Chapter 9: Scouts and Morning Sickness
The two pink lines didn’t fade. They bled into everything, a permanent filter over the world. Hyukjae saw them in the condensation on his shower wall, in the parallel streaks of tire tracks on wet asphalt, in the blank space between Gabby’s eyebrows when she thought he wasn’t looking. They were a secret too big to hold, swelling between them in the cramped silence of his apartment.
Sleep was a fractured, thin thing. He’d wake to find her already awake, her back to him, a hand resting on her still-flat stomach. He’d pull her close, nestle his face in the jasmine-scent of her hair, and feel the slight tremble in her shoulders. They didn’t talk about it much. Talking made it solid, gave it edges that could cut. Instead, they moved through their days like ghosts haunting their own lives.
His refuge was the pitch. The clean, brutal logic of the game. The smell of cut grass and damp earth was an antidote to the chemical smell of her morning sickness, which had begun with a vengeance a week after the test. He’d hold her hair back while she retched over the toilet, her body convulsing, and feel a terrifying, helpless love so powerful it hurt his ribs.
That’s why he was at the field before dawn, a full hour before the team was due. The sky was a deep bruise fading to lilac at the edges. The stadium lights hummed to life, bleaching the dew on the grass into a million cold, scattered diamonds. He started with laps, his breath pluming in the chill air, then moved to ball work. Each kick was a question he couldn’t answer. Each sprint was an escape from a future he couldn’t outrun.
“Couldn’t sleep either, kid?”
Coach Park’s voice, gravelly from coffee and decades of yelling, cut through the morning quiet. He stood at the edge of the pitch, a thermos in one hand, a battered clipboard in the other. He was dressed in his usual tracksuit, his hair a salt-and-pepper buzz.
“Just wanted to get some touches in before practice,” Hyukjae said, trapping the ball under his foot.
Coach grunted, walking onto the grass. “Touches. Right. You’ve been off for two weeks. Your passes are late. Your first touch is like a brick wall. You’re playing like you’re scared of the ball.” He took a sip from his thermos, his eyes never leaving Hyukjae’s face. “This about the girl?”
Hyukjae’s heart stuttered. He looked down, toeing the ball. “Maybe.”
“It’s always about a girl,” Coach said, not unkindly. He came closer, lowering his voice. “Look. The scouts from Atalanta are coming for the derby next month. Not just watching. They’re coming. For you. This is it, Hyukjae. The door is cracking open. You walk through it clean, you’re set. A pro contract in Serie A. You fuck this up with your head in the clouds…” He let the sentence hang, a heavier threat than any finished thought.
“I know,” Hyukjae whispered. The dream felt like someone else’s now. A beautiful, distant postcard.
“Do you?” Coach Park’s voice sharpened. “Because what I see is a kid who’s about to let the single biggest opportunity of his life slip away for a piece of ass. I’ve seen it a hundred times. Talent walks in one door, pussy walks in the other, and talent gets left in the hallway crying.”
“She’s not just—” Hyukjae’s head snapped up, a hot flare of anger in his gut.
“I don’t care what she is,” Coach interrupted, holding up a hand. “Right now, to your future, she’s a distraction. A very pretty, very expensive distraction. You think those Italian suits give a shit about your love life? They want a machine. A focused, ruthless machine. Show me that machine next month, and you’re on a plane. Show me this…” He gestured at Hyukjae’s general demeanor. “This ghost, and you’re finished. That’s the tough love, son. Now, run the cones. And for Christ’s sake, smile a little. You look like you’re at a funeral.”
Hyukjae obeyed, his mind churning. A piece of ass. A distraction. The words coiled around the memory of Gabby on her knees on the penthouse floor, the silicone harness glinting, her voice whispering this is mine. Of her crying in his arms, reeking of another man’s cologne. Of the fierce, protective ache he felt watching her sleep now. Coach was both right and catastrophically wrong in a way only someone who’d never known that specific, terrifying love could be.
He was drilling, attacking the cones with a ferocity that made his calves scream, when he saw her. A figure moving through the grey light near the players’ tunnel. Gabby. She was wrapped in one of his oversized hoodies, her hair a wild cloud. Even from this distance, he could see the pallor of her skin, a greenish-white against the dark fabric.
She lifted a hand in a weak wave. Hyukjae jogged over, leaving the ball.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, his voice soft. “You should be sleeping.”
“Couldn’t,” she said. Her voice was thin. “The bed smelled like your shampoo and it was making it worse.” She attempted a smile. It was a ghastly, fragile thing. “Thought some air might help.”
