearly twenty minutes of silence. “Please say something.”

For a moment Alexia doesn’t respond. She keeps her eyes fixed on the road ahead, the glow of streetlights sliding across her face as she drives, her expression unreadable except for the tension still visible in her jaw.

When she finally speaks, her voice sounds tired more than anything else. “Telling you how disappointed I am isn’t going to change what happened tonight.”

The words settle heavily over the car. Vicky immediately shrinks into her seat. “Ale…”

“No.” Alexia shakes her head. “No, because I honestly don’t know what you expected to happen.”

The frustration is becoming harder for her to contain now. “I’m just so disappointed in all three of you.”

You physically flinch.

Alexia notices but keeps going. “You should have known better.”

“We were safe, I swear,” Vicky rushes to say, leaning forward in her seat. “Nothing happened. I wouldn’t have let anything happen to them.”

Alexia lets out a short laugh, but there is no amusement in her tone. It’s the kind of laugh people make when they’re too frustrated to do anything else.

“Really?” The single word makes the car feel even colder. “Because from where I’m sitting, that’s clearly not true.”

Vicky opens her mouth again, but Alexia beats her to it.

“You know… considering my daughter is currently going viral on Twitter.”

The words hit the car like a grenade.

“What?!” The response comes from both you and Vicky at the exact same time.

Alexia doesn’t even look away from the road. “You heard me.”

The knot in your stomach immediately twists tighter.

Behind you, Vicky is already digging frantically through her purse for her phone, nearly dropping it in her haste. The glow of the screen illuminates her face as she scrolls, and within seconds she lets out a string of curses so creative that under different circumstances it might have made you laugh.

“That dumb fucking-” She cuts herself off before finishing the sentence. “Alexia, she was set up! You have to understand that this isn’t her fault.”

The reaction is immediate. “You think I don’t know that??” For the first time that night, Alexia’s voice rises. The sudden spike in volume is enough to make all of you jump.

She takes a long breath through her nose, visibly forcing herself to calm down before she says something harsher than she intends.

When she speaks again, her voice is steadier, but only just.

“You two need to understand something,” she says, words are directed at both of you, but her eyes flick briefly toward you. “You are public figures. You play for the biggest club in the world and because of that there are expectations whether you like them or not. Every place you go, every person you meet, every mistake you make, somebody is always watching and somebody is always recording.”

The city lights flicker across her face as she drives.

“So tonight, I honestly don’t care that some wannabe journalist decided to leak information she had no business posting online. I will deal with that in the morning.”

The promise sounds less like a possibility and more like a threat. You suddenly almost feel sorry for Lia… almost.

“What I care about is that the two of you looked me directly in the eye and lied to me. What I care about is that you knowingly ignored my instructions and deliberately put yourselves into a situation where something could have happened.” Her grip tightens on the steering wheel.

“She is sixteen, Vicky.” The disappointment in her voice somehow hurts more than the anger. “What the fuck is she doing in a nightclub?”

“Ale, it’s not her fault.” The words leave your mouth before you can stop them. You twist in your seat slightly, trying to look at her despite how worried you are about her reaction.

“She got me out of there when things got weird. The second I looked uncomfortable, she came and got me. Both of them did.” Your voice grows stronger as you continue.

“That girl started asking all these strange questions about you and us and the team and where I lived and stuff. I didn’t know what was happening, but Vicky did. She got me out of there right away.”

You glance back at your teammate. “She was protecting me the whole time.”

The silence that follows lasts several seconds. Long enough that you wonder whether Alexia is going to argue.

Instead, she sighs - a long, exhausted sound. “I know.” There is no uncertainty in her tone. “I know it’s not her fault.” For the first time all night, some of the anger leaves her voice. Not all of it, but just enough to reveal the fear hiding underneath.

“But that’s exactly my point.” She shakes her head. “You three should never have been in that situation to begin with.”

Nobody has an answer for that. Because she’s right.

The silence stretches again. Eventually Vicky drops her gaze to her lap.

“I’m sorry.” Her voice cracks. “I really am.” She wipes quickly at her eyes.

“I know I lied.” The words seem to cost her something.

“I just wanted to hang out with her.” She laughs weakly, though it sounds suspiciously close to a sob.

“I wanted us to make memories together. She’s always training or studying or doing something responsible and I thought…” She pauses to wipe her eyes again. “I don’t know. I thought we could do something fun.”

Her voice drops lower. “And I was worried you’d say no.”

The confession hangs in the air. Alexia doesn’t answer, but she must notice the quiet sniffing coming from the backseat because when she finally pulls into Vicky’s apartment complex, she doesn’t immediately put the car back into drive after parking. Instead, she sits there for a moment with both hands resting on the steering wheel, her eyes fixed on something beyond the windshield, before letting out a slow breath and opening her door.

Vicky follows right away.

You watch them through the passenger window as they move a few steps away from the car and stop beneath one of the streetlights lining the sidewalk. The yellow glow casts long shadows across the pavement and illuminates the tear tracks still visible on Vicky’s face. For a second neither of them says anything. Then Alexia opens her arms.

That is all it takes before Vicky folds into her instantly. The younger woman practically collapses against her, burying her face in Alexia’s shoulder as the sobs she has clearly been fighting for the last twenty minutes finally win.

