Chapter 12: Dražen's Arrival
Vanja’s world had contracted to a single, pulsating point of agony. The universe was the sterile, dimly lit room, the rhythmic, unforgiving tighten of her own body, and Dejan’s hand being crushed within hers. For eighteen hours, the pain had been a tide, pulling her out to a dark sea of sensation where time lost meaning, then dragging her back to his voice, his face, etched with a fear deeper than any she’d seen on a pitch.
He hadn’t left. Not once. He’d been a fixture in the uncomfortable chair, his long legs somehow perpetually in the way of nurses, his tattoos stark against his pallor. He’d murmured a chaotic mix of Croatian profanity and encouragement, wiped her forehead with a cool cloth, and flinched each time a contraction ripped a raw cry from her throat.
“You’re doing it, ludo,” he’d rasp during the final, unbearable stage, his face so close she could see the tremble in his own jaw. “So fucking strong. Push. Push through it.”
And she had. The sensation of tearing, of monumental, impossible pressure, was surpassed only by the sudden, visceral release, a hot, wet slide that culminated in a thin, piercing wail that sliced through the heavy air.
Silence, for a heartbeat. Then movement, hushed voices.
“He’s here,” the obstetrician said, her voice calm and bright. A slippery, mottled, squirming creature was lifted onto Vanja’s chest. He was corded, bloody, furious, his mouth open in a perfect, scrunched-up wail that was the most beautiful sound she would ever hear. A choked sob erupted from Vanja’s throat. She was shaking, a violent, uncontrollable tremor of pure relief and shock.
Her hands, freed from Dejan’s, came up automatically, trembling as they hovered over the tiny, heaving back. He was so hot, so astonishingly alive.
Through the blur of tears, she saw Dejan. He’d fallen back into his chair as if his legs had given out. His face was ashen, utterly slack, his gaze locked on the tiny, mewling thing on her chest. He looked not like a legend, but like a man who’d stared into an abyss and seen something that had hollowed him out.
The nurses worked quietly around them, wiping the baby, assessing, performing the mundane rituals of life. They wrapped him in a striped blanket, just a hint of yellow from the nursery wall, and gently placed him back.
“Would you like to hold him?” a midwife asked Dejan softly.
He didn’t seem to hear her. His eyes hadn’t left the baby.
“Dejan,” Vanja whispered, her voice cracked and rough.
He jolted, blinking. He stood slowly, his movements stiff, like an old man’s. He approached the bed as if walking on broken glass. The midwife carefully transferred the small bundle into his waiting arms.
His arms, capable of brutally physical tackles, capable of holding her in every way imaginable, cradled the weight—less than eight pounds—as if it were spun glass. He looked down. His son stopped his fitful crying.Dražen. They’d settled on it weeks ago, a name from Dejan’s grandfather and her uncle, a name that meant “precious” but carried no flag.
One tiny, perfect hand escaped the blanket, fingers splayed.
Dejan’s breath hitched. A violent shudder ran through his entire frame. Then, with a sound that was ripped from the very core of him—a raw, wounded, animal sob—he crumpled. He fell to his knees beside the high hospital bed, his forehead dropping to the mattress beside Vanja’s hip, his shoulders heaving. The baby, secure in the fortress of his father’s arms, remained undisturbed.
“Hvala ti,” he wept into the sheets, the Croatian words muffled, desperate. “Thank you. Thank you.” He repeated it like a prayer, a mantra, between ragged, unguarded sobs that shook the bedframe. His free hand clutched at Vanja’s thigh, his grip bruising in its intensity, his tears soaking through the thin hospital linen.
Vanja’s own tears fell silently, her hand coming to rest in his short, dark hair, stroking, anchoring. She had seen him angry, possessive, tender, arrogant. She had never seen him broken open. The sight was more monumental than the birth itself. This was the vulnerability beneath the tattooed armor, laid bare not for the world, but for her and for the son he held so perfectly.
He cried until he was empty. The room had cleared, giving them this fragile, private dawn. Eventually, his breathing evened. He lifted his head, his face ravaged, tear-tracks gleaming in the soft light. He looked from Vanja’s exhausted, radiant face to the sleeping infant in his arms. A wonder, slow and dawning, replaced the devastation.
“Dragi moj,” he whispered to the baby, his voice shot through with gravel. “My precious one.”
---
The first weeks were a surreal, beautiful siege. Their home, once a place of silent tension and fierce passion, was now commandeered by a tiny, tyrannical presence. Sleeplessness became a state of being. The air smelled of milk, laundry detergent, and the peculiar, sweet scent of Dražen’s head.
