Chapter 13: 'Let them see who you belong to,' Dejan hisses, yanking Vanja's panties down as she braces against the table. He rams into her without warning, his grip bruising on her hips while her moans mingle with the clink of nearby coffee cups.
Thick, ancient stone echoed with the convulsive roar of fifty thousand voices. The air inside the Maksimir Stadium was a soup of vaporized beer, fried onions, and tribal fervor. Vanja felt the sound in her molars, a subsonic tremor that synced with the frantic drumming in her chest. To her left, Dejan's mother, Iva, clutched a rosary, her lips moving in silent prayer. To her right, his father, Marko, sat with stoic rigidity, his knuckles white on the metal railing before them. Between them, strapped snugly against Vanja's chest in a fabric carrier, Dražen slept, blissfully unaware of the hurricane of national passion swirling around him.
He wore a tiny, custom-made Croatia jersey, "LOVREN 6" stitched in miniature on the back. It had been Iva's gift that morning. "So his father sees him, from the pitch," she'd said, her voice thick, her eyes avoiding Vanja's direct gaze. The gesture had been pure, a grandmother's love, yet it felt like a brand. Vanja had accepted it with a stiff nod, her own complicated feelings about the crest on her son's chest a private, churning ocean beneath a calm surface.
Down on the emerald green, Dejan was a study in controlled fury. It was a friendly, a pre-season tune-up against a Slovenian side, but there was nothing friendly about the way he moved. He was a fortress, a snarling, tattooed bulwark. Every tackle was a statement, every cleared ball a declaration. He played as if the ghosts of every critic, every historical slight, every whisper about his new family were standing in the opposing striker's shoes. He played like a man with something to prove to the entire watching nation.
Vanja watched him, her professional eye noting the hyper-focused aggression, the slight over-commitment in his challenges. It was unsustainable. But her other eye, the one that belonged only to her, saw the tension in the cords of his neck, the way his gaze flickered, just once, toward the section where they sat. He was looking for the fleck of red against her chest. Their son.
The game was a grind, scoreless. The crowd's energy turned nervous, thirsty for a goal to sanctify the evening. In the 78th minute, a sloppy Slovenian pass in midfield was intercepted. The ball squirted free, bouncing toward the halfway line. Dejan, reading the play two steps ahead, erupted from the back line. He wasn't just defending now; he was initiating. He surged forward, legs pumping, a defender turned berserk engine. He took three touches, driving deep into Slovenian territory, a one-man cavalry charge that left the midfield in disarray. The stadium rose as one, a deafening, ascending wave of sound. He wasn't supposed to be here. He was. He dished a perfectly weighted pass to the overlapping winger and continued his run into the box, a monstrous, unexpected presence.
The cross came in, looping, tempting. Dejan launched himself, a horizontal missile of muscle and intent. He connected with his forehead, a savage, thumping crack of leather on bone. The ball bulleted past the keeper’s outstretched hand and ripped into the net.
The explosion was apocalyptic. The sound was a physical force. Confetti of beer cups rained down. Vanja jerked instinctively, curling over Dražen, shielding him from the sudden cacophony. The baby stirred, let out a thin wail lost in the roar. Iva was weeping openly, hugging Marko, who was bellowing, his stern face cracked open by pride.
Dejan slid on his knees toward the corner flag, his roar swallowed by the crowd's. He pounded the crest on his chest, once, twice, a violent, primal punctuation. Then he scrambled to his feet. His celebration was over. His eyes scanned the stands again, urgently this time. He found them. He pointed, a single, direct jab of his finger aimed at the bundle on Vanja's chest. Then he brought both hands to his lips and flung a kiss into the chaotic air. It was for Dražen. It was for her. It was a public claiming, as deliberate and potent as his goal.
The whistle blew. Croatia 1, Slovenia 0. The players trudged off, a river of sweat and satisfaction. Vanja’s ears rang in the sudden, relative quiet. The walk to the designated family meeting area was a gauntlet of stares, nods, and a few muttered comments she chose not to hear. Iva and Marko flanked her like wary guardians.
He found them in a concrete corridor under the stands, the air thick with damp and disinfectant. He was still in his kit, soaked through, dirt streaked across his cheeks, smelling of grass, sweat, and glory. His parents embraced him first, a torrent of Croatian she only half-understood, full of “my son” and “for Croatia.”
Then he turned to her. The intensity in his eyes was a live wire. He looked at Dražen, who was awake now, blinking placidly at the harsh lights, then back at her.
“You saw?” he asked, his voice hoarse.
“I saw.”
Without a word, he closed the distance. His hands,, came up to cradle her face, ignoring the sweat, the grime. He kissed her. It wasn't gentle. It was deep, hard, and tasting of salt and victory. It was a sealing of a public pact. When he pulled back, his forehead rested against hers. “Let's go home,” he rasped. “Our home.”