You can’t hear what they’re saying through the closed windows. You can only watch.

You watch the way Alexia’s arms tighten around her. You watch the way she lowers her head so she can speak directly into her ear. You watch her rub a hand slowly up and down Vicky’s back with the same patient rhythm you’ve felt yourself more times than you can count.

Months ago, a sight like this might have hurt. Months ago, before you understood what Alexia’s love actually looked like, you might have felt that familiar sting of jealousy. You might have watched someone else receive her comfort and wondered whether there would be less left over for you afterward.

Now you simply feel relieved.

Because if Alexia is still standing there holding Vicky after everything that happened tonight, then maybe the world hasn’t ended after all. Because if Vicky is still allowed to cry into her shoulder and be forgiven, then maybe there is still hope for you too.

Eventually Alexia leans back just enough to cup Vicky’s face between both hands, wiping away tears with her thumbs while speaking softly enough that the words never reach you. Whatever she says causes Vicky to laugh through a fresh wave of tears, which in turn makes Alexia smile sadly before pulling her back into one final hug.

The entire interaction is so painfully familiar. The comfort, the reassurance, the certainty. The unspoken promise that she is angry but still loves you. That she is disappointed but not leaving and whatever happens next, she will still be there when the conversation is over.

When they finally separate, Alexia presses a kiss to the top of Vicky’s head before walking her all the way to the building entrance, waiting patiently while she punches in the code and steps inside. Even then she doesn’t leave right away, lingering on the sidewalk until the door closes behind her. Only then does she return to the car.

The difference in her is obvious. The anger that had been keeping her upright for the last hour seems to have drained away, leaving behind something far more difficult to look at.

She looks exhausted. It’s not even physical exhaustion, though there is certainly some of that too, but emotionally exhaustion in a way that makes her seem older than usual.

She settles into the driver’s seat and closes the door quietly behind her. Neither of you speaks. The car remains parked.

Outside, Barcelona continues sleeping around you, occasional headlights drifting past and distant conversations floating through the night air, but inside the vehicle everything feels strangely still.

Her phone vibrates in the cup holder. The sound breaks the silence. Alexia glances down at the screen and some more of the tension leaves her shoulders. It’s Vicky letting her know she made it upstairs.

Only after reading the message does Alexia put the car into drive and pull away from the curb.

The city slides past outside the windows in a blur of streetlights and empty sidewalks while neither of you says anything for several minutes.

Eventually, without looking away from the road, Alexia finally speaks.

“I was really scared.” The confession is so quiet and so unexpected that for a moment you aren’t entirely sure you’ve heard her correctly.

You turn toward her. The stoplights ahead paint soft shadows across her face, highlighting the tiredness around her eyes and the way she keeps worrying at her lower lip with her teeth.

“I thought you were at Vicky’s apartment,” she continues after a long pause. “I thought you were safe. I thought you were asleep on the couch watching movies, and then suddenly my phone started ringing.”

Her fingers tighten slightly around the steering wheel.

“First it was messages. Then it was people calling. Then somebody sent me photos.” She swallows. “And for twenty minutes I didn’t know where you were.”

The words make your heart ache. Because this isn’t about the club anymore. It isn’t even about the lie. It’s about fear. Real fear. The kind that had apparently been eating her alive while she was driving across the city looking for you.

“I didn’t know who you were with,” she says quietly. “I didn’t know whether those people posting photos were the same people you were with. I didn’t know if someone had given you something. I didn’t know if you were okay.”

The guilt settles so heavily in your chest that it almost hurts to breathe.

“I don’t know what I’d do if anything ever happened to you…” her voice trails off as she blinks quickly trying to keep her tears from falling.

“Ale…”

You don’t know what else to say. You don’t know how to fix any of it. So instead you repeat the words she has given you a hundred times before.

“I’m here.” Her eyes flick toward you briefly. “I’m okay.”

You reach across the center console and place your hand over hers. “I’m safe with you now.”

For the first time all night, something in her expression softens.

She turns her hand over and threads her fingers through yours. “I know, petita.”

The nickname nearly breaks your heart. Because it sounds exactly the way it always does - warm, certain, loving. As though none of that has changed.

You spend the rest of the drive in silence, your hand remaining tucked inside hers while the city passes outside the windows. Every few moments her thumb brushes slowly across your knuckles in a repetitive, absent-minded motion, and although she never says another word, you begin to suspect she isn’t doing it to comfort you.

You think she is reassuring herself. Reminding herself that you are really there beside her. That she found you. That you’re safe. And that, despite everything that happened tonight, she still gets to bring you home.

------

When you finally pull in through the gates, the house sits exactly as you left it, quiet and dark beneath the night sky, the familiar porch light casting a soft glow across the front steps.

The engine goes silent, leaving only the ticking of cooling metal and the faint sound of crickets somewhere beyond the yard. For a moment neither of you moves. The tension that had filled the car earlier has changed shape now, no longer sharp and angry but tired and heavy, weighed down by everything that has happened since Alexia walked into that club.

Eventually she unclips her seatbelt and steps out.

