Chapter 6: The Violence of Wanting
She cried until her throat was raw, until the great heaving shudders subsided into shaky, shallow breaths. He never let go. His hand, broad and marked with scars and ink, stayed firm on the back of her head, his other arm a solid band around her back. He just held her while the city did nothing, the lights indifferent below.
Then, as if the tears had washed away a dam, a new current surged.
She went still.Too still.
Her hands, still pressed against his chest, unclenched. Then they shoved.
It wasn't a gentle push. It was a burst of pent-up force that broke his hold and sent him stumbling back a step, his spine hitting the cold metal railing with a dull thud.
“You don’t get to do that,” she said, her voice scraped hollow but vibrating with a fresh, dark energy. She wiped her face with the heels of her hands, smearing the wetness. “You don’t get to stand there and be the fucking noble one. The comforter. After you… after what you did.” The words gained heat, speeding up. “You destroyed it. You took the thing I built for myself, the thing away from all that history, and you just… you just stamped on it. You made it dirty. You made me feel dirty in my own skin, in my own profession. And then you come here with your sad eyes and your ‘sorry’ and you hold me while I cry? FuckThe sobs didn’t soften. They hardened. The vibration against his chest turned from surrender into something coiled and furious. Her hands, still fisted in his jacket, stopped trembling and began to push.
She shoved him back, breaking the embrace with a force that surprised him. He stumbled a step, the cold railing hitting his lower back.
“You don’t get to do that,” she spat, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Her eyes were red-raw, but the tears had been burned away, replaced by a scorching clarity. “You don’t get to comfort me. Not after what you did. You destroyed it. You didn’t just insult me in a tunnel, Dejan. You made a choice. And that choice let a man like Mike Gordon think he could quietly dismantle my career, my reputation, to protect your precious ego. Do you know what that feels like? To have your entire professional life, everything you’ve built, turned into a disposable problem for some club’s PR machine?”
“I know,” he said, his voice low. “I saw it. I stopped it.”
“You allowed it!” The shout tore from her, echoing briefly in the empty space. “It existed because of you! My work at Liverpool is over. I quit. But the stain of it, the whisper that maybe I was hysterical, maybe I did overreact to the big bad defender… that follows. That’s mine now. A gift from you.”
She took a step closer, her finger jabbing at the air between them. “So don’t you dare hold me while I cry about the wreckage you caused. Your apology isn’t a bandage. It’s just another piece of the debris.”
He had no air left to defend himself. She was right. Absolutely, devastatingly right. The shame was a physical heat crawling up his neck. He could only stand there and take it.
Vanja stared at him, at his silence, at the clear acceptance of her verdict in his eyes. The fury seemed to reach a white-hot peak, and with it, all rational thought evaporated. There was only the charged space between them, the hum of the city, the animal rawness of the fight they’d just witnessed and the one they were in.
Her expression shifted. The rage didn’t fade; it mutated. It narrowed, focusing on his mouth, on the line of his jaw, on the whole unbearable, beautiful, infuriating fact of him standing there.
“I hate you,” she whispered, the words thick with a new, dangerous truth.
Then she closed the distance.
It wasn’t an embrace. It was an assault. Her hands came up, not to his face, but to his shoulders, shoving him hard against the unyielding metal of the railing. The impact knocked a grunt from his lungs. Before he could process it, before he could even think to raise his own hands, her mouth was on his.
The kiss was nothing like the soft, tentative thing he might have imagined in some other, impossible life. It was a collision. It was teeth and desperate, angry pressure. It was the taste of salt from her tears and the bitter tang of her lipstick. It was a transfer of all the unsaid, violent things between them—the ethnic slurs, the shattered filing cabinet, the corporate betrayal, the weight of their shared, bloody history.
For a second, he froze, stunned.
Then a switch flipped. A dam broke. His own hands came up, one cupping the back of her head, tangling in the silk of her hair, the other splaying against the small of her back, pulling her into him so fiercely their bodies aligned with no space left for pretense. He kissed her back with equal ferocity, a counter-attack, a surrender, a confession all in one.
It was a fight. It was a negotiation without words. Her nails dug into the nape of his neck, a sharp, grounding pain. He bit her lower lip, not gently, and she answered with a low sound in her throat that was pure defiance. The city lights below them smeared into streaks of gold and white, the world tilting on its axis. The distant roar of the arena was the soundtrack to their private, desperate war.
He forgot where they were. He forgot Niko and Zoran inside. He forgot football, countries, history. There was only the heat of her, the impossible reality of her mouth, the way her body curved into his as if it belonged there, even as every part of them screamed that it didn’t, that it couldn’t.
It was she who broke it. She tore her mouth from his, breathing ragged, her chest heaving against his. They stayed like that, foreheads nearly touching, sharing the same shocked, stolen air. Her lips were swollen, her mascara a faint, smudged shadow beneath her eyes. She looked ruined. She looked alive.
He searched her face, his own breath coming in short gasps. He couldn’t form a word. The question in his eyes was a vast, silent thing.
She answered it by pushing off him again, creating a foot of cold, Munich night between them. Her hand went to her mouth, her fingers touching her bruised lips as if confirming what had just happened.
The reality came crashing back in. The sound of a door opening somewhere inside, laughter spilling out. The chill of the air on his sweat-dampened skin.