Before he could answer, her eyes widened. She clamped a hand over her mouth, a low gagging sound escaping her throat. She stumbled past him, towards a drainage grate at the edge of the field. She didn’t make it. She doubled over, retching violently onto the manicured grass. Nothing came up but thin, acidic bile. Her whole body shuddered with the force of it.
Hyukjae was there in an instant, pulling her hair back, his other hand rubbing slow circles on her back. He felt the sharp knobs of her spine through the thick hoodie. She felt smaller. Breakable.
“Breathe, noona,” he murmured. “Just breathe through it.”
When the spasms passed, she sagged against him, sweating and trembling. He held her up, wiping her mouth with the hem of his own shirt. She tasted of salt and sourness.
Coach Park had walked over, his expression unreadable. He stood a few feet away, watching. Hyukjae met his gaze over Gabby’s head. The old man’s eyes dropped to Hyukjae’s hand, splayed protectively over her stomach, then back to his face. The pieces clicked in his coach’s mind. Hyukjae saw the exact moment of understanding—the narrowed eyes, the slight downturn of his mouth, the slow, grim nod.
“Morning sickness,” Coach stated, his voice flat. “That’s a hell of a distraction, Lee.”
Gabby pushed herself upright, wiping her mouth again with a shaky hand. She looked from Hyukjae to Coach Park, her usual radiant defiance dimmed but not extinguished. “It’s not a distraction. It’s a fact.”
Coach Park studied her, taking in her sickly complexion, the defiant tilt of her chin. He sighed, a long, weary sound that seemed to come from his cleats. “Kids having kids,” he muttered, almost to himself. Then, to Hyukjae: “The scouts are here for the derby. Four weeks. You have four weeks to get your head right, or that kid’s father is the only one who’ll be buying diapers. You understand me?”
Hyukjae nodded, his throat tight. “I understand.”
“Good.” Coach Park turned to leave, then paused, looking back at Gabby. “My wife threw up every day for five months with our second. Ginger tea. Slice it raw, steep it, drink it hot. Tell your boyfriend.” He gave a curt nod and walked away, his footsteps crunching on the gravel track.
They were alone again in the vast, empty bowl of the stadium. The first birdsong of morning pierced the air. Gabby leaned into Hyukjae’s side.
“Ginger tea,” she repeated, her voice a hollow whisper.
“I’ll get some,” he said, kissing the top of her head.
She looked up at him, her eyes glassy with spent nausea and something else—a deep, simmering fear. “Four weeks,” she said.
“Four weeks,” he echoed.
The derby. The scouts. A ticking clock. He looked at her, at the life taking root inside her that was already bending her body to its will, and then out at the pristine, expectant pitch. The two pink lines had finally found their form. They were the goalposts at either end of a very short field, and he had to run the length of it with the world watching, carrying everything he loved, with no room for error. The whistle had already blown.
The whistle had already blown. The taste of bile was still sharp in Gabby’s mouth as they drove back to her penthouse in silence. The city woke up around them, but inside the car, the world felt narrowed to the two of them and the fragile, dividing cell that was rewriting their futures. He held her hand on the gear shift, his thumb stroking her knuckles.
“I have to tell my mother,” Gabby said, staring out the window. Her voice was quiet but resolved. “Before my father hears it from some gossip at the club, or from my vanishing waistline.”
Hyukjae just nodded, tightening his grip. “However you want to do it, noona. I’m with you.”
“Alone,” she said, turning to look at him. Her eyes were clear now, the green flecks vivid against the faint lavender of fatigue. “I need to tell her alone first. She deserves that.”
Two days later, Gabby sat in her mother’s solarium, surrounded by orchids and the damp, earthy scent of tending. Sunlight streamed through the glass, highlighting the fine lines on her mother’s face as she listened, her gardening shears frozen in her hand.
“I’m pregnant, Mama.”
The words hung in the humid air. Gabby watched her mother’s face, bracing for the tight-lipped disappointment, the immediate calculation of scandal. Instead, her mother’s shears clattered onto the marble table. A slow, astonishing smile spread across her face, erasing years of practiced composure.
“A baby?” her mother breathed, her hands coming to her own mouth. Then she laughed, a bright, unburdened sound. “Oh, dushen'ka!”
Gabby could only blink. “You’re… happy?”