By the time you reach for the handle, she is already opening the passenger door for you. You step down onto the driveway and immediately feel her hand settle around your elbow.

You don’t need the support anymore. Most of your drunkenness has worn off during the drive home and your head is far clearer than it was an hour ago. Still, you don’t say anything. You like the contact too much.

The two of you make your way inside together, Alexia locking the door behind you before guiding you upstairs with one hand resting lightly against your back. The gesture is familiar enough that you don’t even think about it anymore. Somewhere along the way you had stopped being surprised by how naturally she takes care of you. What still surprises you is how much you want her to.

When you reach your room, she sits you down on the closed toilet lid before disappearing briefly into the bathroom cabinet. A moment later she returns with a packet of makeup wipes and kneels in front of you.

The tenderness of the gesture nearly hurts.

You had lied to her. You had worried her. You had ignored her instructions and broken her trust. And yet here she is, crouched in front of you at three in the morning, carefully removing the remnants of makeup and glitter from your face with the same patience she always uses.

Neither of you says much. The room is quiet except for the soft rustle of the wipe against your skin.

When she’s finished, she tosses it away and crosses to your dresser without needing to ask where anything is. She knows this room almost as well as her own. A moment later she is holding your favorite pajamas, the soft worn set that always seems to find its way to the top of the drawer whenever you’ve had a bad day.

“Brush your teeth, bebé.”

You nod as she leaves to give you privacy.

When she comes back several minutes later, you’re already in bed.

The blankets are pulled over your legs and you’re propped against the headboard, hands wrapped around your knees as exhaustion finally begins catching up to you. Alexia is carrying a bottle of cold water which she opens before handing it over.

You take a long drink. Then another. And another. Partly because you’re dehydrated, but mostly because it delays the conversation you know is coming eventually.

When you finally lower the bottle, your eyes find hers. “Ale?”

Her expression softens as she looks up at you. “Yes, mi amor?”

The endearment almost makes your eyes sting. You stare down at the bottle in your hands.

“I’m really, really sorry.” The words come out small and rough.

For a moment she simply looks at you. Then her hand comes up to brush gently through your hair.

“I know, bebé.” She tucks a loose strand behind your ear. “We’ll talk about it tomorrow, okay?” she says quietly. “Right now you’re exhausted and I’m exhausted, and neither of us is going to think very clearly tonight.”

You nod. The lump in your throat grows a little bigger. “Ale?”

She huffs out the faintest hint of a smile. “Yeah?”

“Do you think…” you begin before losing your nerve, your fingers tightening around the water bottle in your lap as you stare down at the blanket.

Alexia remains completely patient, giving you all the time in the world to find the courage to ask. “Well maybe…” You stop again, frustration and exhaustion making it impossible to get the words out properly. “Could you maybe stay here tonight?”

Alexia tilts her head slightly, her expression softening as she looks at you.

You don’t elaborate. You don’t need to. You just blink back at her, feeling far too tired and emotionally wrung out to explain that after everything that happened tonight, the thought of being alone feels unbearable.

“Okay, bebé.” Her answer comes so easily that it makes your chest ache.

She rises from the edge of the bed and moves around to the other side, pulling off the oversized sweatshirt she had thrown on earlier. Beneath it are the pajamas she’d clearly been wearing when she received those phone calls, and the sight sends another wave of guilt washing through you because it is impossible not to picture her seeing those photos, grabbing the first thing she could find, and racing out the door without a second thought.

She came for you. She hadn’t stopped to change. Hadn’t stopped to think. Hadn’t stopped at all.

The mattress dips slightly as she climbs into bed beside you.

For a while neither of you says anything. The room is quiet except for the occasional rustle of blankets and the distant hum of the air conditioner, both of you staring up at the ceiling while the events of the night slowly begin settling into place.

Eventually Alexia reaches across the space between you and gently pulls you against her side. The movement is so familiar now that you go willingly without thinking.

Her arm wraps securely around your shoulders while her fingers slide into your hair, scratching lightly against your scalp in the exact way she knows helps you relax, and almost immediately you feel your entire body begin to soften beneath her touch.

The tension leaves your shoulders. Your breathing slows. The frantic energy that has been buzzing beneath your skin since she walked into that club finally starts settling.

Sleep begins creeping up on you slowly. Your eyes grow heavier. Your body sinks further into the mattress.

Then, just as you’re beginning to drift, a memory resurfaces from the car. The words hit you all over again.

My daughter.

Your eyes fly open. Your breath catches sharply enough that Alexia stirs - even half asleep, her response is automatic. Her eyes blink open lazily, heavy with exhaustion, and she lifts her head slightly from the pillow to look down at you.

“You okay?” she murmurs, her voice rough with sleep.

You don’t answer right away because how are you supposed to explain this? How are you supposed to explain what happened inside your chest when she said those words?

You had spent most of your life belonging to nobody. Passed from house to house, caretaker to caretaker, always feeling temporary, always feeling like you were occupying space that could be taken back at any moment.

People had called you a lot of things over the years : foster kid, placement, responsibility, problem. Nobody had ever looked at you with fear in their eyes and called you theirs.