Vanja’s expression shifted through phases too fast to track: shock, horror, a flicker of lingering heat, then a final, settling coldness. She straightened her jacket, a futile, mechanical gesture.
“That didn’t happen,” she said, her voice hoarse but firm.
“Vanja—”
“No.” She cut him off, her gaze finally meeting his, now shielded and impenetrable. “That was the anger. That was the fight. That was nothing.”
She turned and walked towards the steel door, her steps measured and sure, every inch the professional reclaiming her territory. She didn’t look back.
Dejan leaned against the railing, the metal biting into his palms. He watched her go, the taste of her still on his tongue, the ghost of her nails on his skin. The roar from the arena below reached a crescendo. Someone had won. Someone had lost.
He stayed there long after the door had swung shut behind her, until the cold seeped into his bones and the only thing left was the echo of her words, and the searing, undeniable lie of them.
That was nothing.
It was everything.
And it changed absolutely nothing at all.
He found Niko twenty minutes later, alone by the deserted hospitality bar, staring into an empty glass. Dejan’s knuckles were still raw-feeling, phantom touches from where her nails had dug in.
He dropped onto the stool beside him. The leather sighed under his weight. "I need to find a way to make it right to her." His own voice sounded unfamiliar in the quiet.
Niko’s jaw was clenched, a muscle ticking near his temple. He didn’t look over. "You fucked up, Lovren." He finally turned, his gaze assessing, hard. "But you do care about her. I can smell it on you. It's all over your face."
Dejan just nodded. Acknowledgment was the only currency he had left.
Niko signaled the bartender for two waters. "She is starting a new position. With Bayern.Next week."
The news was a physical blow to his sternum.Munich. A different country, a rival club. An ocean away from Melwood, from anything he might accidentally bump into.
"Her father is not pleased," Niko continued, a dry note entering his voice. "But Hansi Flick asked. And I recommended her." He finally looked at Dejan, a sharp, professional glint in his eyes. "She's amazing, really. And well, you are playing Bayern next week. In the Champions League. You'll see her again."
---
A week later, the Allianz Arena was a screaming, red cauldron.
Dejan saw her on the touchline during the warm-up. A sleek, dark-blond ponytail, a Bayern training jacket, a tablet cradled in her arm. She was talking to someone, her head tilted back, laughing at something Serge Gnabry had said. The sound was swallowed by the crowd, but he saw the shape of it on her mouth.
He was staring. Of course he was.
Everyone looked at her. How could they not? She had a gravity, a brightness that pulled attention like a new star. It was him who had been blind before, seeing only a flag, a last name, a history. Now he saw the curve of her smile, the specific way she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, the confident set of her shoulders. It was a specific, exquisite torture.
His former team said their hellos on the pitch before kick-off. Klopp enveloped her in a bear hug, his expression one of genuine pride and a little sadness. Dejan approached last. He gave a single, stiff nod.
"Vanja."
She met his eyes. No smile, no fury. A perfect, neutral professionalism. "Dejan." A nod back. That was all. Then she turned to the bench.
The match was a brutal, relentless 2-2 grind. He played like a man exorcising demons, throwing his body into tackles, his voice raw from organizing the back line. Every time he looked over, she was a statue of focus, watching the play, making notes. She never glanced his way.
After the final whistle, amid the exhausted mingling of players, he moved. He cut through the crowd, his damp kit clinging to him, ignoring the backslaps. She was by the tunnel entrance, speaking quietly with a Bayern coach.
He waited. The coach left."Vanja."
She turned, her expression shifting from mild interest to a guarded flatness. "What do you want, Lovren?"
The tunnel noise faded. He took half a step closer, dropping his voice, the language a private, instinctive shield. "Ne mogu prestati misliti na to kakvog si okusa" I can’t stop thinking about the way you taste.
A vivid, hot blush swept up her neck, staining her cheeks. Her lips—the ones he’d memorized—parted slightly. He saw the pulse jump in her throat.
"I want a second chance," he said, switching back to English, the words rushing out. "I'll do anything."
"Anything?" Her eyebrow arched. The blush was still there, contradicting the cool tone.
"Yes."
She studied him, the wheels turning behind those gold-green eyes. "Okay. You have a party next week. My uncle told me. For the national team call-ups, in Zagreb." She took a breath. "Take me with you."
He went very still. "Vanja," he said, the word heavy. "It's in Zagreb. It's... it's a certain crowd. The songs they sing..." He trailed off, picturing the smoky rooms, the nationalist anthems, the roaring, uncomplicated patriotism. "They will sing about things. And they will... they will look at you. They will ask."
Vanja rolled her eyes, a gesture so familiar and dismissive it sparked a strange relief. "Take me," she repeated, her voice firm. "That's the price. Your second chance, or don't.That's it."
He imagined bringing her into that room. The conversations. The silenced stares. The inevitable, ugly question from someone drunk enough to ask it. Protecting her from that, shielding her with his own body and reputation—the sheer, terrifying intimacy of it. It was a test far harder than any apology.He swallowed. Nodded.
"Fine," he said, the word tasting of imminent chaos."Fine."
She smiled. It wasn't the warm laugh she’d given Gnabry. It was small, private, and held the sharp glint of a challenge accepted. Then she turned and disappeared into the home team's tunnel, leaving him standing alone in the concrete bowels of the stadium, the echo of his own promise hammering in his chest.