---
The drive back to the hotel in Marko’s car was subdued. Dražen fed and drifted back to sleep. Iva made soft comments about the game. Marko grunted agreement. The unspoken tension—the jersey, the pointed kiss, the sheer, blazing fact of them—hummed beneath the small talk.
In the penthouse, Dejan’s parents said stiff goodbyes. “We will see you for breakfast,” Iva said, her eyes lingering on Dražen with a hungry love. The door shut, sealing Vanja and Dejan in a silence that was suddenly deafening. The adrenaline was leaching away, leaving a raw, electric aftermath.
Dejan went straight to the minibar, pulled out a bottle of water, and drank half of it in one go, his throat working. He peeled off his damp training top, tossing it on the floor, his torso a map of heaving muscle and vivid ink. He stood by the window, his back to her, watching the city lights.
“That jersey,” Vanja said quietly. She had unstrapped Dražen and was laying him gently in the cot.
He didn't turn. “What about it?”
“Your mother. It was a kind gesture.”
“But?”
She straightened up, facing his broad back. “It doesn't feel like a gift. It feels like a uniform. Like he’s been conscripted.”
Now he turned. His face was shadowed. “He’s my son.In Croatia. He wears the shirt. What’s the problem?”
“The problem is he’s my son, too. And I didn’t choose that for him. You didn’t consult me.”
“Consult you?” A harsh laugh escaped him. “It’s a fucking baby shirt, Vanja. Not a political manifesto.”
“Everything here is a political manifesto!” Her voice rose, sharp in the quiet room. She gestured toward the window, toward the sleeping city. “Your goal, your celebration, that kiss—it was all a performance for them. For your country. You pointed at him like he was a trophy.”
He crossed the room in three swift strides, stopping inches from her. The heat and smell of him enveloped her. “I pointed at him because he is my heart. Out there. For everyone to see. I kissed you because you are mine. I scored that goal for him. For you.”
“You scored it for them,” she shot back, poking a finger at his chest. It was like poking granite. “To prove you’re still their loyal son, even with a Serbian-Croatian woman in your bed and a mixed-blood child. You were screaming it with your body.”
His control snapped. He grabbed her wrist, not hard, but with an unbreakable firmness. His eyes were black pools. “Maybe I was. So what? You want me to be ashamed? You want me to hide you? Hide him?” He pulled her closer, his voice dropping to a venomous whisper. “That’s not happening. Ever.”
The argument was a gas leak, looking for a spark. It found it in the collision of their bodies. His mouth crashed down on hers again, but this was not the triumphant kiss from the stadium. This was a battle for dominance. He backed her toward the massive bed, his hands yanking at the waist of her jeans. She fought him, not to stop him, but to match him. She shoved at his shoulders, twisted, got her hands between them and tore at the button of his track pants. It was frantic, graceless, a physical translation of the unspeakable conflict between them.
Her jeans and underwear were shoved down her thighs. He pushed her back onto the mattress, her legs tangled in the denim. He freed his cock, thick and already painfully hard, and was on her in an instant. There was no foreplay, no tenderness. He drove into her with a single, brutal thrust that punched the air from her lungs. She was dry, tight from stress and anger, and the penetration was a sharp, burning stretch. She cried out, a sound of pain and dark satisfaction.
“Is this hidden?” he growled, pinning her hips down, starting a punishing, deep rhythm. Each stroke was an accusation. “Is this your ashamed Croatian, fucking his complicated half- Serbian cunt?” The obscenity was deliberate, a weapon to carve through the pretense.
The initial burn melted into a slick, agonizing friction. Her body betrayed her, softening, welcoming the invasion, responding to the raw, undisguised claim he was staking. He was everywhere, his weight, his scent, the brutal cadence of his hips. She arched against him, her own nails digging into the scars on his back, meeting him thrust for thrust.
“Say it,” he demanded, his breath scorching her ear. He hooked one of her legs over his arm, opening her wider, sinking even deeper. The new angle made her see stars. “Whose are you?”
“Yours!” she screamed, the word torn from her. It wasn't a surrender. It was a furious affirmation. “Yours, you bastard! They can all fucking watch!”
Her orgasm took her violently, a seizure that clenched around him like a vice, ripping a guttural roar from his throat. He came seconds later, his release a hot flood inside her, his body collapsing onto hers, shuddering through the final waves.
They lay locked together, breathing in ragged, shared gasps. The sweat cooled on their skin. Gradually, the world returned. The hum of the air conditioning. The soft, rhythmic sigh of Dražen’s sleep from the cot.
Dejan shifted his weight, rolling to his side, taking her with him, still joined. He nuzzled the damp hair at her temple. His voice, when it came, was scraped raw, stripped of all armor. “I don’t know how to do this,” he whispered. “Be their hero and your man and his father. It’s all the same person. And it’s tearing me in half.”