Dejan was a study in obsessive devotion. He learned to change nappies with a defender’s focus, his large, tattooed hands surprisingly deft with the tiny tabs. He walked the halls at 3 a.m., singing gruff, off-key Croatian lullabies about mountains and the sea, his bare feet silent on the floorboards. He was terrified of baths, holding the slick, wriggling body with a look of pure panic until Vanja laughed and took over.
She healed. Her body felt strange to her—softer, heavier. Her breasts ached and leaked. A deep, protective fury lived in her chest, a new instinct that startled her with its primal intensity. When Dejan returned to training, she felt his absence like a physical draft.
One afternoon, six weeks in, the house was improbably quiet. Dražen was down for a nap, a minor miracle. Vanja stood in the shower, letting hot water beat against her sore shoulders, trying to wash away the accumulated fog of exhaustion. She felt hollowed out and full at the same time.
She stepped out, wrapping a towel around herself, her hair in a dripping knot. Dejan was there, leaning in the bathroom doorway, watching her. He was still in his training kit, sweat drying on his temples, his muscles defined under the damp fabric. His gaze was dark, intent, a look she hadn’t seen in weeks. It traveled over the towel, over the new curves of her body, on her lower belly that he’d traced with his tongue just last night, whispering they were his favorite tattoos.
“He’s asleep,” Dejan said, his voice low.
“For now.”
He pushed off the doorframe. “Come here.”
There was no question. She went to him. He took her face in his hands, his thumbs stroking her cheekbones, and kissed her. It wasn’t the frantic, possessive kiss of the nursery. It was slow, deep, exploratory. A re-acquaintance. His tongue slid against hers, tasting of mint and sweat. A dormant ache in her core flickered to life, a hot, lazy uncoiling.
He pulled back, his eyes searching hers. “The doctor said six weeks.”
She nodded. “Yesterday.”
A slow, predatory smile touched his lips. He unwrapped the towel from her body, letting it fall to the floor in a damp heap. His gaze raked over her nakedness—the fuller breasts, the changed waist, the evidence of her new motherhood. “Jebo te,” he breathed, not a curse, but a reverent expletive. “Look at you.”
He spun her gently, pressing her front against the cool tile wall beside the sink. He stood close behind her, his clothed body a heat source against her bare skin. He nuzzled her wet hair aside, kissing the nape of her neck, his hands coming around to cup her breasts. They were heavy, sensitive. He rolled her nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, and a sharp, exquisite sensation shot straight to her groin, making her gasp.
“These fucking beautiful tits,” he murmured, kneading them. “Full of milk for my son.” He pinched a nipple, harder, and she moaned, pushing her ass back against him, feeling the hard ridge of his erection through his shorts. The crude contrast—the maternal image, his filthy words—sent a jolt of pure lust through her.
“You want me?” he asked, one hand leaving her breast to slide down her stomach, through the damp curls below. His fingers found her folds, parting them. “Still so wet for me. Even after everything.” He pushed two fingers inside her, a slow, deliberate stretch. She was tight, different, but slick and ready. She cried out, her forehead pressing against the tile.
“Shhh,” he whispered against her ear, curling his fingers inside her, finding a spot that made her knees buckle. “You have to be quiet, luda. Don’t wake the baby.”
He worked her with his fingers, relentlessly, until she was panting, her hips rocking back against his hand. Then he withdrew. She heard the rustle of his clothes, the rip of a foil packet—a new, post-baby ritual. The sound of him sheathing himself. Then the blunt, thick head of his cock pressing at her entrance.
He entered her in one slow, inexorable push. Her body stretched, accommodated, a familiar fullness with a new, profound depth. She was so tight, so sensitive, every nerve ending shrieking. He filled her completely, burying himself to the hilt with a groan that was pure, unadulterated relief.
“Bog,” he choked out, his hands clamping on her hips, holding himself still for a moment, buried inside her. “Fuck. Vanja. This.”
Then he began to move. Not the frantic pounding of before, but deep, rolling thrusts, each one a full, possessive reclamation. Each withdrawal was slow, torturous, each penetration a deep, grounding shock. The angle was perfect, his pubic bone grinding against her with every stroke. The pleasure was a slow, thick burn, building in her belly, coiling tighter with every deliberate, quiet thrust.
His hand snaked around her hip again, his fingers finding her clit, slippery from her own arousal and his thrusts. He circled it in time with his deep strokes.
“This is my cunt,” he rasped, his breath hot and ragged in her ear. His thrusts picked up pace, becoming harder, more urgent. The quiet slap of his skin against hers echoed in the tiled room. “It made my son. It’s mine.You feel that? You feel how deep I am? I’m fucking you in the same place I made him.”