And Alexia hadn’t even done it intentionally. She hadn’t sat down and chosen those words carefully. She hadn’t made some grand declaration. The words had simply fallen out of her mouth in a moment of panic because, somewhere in her mind, that was already what you were.

Her daughter.

The realization makes something warm and painful bloom inside your chest all at once.

You don’t know how to tell her that hearing those words felt like being handed something you’d secretly wanted for so long that you’d stopped allowing yourself to hope for it. You don’t know how to tell her that you’ve been replaying them over and over in your head ever since.

So instead you simply shake your head and burrow closer.

Your hands curl into the front of her pajama shirt and you press your face against her shoulder, holding onto her a little tighter than usual.

Alexia studies you for a moment until a quiet breath leaves her nose, carrying equal parts affection and amusement, before she leans down and presses a gentle kiss against your forehead.

“T’estimo, mi amor,” she murmurs softly.

One of her hands settles against the back of your head while the other resumes its slow journey through your hair.

She doesn’t ask any questions or make you explain. She just holds you.

The steady movement of her fingers gradually slows as sleep begins pulling at her again, each pass through your hair becoming a little lazier than the last until eventually her hand comes to rest against the back of your neck.

A few minutes later her breathing deepens. The familiar rhythm fills the room.

You listen to it for a long time. Long enough for your eyes to grow heavy. Long enough for the warmth in your chest to outweigh the guilt still lingering there. Long enough for sleep to finally pull you under too, tucked safely against her side while her arms remain wrapped around you exactly where they belong.

The perfect season somehow ends exactly the way Alexia insists all perfect seasons should: with a trophy in one hand and an excuse to throw a party in the other.

You stand off to the side of the patio watching the chaos unfold with increasingly wide eyes as Alexia, Irene, and Patri completely take over the backyard, moving furniture from one end of the garden to the other with the seriousness of people preparing for a diplomatic summit rather than a seventeen-year-old’s birthday party.

At some point during the morning, the normal outdoor seating arrangement had disappeared entirely. In its place now sat long tables covered in decorations, enormous flower arrangements filled with carefully coordinated colors, and what looked suspiciously like an entire wall of balloons that seemed to grow larger every time you looked away for more than five minutes.

You aren’t entirely sure where half of it came from. You do know that at one point you heard Alexia discussing delivery schedules with someone on the phone before mentioning that the caterer would be arriving at three o’clock, which had nearly caused you to choke on your coffee because, as far as you were concerned, ordering pizza would have qualified as party planning.

Apparently Alexia strongly disagreed.

The strange thing is that none of this had been your idea.

Your birthday wasn’t technically until tomorrow, but after weeks of relentless pestering from Vicky and Clara, who seemed personally offended by your complete lack of interest in celebrating yourself, you had eventually worked up the courage to ask Alexia if maybe they could come over for an afternoon.

Just them and maybe a few teammates. Something simple.

You had even presented your argument carefully. Having people over at the house still complied with the terms of your grounding, you had pointed out. After all, you had spent the last month accepting the consequences of your disastrous decision-making without complaint, fully aware that sneaking into a nightclub, lying to Alexia, and accidentally becoming the center of a social media firestorm had earned every restriction she’d given you.

Alexia had listened to your carefully constructed reasoning for approximately ten seconds before laughing outright.

Then she’d reached over and ruffled your hair. “It’s your birthday, petita,” she had said. “You can celebrate it anywhere you want.”

The truth was that you genuinely did want it here. You liked that somewhere along the way the house had stopped feeling like Alexia’s house. It felt like yours too.

Your shoes lived by the garage door. Your textbooks ended up scattered across the kitchen table. Your favorite cereal permanently occupied a shelf in the pantry. There were photographs of you throughout the house now, mixed naturally among the family photos as though they’d always belonged there.

Most importantly, it was the first place you had ever wanted to invite people to. The first place you had ever felt proud of. The first place that felt enough like home that you wanted to share it with your friends.

Unfortunately, what began as a small gathering had spiraled wildly out of control.

The chain of events had apparently started with Vicky. Vicky told Kika. Kika told Patri. Patri told every living person in Barcelona. And because footballers were apparently incapable of minding their own business, the information had spread through the entire team with frightening efficiency.

Now people kept appearing at training asking what time the party started. Players you hadn’t technically invited were somehow discussing what swimsuits they planned to bring. At one point Mapi had asked whether she should bring an appetizer. You hadn’t even known she was coming.

Alexia, meanwhile, seemed delighted by the entire situation. If anything, every new guest only made her more excited.

Over the last two weeks, she had been almost impossibly happy. Winning the Champions League had left the entire team floating for days, her contract renewal had removed months of uncertainty, and the season itself could not have ended more perfectly if someone had written it in a script.

Your birthday had arrived immediately afterward and somehow became the thing she was most excited about.

She had talked about it constantly. She had made lists. She had revised those lists. She had asked what food you wanted, what music you wanted, whether you preferred a cake or multiple desserts and then decided to get both.

Every time you sheepishly informed her that another teammate had somehow heard about the party and wanted to come, her face had lit up even more.

“Bebé, our house is enormous,” she had told you after your latest attempt to apologize. “You could invite everyone you know and we’d still have room.”

As it turned out, you were dangerously close to testing that theory.