She turned her head to look at him. In the dim light from the city, she saw the boy beneath the legend, terrified and lost. She saw the man she loved. She touched his cheek. “Then don't tear,” she said, her own voice quiet. “Just be.Here. With us. The rest is just noise.”
He closed his eyes, a profound weariness settling into his features. He pulled her closer, his body finally relaxing into hers. For now, the battle lines were blurred, the borders between love and pride, history and future, momentarily dissolved in the simple, exhausted truth of their tangled limbs and shared breath. The morning, with its breakfasts and unspoken judgements, would come soon enough. For these few, dark hours, they had a fragile, hard-won peace.
For these few, dark hours, they had a fragile, hard-won peace. The morning brought a stiff breakfast with his parents, the conversation a minefield of generic praise for the game and cooing over Dražen. The flight back to Liverpool was a silent pact of exhaustion, Drašen sleeping in a bassinet between them.
Weeks bled into a routine of training, doctoral work, and night feeds. The Zagreb trip receded, a scar beneath the skin of their daily life. It itched sometimes, when a tabloid headline mentioned Dejan’s “patriotic passion” or when a fan shouted something in Serbian from the stands he pretended not to hear. Vanja buried herself in her research and the consuming, beautiful minutiae of their son. Dejan trained with a ferocity that worried the club’s physio.
He came home later each evening, smelling of the gym and a new, aggressively musky cologne. It was a sharp, woody scent that clung to the upholstery. Vanja found herself opening windows after he’d left a room.
One Tuesday, he found her at the kitchen sink, staring blankly at the water running over a rinsed bottle. Her shoulders were tense. He moved behind her, his hands settling on her hips, his chin resting on her shoulder. She flinched. Just a tiny, involuntary recoil.
“You are upset with me,” he said, his voice low in her ear.
“No, I’m not.”
“You are crying again.” He turned her gently to face him. A single tear had tracked through the powder on her cheek. She wiped it angrily. “And you are avoiding me. You’ve been cold for days.”
“Your new cologne,” she said, her voice thin, strained. “It smells strong. I’m sensitive to it, that’s all.” She tried to pull away, to return to the mindless safety of the dishes.
He held her firm, his gaze searching hers. The stare was penetrating, stripping away her feeble pretext. He saw the exhaustion, the lingering fear from Zagreb, something else he couldn’t name. He said nothing, just waited, his thumbs rubbing small circles on her hip bones.
The truth, sharp and terrifying, climbed her throat. It was the only weapon she had left against the wall of scent and silent distance he’d built.
“I’m pregnant again,” she said. The words fell into the space between them like stones. “You knocked me up.”
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the drip of the faucet. His expression didn’t change. Then, a slow, disbelieving smile broke across his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes. It wasn’t the arrogant grin of the football star. It was something softer, more astonished. He laughed, a single, joyous huff of air, and pulled her into him.
He kissed her. It was a deep, claiming, grateful kiss that tasted of the salt from her cheek and the promise of chaos.
“Mamaaa!” Dražen’s impatient yell shattered the moment from the living room, followed by the thud of a block against a wall. “Maaaaamaaa!”
They broke apart, both looking toward the sound. Then they both laughed, the tension dissolving into a shared, breathless disbelief at the beautiful, relentless life they kept building. He rested his forehead against hers, his hands sliding down to cradle her still-flat stomach, his smile fading into something solemn and fierce.
He rested his forehead against hers, his hands sliding down to cradle her still-flat stomach, his smile fading into something solemn and fierce. “Another one,” he whispered, the words a vow and a surrender. Dražen’s wails escalated. The moment fractured, but the ground beneath them had subtly, irrevocably shifted.
Two weeks later, he surprised her. “We’re going away,” he announced, tossing a brochure onto her research notes. It showed a stark, beautiful stone villa perched on a remote stretch of the Dalmatian coast, accessible only by boat. “Just us. Three days. My cousin owns it. No press. No parents. No history.” His voice was careful, a negotiated peace. “We need to breathe, Vanja. Before everything gets loud again.”
The villa was a silent sanctuary of sun-bleached stone and whispering pine trees. The only sounds were the cicadas and the relentless, crystal-clear lap of the Adriatic against the rocks below. For the first twenty-four hours, they did nothing but sleep, swim in the secluded cove, and feed Dražen under a sprawling pergola draped in grapevines. The silence between them was no longer charged with unsaid things, but slowly, tentatively, becoming a space to simply exist.
On the second evening, they put Dražen down in a travel cot in the shaded bedroom, the sea breeze billowing the linen curtains. They ate grilled fish and drank local wine on the terrace as the sun melted into a riot of orange and violet. The wine was dark and earthy, loosening the last tight cords of restraint.