The words, the profound, obscene truth of them, were the final key. Her orgasm rolled over her not in a violent crash, but in a deep, seismic wave. It started in her core and radiated outwards, a silent, pulsating convulsion that clenched around him, pulling a raw groan from his throat. She bit her own wrist to keep from screaming, her body shaking against the wall, against him.
Her contractions triggered his own release. With three more brutal, grinding thrusts, he buried himself and came, his release flooding the condom inside her, his body shuddering against her back, his mouth open against her shoulder in a silent roar.
They slumped against the wall, slick with sweat and water, breathing in ragged, synchronized gasps. In the distance, the faint, stirring cry of their son began. A hungry wail, pulling them back.
Dejan slowly pulled out, disposing of the condom. He turned her, his hands gentle on her shoulders, and looked into her eyes. His were dark, sated, full of a peaceful wonder. He kissed her softly on the lips, a tender seal.
“I’ll get him,” he said, his voice hoarse. He pulled his shorts up, his movements easy. He looked at her naked, spent body one more time, and the possessive awe was still there, but softened now, fused with a deeper, settled certainty.
He walked out of the bathroom to attend to their son’s cries. Vanja, leaning against the cool tile, listened to the two sounds that now defined her world: the retreating footsteps of the father, and the insistent, loving demand of the son. The chapter wasn't closed. It was just beginning, one demanding, beautiful cry at a time.
It was just beginning, one demanding, beautiful cry at a time.
Dražen’s cries subsided into soft, milky gulps from Vanja’s breast. Dejan watched from the doorway, a mug of cold coffee forgotten in his hand. The scene—his son’s small hand splayed against the pale curve of her breast, her head bent in a shaft of afternoon light—struck him with a force more physical than any tackle. It wasn’t sentiment. It was a foundational shift, the ground beneath him re-solidifying into something unknown but absolute.
He’d returned to training two weeks prior. The pitch, once his absolute domain, felt oddly dimensionless. His timing was a half-second off, his legendary focus fractured by an intrusive, primal echo: Is he sleeping? Is she crying? Jordan Henderson had clapped him on the shoulder after a mistimed slide. “Head’s still at home, mate.” It wasn’t a criticism, just a fact. Dejan had merely nodded, tasting the truth of it, metallic on his tongue.
At home, the silence when Dražen slept was a tense, waiting thing. He and Vanja moved around each other in the kitchen, a new carefulness between them. The bathroom incident had been a necessary collision, a raw reconnection, but it hadn’t smoothed the edges of their new reality.
“The club wants me in Zagreb next week,” he said one evening, his voice too loud in the quiet living room. He was staring at a spreadsheet on his laptop, a charity event for war veterans’ children. “Three days. For this.”
Vanja, burping Dražen over her shoulder, went very still. “Croatia?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re bringing us.” It wasn’t a question.
He looked up. Her golden-green eyes were flat, challenging. The unspoken history thickened the air between them—his early, cruel barbs about her Serbian blood, the wary peace forged through passion and this child. Taking his Serbian-Croatian girlfriend and their son into the heart of Zagreb, under the glare of the Croatian media, was a political statement he hadn’t fully measured.
“It’s not a good idea,” he said carefully, shutting the laptop. “The press, the fans… they can be animals. I don’t want that noise around him. Around you.”
“He’s half that noise, Dejan.” Her voice was low, precise. “Or have the genetics changed?” She stood, settling Dražen into his bassinet with a ritualistic gentleness that contradicted the steel in her posture. “You don’t get to compartmentalize him.Or me. Not anymore.”
He saw it then, the fear beneath her anger. Not fear of the fans, but of him sliding back into the man who defined himself by borders and flags. The argument that followed was conducted in hissed whispers so as not to wake the baby, a brutal economy of words that cut deeper than shouts.
They didn’t speak of it again until the night before his flight. The suitcase lay open in the bedroom like a wound. Vanja fed Dražen in the rocking chair, the rhythmic squeak a monotonous counterpoint to Dejan’s restless pacing.
“I booked the tickets,” he said, stopping by the window. The Anfield lights glowed in the distance. “For all three of us. The hotel is private. We’ll use the service entrance.”
She didn’t look up, just stroked Dražen’s downy head. “Thank you.”
The gratitude felt like a loss.
---
Zagreb greeted him with a familiar, damp chill and the immediate, suffocating embrace of his own fame. The charity event was a blur of flashing lights, handshakes with politicians whose eyes dropped to his left hand, searching for a ring they wouldn’t find. He gave a short, rehearsed speech in Croatian about legacy and the future. His voice echoed in the hall. He felt like a traitor.