“Of course I am!” Her mother stood, sweeping around the table to pull Gabby into a fierce, jasmine-scented hug. “A life! New life!” She held her at arm’s length, her clever eyes scanning her daughter’s face. “It’s Hyukjae’s, yes?”
Gabby nodded, mute.
“I knew it,” her mother said, her smile softening. “That boy looks at you like you hung the moon. He’s young, yes. Still in college. But his heart… his heart is true. I see his sincerity.” She cupped Gabby’s cheek, her thumb wiping away a tear Gabby hadn’t felt escape. “We will tell your father together. You let me handle him. He will be furious. He will shout. He will threaten to disown you, to crush that poor boy like a bug.”
Gabby’s breath hitched. Her mother’s hands tightened on her shoulders.
“But at the end of the day, he is a father who loves his daughter. He wants your happiness, even if his version of it is packaged in euros and prenups.” Her mother’s gaze grew serious, probing. “The important questions are yours. Do you want this baby?”
“Yes,” Gabby answered without hesitation. The word felt solid, a cornerstone.
“And Hyukjae? He wants it? He understands… he has the means to take care of you? Both of you?”
Gabby thought of the feel of his hands holding her hair back at the stadium. The raw vow in his voice when he’d said we are going to have a baby. “He wants it more than anything. The means…” She swallowed. “He’s working on it.”
“Then he will find them,” her mother stated, as if willing it into existence. “A man with a true heart finds a way. Now, let’s have some tea. You look pale.”
Meanwhile, on the field, the whistle wasn’t metaphorical. It screamed from Coach Park’s lips, relentless, driving Hyukjae through drills until his muscles screamed in harmony. Every sprint was chased by the ghost of Gabby’s pallor. Every shot on goal was fuelled by the memory of her father’s imagined disdain. The Italian scouts were no longer a vague door. They were the only door left, and he had to rip it off its hinges.
“Again!” Coach barked. “You think Monza wants a midfielder who daydreams? They want a pitbull! Be a pitbull!”
Monza. The name was a mantra. Not just any Serie A club. A specific one. A plan was coiling in his mind, crystalline and hard. First, get the contract. The derby was his stage. He would be undeniable. Second, with an offer in hand, he would go to Gabby’s father. He would have something more tangible than just his heart to lay on the man’s polished desk. Third, he would fight for her, for them. He would propose not with a question, but with a future already built.
After practice, his body steaming in the cold shower, he approached Coach Park. “The scouts from Atalanta. Do they talk to other clubs? Like Monza?”
Coach looked up from his clipboard, water dripping from his hair. “They’re a network, kid. Impress one, word spreads. Why Monza?”
“They’re building,” Hyukjae said, the words feeling right. “They need hungry players. I’m hungry.”
A slow, knowing grin spread across Coach Park’s face. He saw the change in Hyukjae’s eyes—the scattered fear was gone, burned away and replaced by a single, burning point of light. “Good. That’s a good target. Now, being hungry isn’t enough. You have to be a chef. You have to cook the whole meal. Show them ball control, vision, stamina, heart. Especially heart. They can smell desperation, but they respect fire.” He slapped Hyukjae’s shoulder. “Keep that fire lit.”
Hyukjae walked off the pitch, his cleats crunching on the gravel. His phone buzzed in his bag. A message from Gabby: Mama knows. She’s… happy. Really happy. We’re telling Dad together next week.
He stopped walking, the evening air cool on his sweat-slicked skin. A fragment of hope, delicate as a soap bubble, floated up from the chaos. He typed back, his fingers trembling not from exhaustion, but from a fierce, gathering resolve. I’m getting that contract, noona. Then I’m coming for you. For us.
He hit send, shouldered his bag, and looked towards the setting sun. The path was terrible and clear. He had four weeks to become someone a club like Monza couldn’t refuse. Four weeks to forge himself into a man her father couldn’t dismiss. The goal wasn’t just in front of him anymore. It was inside him, a second heartbeat keeping time with the first, and he would run himself into the ground to reach it.
It was inside him, a second heartbeat keeping time with the first, and he would run himself into the ground to reach it. The resolve was a cold, hard knot in his chest, pulled tight every time he thought of her alone in that penthouse, a place that was starting to feel less like a sanctuary and more like a very beautiful cell.
A week after the morning sickness on the pitch, Gabby texted him. The single word carried the weight of a verdict: Tonight.
The ‘tonight’ arrived cloaked in a tense, polished silence. Her mother had chosen the formal lounge, a room of sharp edges and low-slung leather furniture that smelled of lemon oil and imported cigars. Gabby sat perched on the edge of a sofa, her mother a calm, immovable presence beside her. They didn’t speak. They waited.