The whole thing should probably have been overwhelming. Honestly, it was a little overwhelming. But every time you started feeling nervous about the growing guest list or the increasingly elaborate decorations, you would look over at Alexia and see the excitement written all over her face.

She was just so happy to be throwing you a party, so happy to have an excuse to fill the house with people who cared about you, so happy to celebrate you in a way that made it impossible for anyone to miss how loved you were.

Birthdays had never really meant much before. For most of your life they had passed quietly, acknowledged by very few people and celebrated by even fewer. The only part you had ever cared about was football, because another birthday usually meant another promotion, another chance to play against older girls, another step forward in the sport you loved.

Everything else had always felt secondary and forgettable. Just another date on a calendar. Alexia, however, had treated this birthday like a national holiday. The date had been circled on the kitchen calendar for months.

She had started asking what you wanted weeks ago. More than once she had casually mentioned that she already had “a few ideas” but wanted to make sure there wasn’t anything specific you hoped for first.

Every time, you had shaken your head with growing embarrassment. Because the truth was that you genuinely couldn’t think of anything. Every time she asked, you found yourself looking around at the life you’d somehow built here and realizing that you already had everything you’d spent years wishing for without ever expecting to find.

And judging by the knowing look Alexia kept giving you whenever you failed to answer the question, you suspected she already knew that.

------

Alexia laughs when the third balloon in less than ten minutes explodes directly in Patri’s face.

The sound echoes across the backyard, followed immediately by Patri’s increasingly dramatic complaints about being personally victimized by party decorations, which only seems to make Alexia laugh harder. Eventually she gives up entirely, gesturing for Patri to surrender the pump and go find something else to do before she somehow manages to injure herself preparing for a birthday party.

Patri leaves with all the dignity of a disgraced soldier retreating from battle.

Once the others disappear inside to continue setting up decorations throughout the house, you make your way across the patio toward Alexia, who is crouched beside an increasingly elaborate balloon arch that has somehow become one of the most important projects of the day.

“Ale.” She glances up immediately. You are fairly certain you could whisper her name from the opposite side of Barcelona and she’d still somehow hear it.

“Maybe I can do that?” you ask, gesturing toward the pump. “I want to help.”

The expression she gives you is fondly exasperated. “Petita, it’s your birthday.” Then she pauses. “Well, birthday weekend.”

You can’t help smiling at the correction.

“You shouldn’t be setting up your own party.”

“Yeah, but I want to.” You shift your weight slightly before adding the part that usually works. “Pleaseee?”

Alexia studies you for a moment, clearly debating whether to continue arguing, before finally surrendering with a shake of her head. “You blow them up and I’ll arrange them.”

The victory feels embarrassingly satisfying. You immediately claim the pump before she can change her mind.

For a while the two of you work quietly beside one another, settling into an easy rhythm as you inflate balloons and hand them over while Alexia somehow transforms what should be a chaotic pile of plastic into something that actually looks organized and intentional.

At some point you become aware of her watching you, checking in without wanting you to notice she’s checking in.

Eventually she breaks the silence. “You doing okay?” The question is simple and casual. But you know her well enough by now to hear everything underneath it.

The month after the club incident hadn’t been easy. The grounding had been fair, but fair didn’t necessarily mean enjoyable. There had been difficult conversations and consequences and more than a few moments where you’d felt terrible about how badly you’d scared her.

Even now, weeks later, she still checks sometimes. Making sure you’re actually okay. Making sure you’re happy. Making sure the weight of everything that happened isn’t still sitting on your shoulders.

You glance around the yard before answering.

The patio is bathed in warm afternoon sunlight. Through the open doors you can hear Patri and Irene arguing over something neither of them actually cares about enough to be fighting over, their voices rising and falling in the familiar rhythm of people who have spent years annoying each other affectionately. Somewhere nearby the pool filter sends water gently splashing against the tiled walls, and the warm summer air carries the scent of freshly cut grass and flowers across the backyard.

For a moment you simply take it all in before your eyes return to Alexia. To the woman sitting beside you surrounded by half-finished decorations and balloon fragments, looking at you with enough affection to make your chest ache.

And for once the answer comes easily. “Yeah.” You mean it, you genuinely mean it.

Four hours later, however, you mean it a little less.

The party is perfect. The food is incredible, the weather is somehow cooperating despite the fact that Barcelona summers usually seem determined to melt everyone alive, and every person you care about appears to be having the time of their life.

The problem is simply that there is so much of it.

So many people. So much noise. So much attention.

The backyard has transformed into something that feels closer to a festival than a birthday party, every corner occupied by a different conversation, every chair filled, every patch of shade claimed by some combination of teammates, relatives, classmates, and family friends.

The table near the back door is completely buried beneath gifts, colorful wrapping paper stacked so high that you can barely see the surface underneath anymore, and every time you glance in that direction you swear the pile has somehow gotten bigger.

There are Barça players scattered throughout the yard. There are classmates you never expected to see standing beside Champions League winners discussing school gossip. There are various members of the Putellas i Segura family tree whose exact relationship to Alexia remains something of a mystery to you despite repeated explanations.

