Chapter 28: Victory Embrace
The kiss tasted of salt and victory. It was deep, claiming, a punctuation mark to his whispered words. Your back met the cool concrete wall of the tunnel, his body a solid, trembling line of heat against you. The distant roar of the celebrating crowd was a white noise, everything narrowing to the rough pad of his thumb tracing the curve under the jersey, the frantic beat of his heart where your hand splayed on his damp chest.
He broke the kiss, resting his forehead against yours again, his breath coming in short puffs. “Did you feel that?” he murmured, his voice wrecked. “Every goal. Every pass. It was for you. For this.”
You nodded, speechless, your fingers threading through the sweat-damped hair at his nape. You could still see it—the ninety-minute fury of him on the pitch, a controlled explosion of speed and anger, capped with a vicious, winning free-kick in the eighty-eighth minute. He’d pointed straight to the executive box where you sat, his face a mask of fierce, public dedication. The headlines were already writing themselves.
“You were incredible,” you finally managed.
He gave a short, sharp laugh. “I was possessed.” He pulled back just enough to look down at where his hand rested. The simple black fabric of your dress was stretched taut. His gaze was unnervingly focused. “They are going to be animals now. Worse than before.”
“Let them.”
“No.” The word was sudden, granite. His eyes snapped to yours. “Not to you. Not about this.” The protectiveness rolling off him was a tangible force, a different kind of heat. It was the same intensity he’d shown in the penthouse, but sharpened, edged with a new fear. “The scan is tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“I’m coming.”
“Matteo, you have training. Izzy said—”
“Izzy can go to hell.” He said it without heat, a simple statement of fact. “I am coming. I don’t care if the manager benches me. I am seeing our child’s heartbeat for the first time.” His voice caught, just a fraction, betraying him. The great Matteo Rossi, undone by a grainy ultrasound image.
You saw the conflict in him—the absolute footballer, and the man trying to wrench himself into a new shape. You cupped his face. “Okay. You’re coming.”
Some of the tension leaked from his shoulders. He turned his head, pressing a kiss to your palm. “Thank you.”
A burst of laughter echoed from further down the tunnel, the clatter of cleats on concrete. The team was heading to the baths. Matteo didn’t move, holding you in the shadowed alcove, a stolen moment fraying at the edges.
“Rossi! You dead in there?” a voice boomed—Luca, the goalkeeper.
Matteo’s eyes closed in brief exasperation. “One minute!” he shouted back, his voice shifting seamlessly into its public, charismatic tone. When he looked back at you, it was with a resigned smile. “Duty calls. Wait for me in the car. Antonio has it running.” He fished the key fob from his pocket and pressed it into your hand. His fingers closed over yours. “Don’t talk to anyone. Not even the nice old lady with the complimentary biscuits. She is probably paparazzi.”
You smiled. “I’ll be a ghost.”
He kissed you once more, hard and fast. “My ghost.” Then he was gone, melting back into the flood of neon-edged players, his laugh booming as someone clapped him on the shoulder.
The silence he left behind was abrupt. You adjusted the jersey—his jersey, number 10, still smelling of him and grass—over your dress and made your way through the labyrinthine underbelly of the stadium. The shadows felt longer now, the echoes more hollow.
Antonio, his usual stoic self, held the door of the black SUV open. You slid into the butter-soft leather, the quiet hum of the engine a world away from the stadium’s roar. You pulled out your phone. The screen bloomed with notifications—news alerts, social media mentions. A video, already trending: Matteo Rossi’s Dedication to Mysterious Pregnant Partner Signals End of Bachelor Era. The thumbnail was a grainy zoom of you touching your stomach in the box, right after he’d scored.
You swiped it away. Instead, you opened the notes app, to the private list you’d started. Names. One column for boys, one for girls. You’d only shared it with him last week. He’d studied it with the concentration of a tactician reviewing game film, adding a single, fiercely underlined entry to the boy’s column: Alessio.
His father’s name.
The passenger door opened, and he slid in, bringing a wave of clean soap scent and damp hair. He’d showered and changed into dark jeans and a simple grey hoodie, the cap pulled low. “Go,” he said to Antonio, before turning to you. “You saw the news.”
“It was inevitable.”
He grunted, pulling out his own phone, his jaw tight as he scanned the headlines. “They are calling you a ‘distraction.’ Saying I will lose focus.” He tossed the phone onto the seat between you as if it burned. “Idiots. They have never understood. Before, I played for noise. For the roar. Now…” He reached over, his hand finding yours, lacing your fingers together. “Now I play for the silence afterwards. For this.”
The car slid through the nighttime streets. He was quiet, watching the city blur past, his thumb rubbing absent circles on your knuckle. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving something more pensive in its wake.
“I am scared,” he said, so softly you almost didn’t hear it over the engine.
You squeezed his hand. “I know.”
“Not of them. Of… the size of it. The responsibility. What if I am not good at this? What if I am only good at kicking a ball?” He looked at you, his famous eyes wide in the semi-dark. “What if I fail you?”
You brought his hand to your lips, kissing his scarred knuckles, the calluses earned from a lifetime of sport. “You won’t.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I do.” You guided his hand back to your stomach, holding it there. “Because you’ve never played a game in your life you didn’t intend to win. And this? This is the only game that actually matters.”
A slow breath escaped him. He shifted, wrapping his arm around you, pulling you close so your head rested on his shoulder. He pressed his lips to your hair. “You give me too much credit.”
“No,” you whispered, settling into him. “I just see you.”
He held you the rest of the way home, his silence no longer anxious, but full. A planning silence. When the car stopped at the penthouse, he didn’t move immediately. He just looked at the building’s sleek facade, then down at you.
“Tomorrow,” he said, and it sounded like a vow. “Tomorrow, everything changes.”
“It already has,” you said.
He smiled, a real one, faint but undeniable. “Sì. It has.” He got out, coming around to open your door, his hand lingering on the small of your back as you walked inside. The elevator rose, and you watched the numbers climb, his reflection serious in the polished brass. His hand never left you, a steady, warm pressure. An anchor. A promise.
As the doors opened to the quiet, dark apartment, he finally spoke again, his voice echoing slightly in the spacious foyer. “I want to hear the name. The one we choose. I want to hear you say it to them when they are here.” He paused, taking off his cap and running a hand through his hair. “I need to know what it sounds like in your voice first.”
You walked to the moonlit window, the city sprawling below. You could feel him watching you, waiting.
“Alessio,” you said, testing the weight of it.
Behind you, he went perfectly still. Then you heard his slow approach, the soft pad of his bare feet on marble. His arms circled you from behind, his hands coming to rest over yours where they cradled the bump. He dropped his head, his cheek against your temple.
“Again,” he whispered, his voice thick.
“Alessio Rossi.”
He trembled. Just once. A full-body shiver that he let out in a long, surrendering sigh against your neck. “Perfetto,” he breathed. And for now, in the deep quiet of the night, with the world shouting outside, it was.