“I hated you when you first walked into the treatment room,” he said suddenly, swirling the wine in his glass. His eyes were on the horizon, but his attention was entirely on her. “That sleek German PhD with her clipboard and her calm eyes. I thought you were a spy sent by the board to fuck with my head.”
Vanja snorted softly. “You made that abundantly clear. You called my methodology ‘Western bullshit.’”
“It was.” He smiled, a faint, nostalgic twist of his lips. “But then you looked at me, after that derby where I’d played like a wrecking ball. You didn’t see a legend or a nationalist or a headcase. You just saw a pissed-off man who was scared.” He finally looked at her, the fading light catching the gold in his eyes. “No one had looked at me like that in years. It pissed me off more. I decided to break you.”
“Break me?” She raised an eyebrow, a challenge.
“Yeah. Make you cry, make you quit, make you flinch.” He took a long drink. “Instead, you’d just tilt your head and ask, ‘And how is that working for you, Dejan?’ in that soft, fucking unshakeable voice.” He imitated her accent, badly. The sound of his laughter mixed with the waves. “You were the only person who wasn’t afraid of me. It was the hottest thing I’d ever seen.”
The admission hung in the salty air. He stood up, the wooden chair scraping, and walked around the table. He took her hand, pulling her up. The touch was electric, a live current running from his fingers up her arm. He led her not to the bedroom, but down the rough stone steps to the private pebble beach, now swallowed by indigo twilight.
“I liked you,” he said, the words rough, stripped bare. “I liked you so much it felt like a disease. Every session, I’d come in looking for a fight just to feel that crackle between us. I’d imagine what it would take to make you lose that control, to see your hair come down, to hear you make a sound that wasn’t a psychologist’s question.” He stopped at the water’s edge, turning to face her. The moon painted his skin in silver. “I wanted to ruin your perfect composure. I wanted to get inside you, in every way, just to prove I could.”
Her breath hitched. This wasn’t a retrospective romanticization. This was a raw, ugly confession of intent. It was more honest than any sweet nothing.
“You did,” she whispered.
“I know.” His hands came up to the straps of her sundress. He pushed them down slowly, the thin cotton pooling at her feet until she stood naked in the moonlight. The sea air kissed her skin, pebbling her nipples. He didn’t touch her yet, just drank her in with a hunger that was decades old. “But you got inside me, too. You fucked up my entire world.”
He stepped back, shucking his own shorts, his cock already thick and erect against his thigh. He was a silhouette of power and tension against the shimmering water. “Come here.”
She walked into the shallows. The water was cool, a shock that made her gasp. He followed, the waves lapping at their knees, then their thighs. He pulled her to him, his skin hot against the cool sea. His mouth found hers, and the kiss tasted of wine and primal possession. There was no audience here, no history to perform, only the two of them and the ancient, swallowing sea.
His hands gripped her ass, lifting her. She wrapped her legs around his waist, the water buoying them. The head of his cock nudged against her entrance, slippery with seawater and her own sudden, aching wetness. He didn’t push in. He held her there, poised, his forehead against hers, his breath ragged.
“I liked you,” he repeated, the words a guttural mantra against her lips. “I wanted this. I wanted to bend you over that fucking treatment table and make you scream so the whole training ground could hear who you belonged to.”
Then he let gravity take her, impaling her in one deep, unyielding stroke that made her cry out into the vast night. The water surged around them. He held her immobile, fully sheathed, letting her feel every inch of him. “You understand?” he growled, his voice trembling with the effort of holding still. “It was never hate. It was always this. This fucking need.”
He began to move, a slow, devastating rhythm aided by the push and pull of the waves. Each thrust was a punctuation to his confession. She clung to his shoulders, her nails biting into the hard muscle, her mouth open against his neck as the pleasure built, a deep, coiling pressure that was inseparable from the emotional vertigo of his words.
“Tell me,” he demanded, his pace quickening, the water sloshing violently around them. “Tell me you know.”
“I know!” she gasped. The world narrowed to the slide of him inside her, to the salt on her tongue, to the raw truth finally freed. “I liked you, too, you arrogant prick. I wanted to unravel you.”
With a savage groan, he drove into her one last time, his release pumping into her as the sea crashed against his back. Her own climax tore through her, a silent, seismic shattering that left her boneless against him. He staggered slightly, still holding her, their hearts hammering a frantic, synchronized beat against each other’s chests.
He carried her back to the shore, laying her down gently on the dress he’d discarded. He sprawled beside her on the pebbles, both of them breathless, staring at the infinite sprawl of stars. The past was a ghost between them, finally acknowledged.
“We’re going to be terrible at this vacation,” she said eventually, her voice hoarse. “We don’t know how to be quiet.”
He laughed, a real, easy sound that rolled into the darkness. He found her hand, lacing their fingers together. “Fuck quiet,” he said.