Across the yard, Vicky and Clara have recruited one of Alexia’s younger cousins into an increasingly competitive game of keepy-uppy that seems to involve far more shouting than the sport technically requires. Every few seconds somebody erupts into celebration while somebody else accuses them of cheating, and the argument inevitably starts all over again before any actual conclusions are reached.

Nearby, Kika, Esmee, and Salma have turned the pool into their own personal volleyball court, the game growing more aggressive with every passing minute as increasingly dramatic dives send water splashing onto anyone unfortunate enough to be standing nearby.

Pina and Cata have established themselves near the drinks table, a development that several people have openly described as concerning, though not concerning enough for anyone to actually intervene.

Meanwhile, you seem to have spent the entire afternoon being gently passed from one conversation to the next.

Every time you think you’ve finally escaped a cluster of people, somebody spots you from across the yard and waves you over. Every time you finish one conversation, another begins. Every time you manage to sit down, someone appears beside you wanting to congratulate you on the season, ask about school, discuss football, or tell you a story you somehow feature prominently.

It is wonderful. It is exhausting. It is probably the most loved you have ever felt in your entire life.

And that might actually be the problem. Because every few minutes something happens that throws you off all over again.

One of Alexia’s relatives hugs you goodbye and tells you they’ll see you at the next family gathering as though your attendance is already assumed. Someone refers to the house as yours without even thinking about it. Another person talks about next season as though your future at Barça is inevitable.

Each interaction is small. Insignificant on its own. Yet somehow they keep accumulating until your chest feels strangely tight.

You catch yourself looking toward Alexia more than once. She is everywhere. One moment she’s helping carry trays of food onto the patio. The next she’s greeting another arriving guest. Then she’s laughing at something Alba says, throwing her head back with a smile so bright that even from across the yard you can see it.

The happiness radiates off her in waves. Every time her eyes eventually find you somewhere in the crowd, her entire expression softens in a way that still catches you off guard despite how often you’ve seen it. You know that look now. You know exactly what it means. Which somehow only makes your chest twist even more.

Because there was a time when birthdays passed almost unnoticed. There was a time when nobody decorated anything. Nobody planned anything. Nobody circled dates on calendars months in advance. Nobody spent weeks discussing cakes and playlists and guest lists as though your existence was an event worth celebrating.

You never really minded back then. At least you told yourself you didn’t. You became very good at pretending things didn’t matter. Very good at convincing yourself that wanting less was the same thing as needing less. But sitting here now, surrounded by more love than you know what to do with, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain those old lies.

Eventually, after being trapped in a conversation with Patri about music, summer plans, and at least three separate stories that somehow merged together halfway through, you manage to slip away under the excuse of needing another drink.

The moment you step inside the house, the noise dulls slightly. The music becomes distant. The conversations blur together. The air feels cooler.

You find yourself wandering toward the staircase instinctively and lowering yourself onto the bottom step, settling into that strange middle ground where you are technically still present but no longer actively participating.

You rest your chin against your hand and stare vaguely toward one of the paintings hanging on the opposite wall, your focus gradually softening until the details blur together. You take slow, deep breaths, trying to understand why your eyes suddenly feel suspiciously warm.

When you finally glance up, Alexia standing in the doorway watching you with a look that suggests she figured out exactly what was happening several minutes ago.

You immediately feel sheepish. Your birthday party is happening twenty feet away and you’ve hidden yourself on the stairs like an overwhelmed cat.

You open your mouth, already preparing to explain yourself, but Alexia’s expression shifts before you can get a single word out. A grin spreads slowly across her face, the kind that always means she’s had an idea and that everyone around her is about to be dragged into it whether they like it or not.

“Do you want to get out of here?”

You blink. The question takes several seconds to register. “What?”

“Do you want to get out of here?” She gestures vaguely toward the backyard. “My mom is here. Alba is here. Everyone is fed, nobody is fighting yet, and there is enough food to survive a small natural disaster.”

You stare. Alexia continues like this is the most reasonable suggestion in the world. “They won’t even notice we’re gone. And we’ll be back before cake.”

The next thing you know, she was leading you through a side gate with a football tucked beneath one arm, both of you trying and failing to suppress your laughter as though you were committing some elaborate crime instead of temporarily abandoning a gathering full of people who adored you. The ridiculousness of it all only becomes funnier the farther you get from the house.

By the time you reach the small park at the end of the neighborhood, the tightness in your chest has already eased considerably.

The evening air is warm without being oppressive, carrying the lingering scent of summer grass and sun-warmed pavement. Behind you, the party continues somewhere beyond the trees and rooftops, reduced to a distant memory of music and laughter that feels pleasantly far away rather than overwhelming.

The two of you spend a while kicking the ball back and forth without much purpose, neither of you really trying to play properly. The football becomes little more than an excuse to move around while you talk, the conversation drifting effortlessly from one topic to another as you laugh about the increasingly chaotic state of the party. You speculate about which guests will somehow end up in the pool before the evening is over, debate whether Pina and Cata should ever be trusted with drink responsibilities again, and spend several minutes discussing a couple who may or may not be having an argument near the buffet table.

For the first time all afternoon, everything feels manageable. The constant attention has disappeared. The endless conversations have quieted. The pressure to be perceived has evaporated. It is just you and Alexia and a football. The simplicity of it allows something else to surface.