Her father entered not with a bang, but with the quiet, inevitable force of a falling bank vault door. He was freshly returned from a board meeting, still in a tailored suit the color of slate. He poured himself a measure of Scotch, the crystal decanter clinking softly, before he turned and saw their faces.
“This looks ominous,” he said, taking a slow sip. His eyes, the same green as Gabby’s but devoid of their warmth, flicked between them. “Out with it.”
Gabby’s mother placed a hand over her daughter’s, a silent signal. Gabby took a breath that felt too thin. “I’m pregnant.”
The glass in his hand didn’t shake. It simply stopped halfway to his lips, suspended. The ice cubes inside gave a minute, crystalline rattle. He set the tumbler down on the sideboard with a precision that was more threatening than a slam. “Explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain, Robert,” her mother said, her voice a steady contralto. “She’s having a child.”
“With whom?” His voice was dangerously low.
“With Hyukjae,” Gabby said, forcing the words past the tightening in her throat. “The man I love.”
Her father’s laugh was a short, dry crack of sound. “Love. You’re twenty-four. You don’t know what that word means outside of poetry and pop songs.” He finally looked at her, really looked, and his gaze was like an X-ray, seeing only the folly, the liability. “This ends now. You will terminate this… situation. We will arrange a period of study abroad. Switzerland, perhaps. You will return when it’s over, refreshed, and ready to meet your actual potential.”
Gabby felt the room tilt. “No.”
“It is not a request, Gabriella.” He took a step forward, his shadow falling across her. “You are my daughter. Your life, your associations, are a reflection of this family. I will not have you throw yourself away on some… athlete. Some boy with no lineage, no prospects, nothing to his name but a pair of cleats and a dream.”
“He has more than that!” The words burst from her, hot and sharp. “He has integrity. He has heart. He wants this baby!”
“Wanting doesn’t pay for pediatricians,” he spat. “Wanting doesn’t provide security. Where is he right now? Is he here, facing me? Or is he hiding behind his soccer ball, letting you carry this alone?” His voice rose, filling the sterile room. “The child’s father isn’t around to take responsibility, so I will! By erasing this mistake!”
“You will do no such thing.” Gabby’s mother stood. She was smaller than him, but she placed herself squarely between her husband and their daughter. “You will not distress my child. Or my grandchild.”
He stared at her, incredulous. “You’re siding with this insanity?”
“I am siding with life,” she said, her voice never wavering. “And with her happiness, which you seem determined to treat as a disposable asset. This is happening, Robert. Your anger will not unpregnant her.”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. He turned his fury back on Gabby, a focused, chilling beam. “Then you will remain here. You will not leave this apartment. You will not see him. You will cut all contact. You think he loves you? Let’s see how long that lasts when he can’t get what he wants from you. When his little fantasy of a family meets the reality of being shut out.”
“You can’t lock me up,” Gabby whispered, the defiance leaching from her voice under the sheer weight of his will.
“Watch me.” The words were flat, final. “Your cards, your accounts, your access. All of it is mine until you come to your senses. You have a roof, food, the best care. Everything you need. He is not what you need.” He picked up his glass again, the discussion clearly over in his mind. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a company to run. A real one.”
He left the room. The silence he left behind was thick, suffocating. Gabby stared at the doorway, trembling. Her mother’s arms came around her, pulling her close.
“He’ll calm down,” her mother murmured into her hair, but the words sounded hollow even to her. “He just needs time to process.”
Gabby’s phone, hidden in the pocket of her dress, vibrated against her thigh. A secret, frantic heartbeat. She pulled it out with shaking hands.
A text from Hyukjae: How did it go?
She typed, her vision blurring with tears she refused to shed in this room. Bad. He’s cutting me off. Won’t let me see you. Says you’re not here to take responsibility.
The three dots pulsed for an agonizing minute. Her breath hitched, waiting.
His reply came through. I am. I will. Just give me time, noona. Time to get the contract. Then I’m coming for you. For our baby. I promise.
She stared at the words: I promise. They were pixels of light on a screen, fragile against the solid, immovable wall of her father’s world. She clutched the phone to her chest, a tiny, glowing shield. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city lights pulsed, indifferent to the small, desperate war being waged in a penthouse high above it all. Down on a dark, empty field, a boy was running, his every stride a hammer-blow against the door that kept her in.