Vanja waited upstairs in the sprawling penthouse suite, a gilded cage. He found her standing at the floor-to-ceiling window, looking down at the Cathedral spires. Dražen slept in a plush hotel cot nearby. She wore a simple black dress, her hair loose. She looked like a stranger, or perhaps she looked exactly like herself, and he was the stranger here.
“How was the war hero party?” she asked, not turning.
He didn’t answer. He crossed the room, the thick carpet muffling his steps. The energy from the night, the judging eyes, the latent nationalism in every toast, had coiled into a tight, furious spring inside him. He needed to obliterate it. He needed her. Not the mother of his child. Not the psychologist.His. The one piece of this fractured puzzle that was irrevocably his.
He stopped behind her, his reflection ghosting the dark window beside hers. He placed his hands on her hips. She stiffened.
“Look at me,” he said, his Croatian rough.
Slowly, she turned. Her expression was guarded, closed off. He cupped her face, his thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. “They asked about you. The reporters.
Her eyes flashed. “And you said?”
“I said it was private.” He leaned in, his lips almost touching hers. “A lie. You’re not private. You’re my fucking complication.”
He kissed her then, and it was all conquest and anger. He pushed his tongue into her mouth, claiming the space. She resisted for a second, then met him with equal ferocity, her hands fisting in the front of his tailored shirt. It was a fight. A necessary, ugly one. He walked her backward until her knees hit the edge of the king-sized bed.
“Take it off,” he ordered, nodding at her dress.
Her fingers trembled slightly on the zipper. She let the dress pool at her feet. She stood in only her lace underwear, pale against her skin in the city-light. He didn’t touch her. He just looked, drinking in the sight: the fuller hips that had borne his child, the silver lines beginning to trace her lower abdomen, the vulnerable curve of her bare throat. A possessive rage, tender and vicious, swamped him.
“On the bed. Now.”
She lay back, watching him as he tore at his own clothes, his belt buckle clanging. He didn’t undress her fully, just hooked his fingers in the sides of her underwear and pulled, the lace snapping with a sharp sound. He pushed her thighs apart, his hands rough on her skin.
She was wet. He shoved two fingers inside her to confirm it, a crude, probing thrust. She gasped, arching off the bed.
“All that quiet anger,” he growled, curling his fingers, watching her face contort. “It all pools here, doesn’t it? This hot, tight cunt. It doesn’t care about borders.”
“Dejan—” His name was a half-sob.
He freed his cock, heavy and already leaking. He notched the head at her entrance, applying pressure but not entering. “Tell me whose you are.”
She glared up at him, her breath coming in short pants. “Fuck you.”
He laughed, a low, dark sound. He pushed in, just an inch, a brutal, stretching invasion. The sensation was a lightning bolt up his spine. Her eyes widened.
“Say it.”
She shook her head, biting her lip. He withdrew slightly, then slammed home, burying himself to the hilt in one vicious stroke. The force drove a choked scream from her lungs. He pinned her hips to the mattress, letting her feel every inch of him, the overwhelming fullness.
“Whose?” he demanded again, beginning a ruthless, pounding rhythm. The bed rocked against the wall. Each drive was a punctuation mark on his words. “This. My. Cunt.”
Her resistance shattered. “Yours!” she cried out, her nails raking down his back. “God, it’s yours!”
He fucked her then with a single-minded intensity, each thrust a physical eradication of the distance, the politics, the fear. He was marking his territory, not with a flag, but with the raw, slap of skin, with the sheer depth of his possession. He bent her legs back, changing the angle, hitting a spot that made her see stars. Her orgasm ripped through her, a silent, convulsing wave that squeezed his cock like a fist.
He followed her over the edge, his own release a hot, pulsing flood inside her. He collapsed, his weight crushing her into the mattress, his face buried in the sweaty hollow of her neck. He was shaking.
Slowly, the world filtered back. The hum of the minibar. The distant wail of a siren. The soft, sleepy snuffle from the cot. He rolled off her, onto his back, staring at the ceiling. His heart hammered against his ribs.
Her hand found his on the rumpled sheets. Her fingers laced through his, sticky with sweat. They lay in the wreckage, in the silence.
“We go to the cafe tomorrow,” he said, his voice hoarse, emptied. “The one on the square. All three of us. In the open. they know you, they know us, its time they see him too”
She turned her head on the pillow to look at him. She didn’t smile. Just searched his face, her eyes clear now, the barriers gone. She gave a single, slow nod.
It was a start.