You trap the ball beneath your foot and stare down at it for a moment before speaking.

The admission comes slowly, partly because you’ve never really thought about it before and partly because you’re only just beginning to understand it yourself.

You tell her that birthdays were never something you paid much attention to growing up. They came and went like any other day, acknowledged occasionally but rarely celebrated, and somewhere along the way you stopped expecting them to matter. Football was usually the only thing worth noticing, because another birthday often meant another promotion, another chance to play at a higher level, another step forward in the one area of your life that felt predictable.

“I don’t know why I got so in my head about it,” you admit after a long stretch of silence, your eyes following the football as it rolls lazily through the grass before coming to rest a few feet away. “I think it was just a little overwhelming, you know? All those people there for me.”

The words sound small once they’re out in the open. A little ridiculous even. You kick absently at a patch of grass.

“I don’t know,” you continue more quietly. “I think maybe I just don’t feel like I deserve it.”

The confession leaves your mouth before you can stop it. Immediately you wish you could take it back. Hearing the thought spoken aloud makes it sound far sadder than it did inside your own head.

Beside you, Alexia doesn’t answer right away. She rarely does when the conversation starts drifting toward something important.

Instead, she takes a few slow steps forward until she’s standing beside you, both of you looking out across the open field while the evening sky stretches above the park in shades of pink and gold. The sun has nearly disappeared now, leaving only the soft glow of sunset lingering along the horizon, and for a while the two of you simply stand there shoulder to shoulder while a warm breeze stirs the grass around your feet.

When she finally speaks, her voice is soft enough that it almost blends into the evening air. “Love isn’t something you deserve.”

You glance toward her. Her gaze remains fixed on the sky. “It’s not something you earn either.”

The words are spoken so matter-of-factly that for a moment you aren’t entirely sure you’ve heard them correctly. Alexia notices your confusion, small smile tugs at the corner of her mouth.

“People always talk about deserving love like it’s some kind of reward,” she says quietly. “Like if you’re good enough or successful enough or kind enough, eventually somebody hands it to you. But that’s not how it works.”

Her hands slide into the pockets of her shorts. “Love isn’t a prize. It isn’t a transaction. It isn’t something people give you because you’ve finally proven yourself worthy of receiving it.”

She turns her head slightly then, just enough for you to catch the affection in her expression. “It just is.”

The simplicity of the statement makes your chest ache. She says it like it’s obvious. Like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Like there has never been any question about it.

“You didn’t earn Alba’s love,” she continues after a moment. “You didn’t earn Vicky’s love or Clara’s or my mom’s. None of those people spent the afternoon in that backyard because you somehow convinced them to.”

A small laugh escapes her. “Trust me, if I could convince the family to do anything, life would be much easier.”

That earns the faintest smile from you. Alexia’s expression softens even further when she sees it.

“They were there because they care about you,” she says. “Because they love you. Because somewhere along the way you became important to them and now they can’t imagine their lives without you in them.”

The words settle heavily in your chest. It’s as if something you’ve been carrying for a very long time is finally being set down.

For a while neither of you speaks. The breeze moves through the trees overhead. The sounds of the neighborhood drift around you. And somewhere behind you, hidden beyond rows of houses and garden walls, your birthday party continues without either of you.

Alexia exhales softly through her nose. When she speaks again, her voice is thoughtful. Almost amused.

“You know,” she says, “I call you my daughter in my head every day.”

The world seems to tilt slightly. Your head turns so quickly it nearly gives you whiplash.

Alexia notices immediately. The smile that appears on her face is small and fond. She’s been expecting this reaction.

“I have for a while now.” She shrugs one shoulder comfortably, like she’s talking about something she accepted a long time ago.

“You never earned my love either.” The words are quiet and certain. “You just have it.”

You stare at her. Unable to look away. Unable to speak.

“You never had to earn a place in my life,” she continues. “You never had to prove that you belonged there. You never had to become successful enough or talented enough or good enough for me to care about you.”

A gentle smile appears on her face. “The day I decided you were staying with me, that was pretty much the end of the discussion as far as I was concerned.”

A laugh escapes you despite the tears suddenly threatening behind your eyes.

Alexia reaches over and squeezes the back of your neck gently. “Alba loves you because you’re you. Vicky loves you because you’re you. My family loves you because you’re you.”

Her eyes meet yours then, steady and certain in a way they always are when she’s saying something she knows to be true. “And I love you because you’re my daughter.”

The words hit harder than anything else she’s said.

It doesn’t surprise you, you’ve spent months suspecting it. You’ve spent months noticing it in all the small things she probably never even realized she was doing. In the way she worried whenever you were late getting home. In the way she always remembered the things that mattered to you, no matter how insignificant they seemed. In the way she fussed over injuries and schoolwork and meals and sleep schedules. In the way her eyes immediately searched for you whenever she entered a room.

Most of all, you’d noticed it in the way she loved you. A kind of love that had never felt temporary. A kind of love that never seemed conditional. A kind of love that simply existed, unwavering and constant, no matter how many mistakes you made.

Still, hearing her say it aloud feels different. It feels like someone finally putting a name to something that has been quietly growing between the two of you for so long that neither of you can quite remember where it started.

Your throat tightens. Your eyes sting. You stare stubbornly down at the grass beneath your feet because looking directly at her suddenly feels impossible.

“I call you mama in my head too.” The confession slips out before you can stop it.

The second the words leave your mouth you want to crawl into a hole and never emerge again. Heat floods your face. Embarrassment follows immediately after. You feel exposed in a way you haven’t felt in a very long time, like you’ve accidentally handed her a piece of yourself you never intended anyone else to see.

“I don’t even know when I started,” you admit quietly, still refusing to look at her. “It wasn’t intentional or anything. It just sort of…” You trail off, searching for words that don’t seem to exist. “It just happened.”

The silence that follows stretches long enough that you finally force yourself to look up.

When you do, Alexia is staring at you with an expression you’ve never seen before. There is so much love that it almost hurts to look at. She looks like someone who has just been handed something precious she never dared ask for.

Slowly, she reaches up and cups the side of your face. The touch is warm and steady. The same hand that has fixed your hair before interviews, checked your temperature when you were sick, wiped tears from your cheeks, and squeezed your shoulder after difficult matches. This time it lingers.

She steps closer and presses a kiss against your temple, letting it rest there for several long seconds before finally pulling back.

When she finally speaks, her voice is impossibly gentle. “You know you’re allowed to say it out loud too, right?”

Your breath catches. The question hangs between you, so simple and yet somehow so frightening. Because thinking it and saying it are two very different things. Thinking it is safe, private, yours. Saying it aloud makes it real.

Alexia must see the panic flicker across your face because her smile softens even further. “It belongs to you.”

The words settle somewhere deep inside your chest, like rain sinking into dry ground.

“You don’t have to earn that either,” she continues quietly, her thumb brushing across your cheek in the same soothing way she always does whenever you’re upset. “You don’t have to wonder whether you’re allowed or whether it’s okay or whether you’re somehow asking for too much.”

A small laugh escapes her then, warm and fond and full of affection. “Trust me, carinyo, if anyone in the world has the right to call me that, it’s probably the girl I’ve spent the last year accidentally raising.”

The laugh that escapes you comes out broken immediately by a sob. The sound surprises both of you.

One second you’re standing there trying very hard to keep yourself together, and the next every emotion you’ve apparently been carrying for months comes crashing through the carefully constructed walls you’ve built around them.

You don’t even think about it. You just move. Throwing yourself forward until you’re wrapped around her. Holding on tighter than you ever have before. Your hands fist in the back of her shirt. Your face disappears into her shoulder.

And then you’re crying. Big, ugly, helpless sobs that shake your entire body. The kind that come from somewhere deep. Somewhere old. Somewhere that has been waiting a very long time for this.

Alexia doesn’t say a word. She simply catches you. The way she always does. Her arms wrap around you tightly, one hand settling firmly between your shoulder blades while the other slides into your hair, fingers moving through it in slow, soothing strokes as she holds you against her chest.

You can hear her heartbeat - it’s strong and steady and familiar. You cling to her like she’s the only solid thing in the world. And maybe, in this moment, she is.

She lets you cry for as long as you need. Simply holding you while years of loneliness and fear and uncertainty finally loosen their grip enough to be carried away by tears.

Eventually the sobs begin to quiet. Your breathing steadies. The crushing pressure in your chest eases enough for you to lift your head.

You look up at her through blurry eyes and wet lashes, your cheeks stained with tears, your nose hopelessly stuffy, your throat aching with emotion.

Alexia immediately brushes a tear away with her thumb. Looking at you like you are the most precious thing she has ever been trusted with.

Your voice trembles when you finally speak.

“T’estimo.” Fresh tears instantly fill Alexia’s eyes. You see them before she can blink them away.

“T’estimo molt, mama.”

The word feels different out loud. Bigger and warmer. Like something that has belonged to you for a long time finally finding its way home.

For a second Alexia simply stares at you. The world seems to narrow to the space between you.

All the sounds from the party fade into the background. The laughter, the music, the voices drifting across the neighborhood become distant and insignificant compared to the look on her face.

A tear slips down her cheek. Then another.

She lets out a soft, disbelieving laugh through the tears, shaking her head slightly as though some part of her still can’t quite believe she’s actually hearing it.

As though she’s spent so long loving you this way that she never stopped to imagine what it might feel like to have that love named and returned.

Then she’s pulling you right back into her arms. Holding you so tightly it almost hurts.

“T’estimo també, filla.”

Her voice cracks around the last word. Daughter.

The same certainty you’ve heard every time she’s called you petita, or bebé, or amor meu. The same unwavering certainty that has lived beneath every hug, every forehead kiss, every late-night conversation, every moment she chose you without hesitation.

Only this time neither of you has to hide behind other names. Neither of you has to dance around the truth anymore.

“Moltíssim.”

The word is barely more than a whisper against your hair, but you feel it all the same.

The kind of love that asks for nothing and expects nothing. The kind of love that simply exists.

The kind that always existed between you, long before either of you were brave enough to say it out loud.

wosofutbolfan

Jeeeeesus

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