Chapter 2: H
The rain on Saber Straße was a fine, persistent mist, turning the neon signs into smeared watercolor blurs. Vanja stood under the awning of the café, her portfolio clutched to her chest like a shield. Across the slick boulevard, the FC Bayern München administrative headquarters rose, a modern monolith of glass and steel. It looked less like a football club and more like a fortress of finance.
Her interview suit—navy, tailored, professional—felt like a costume. Every click of her heels on the polished lobby floor echoed the frantic beat of her heart. The receptionist, impeccable and cool, directed her to the third floor.
Dr. Heinrich Schuller’s office was all clean lines and motivational posters in German. He was a man in his fifties with sharp eyes and a handshake that assessed bone density. “Your research on the consolidation of motor memory under acute stress is fascinating, Ms. Vran. Particularly the Serbian study on adolescent pianists.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
“The transition to elite sports is natural. The brain under a penalty kick, the brain before a concerto… both are landscapes of fear and recall.” He leaned back, steepling his fingers. “Our program focuses on the younger academy players. The ones not yet jaded by fame. We build the foundation here. Your role would be to assess, to run cognitive drills, to be a resource. These are teenagers, some from difficult backgrounds, with the weight of an empire on their shoulders. It is delicate work.”
“That is exactly the work I want to do,” Vanja said, and meant it.
“You speak Spanish? French?”
“Fluently in Spanish, proficient in French.”
“Excellent.” A genuine smile touched his lips. “We have a very diverse squad. That will be invaluable.” He stood, signaling the end. “The position is yours, if you want it. We need you to start as soon as possible. Orientation is tomorrow.”
Vanja felt dizzy. “Tomorrow?”
“Is that a problem?”
“No. No problem at all.”
“Good. Welcome to FC Bayern.” Another handshake, firmer this time.
She floated out of his office, the contract signed and sealed in her bag. The hallway seemed brighter. She needed air, a moment to process. Someone had mentioned a staff canteen with a coffee bar on the ground floor.
The canteen was a vast, airy space with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the training pitches. The green of the grass was obscenely vibrant against the grey day. It was mid-morning, mostly empty. A few staff members sat with laptops. The rich aroma of coffee grounds hit her, a familiar comfort.
She was at the machine, fumbling with an unfamiliar pod system, when she felt the air change. A presence, large and quiet, materialized beside her.
“You left.”
The voice, that low rumble, was a physical shock. It cascaded down her spine, pooling heat in her core. She didn’t need to look. She knew the shape of him in her periphery, the slope of his shoulders, the blonde hair. Manuel.
She kept her eyes on the machine, willing her hands not to shake. “I did.”
“Did you know?” The question was stripped bare, all hard edges.
Finally, she turned. He was dressed in training gear—a grey Bayern hoodie, black track pants. He looked tired, and there was a new hardness around his eyes, a defensive wall she hadn’t seen at The Black Swan. He was holding an empty mug.
“Did I know what?”
“That you would be working here. Before you came to my house.” His gaze was forensic, searching for cracks in her story.
The accusation was a slap. It stole her breath for a second. “No,” she said, the word flat and final. “I got the call for the interview a week after. I didn’t know.”
He held her look, his blue-grey eyes stormy. He seemed to be weighing her soul. Then he gave a single, curt nod. “Right.”
He turned to the coffee machine, efficiently selected a pod, and slammed the mechanism shut. The machine hissed and gurgled. The silence between them was thicker than the steam.
“Congratulations on the job,” he said, not looking at her.
“Thank you.”
He took his full mug, the scent of strong black coffee mingling with the clean, athletic scent of him. He paused, his body angled away. “The young players… they’re good kids. Be good to them.”
And then he was walking away, his stride long and measured, disappearing through a door marked ‘Player Zone - Authorized Personnel Only.’
Vanja stood rooted, the heat from her own untouched cup burning her fingers. The encounter had lasted less than a minute. It left her feeling flayed.
From a table near the window, two men had watched the entire exchange. Joshua Kimmich took a slow sip of his water, his eyebrows raised. Thomas Müller, leaning back in his chair, wore a grin that threatened to split his face.
“Who was that?” Kimmich asked, his voice low.
“That,” Müller said, gleefully, “is your new sports psychologist. Some wunderkind from the university. Schuller snapped her up.”
“Already? I thought they only spoke to her yesterday.”
Müller’s eyes followed the path Manuel had taken. “Efficiency is key, Josh.” His grin turned sly. “Interesting chemistry, no? Our captain looked like he’d seen a ghost. A very beautiful, pissed-off ghost.”
Back in the sterile, temporary office they’d assigned her, Vanja locked the door. She leaned against it, the professional composure shattering. A choked sob escaped her throat, then another. She slid down to the floor, heels scraping on the linoleum, and buried her face in her hands. The tears were hot, angry, humiliating.
He thought she’d used him. He thought their night, that raw, vulnerable connection, had been a calculated step towards a job. The injustice of it burned worse than his absence. She cried for the simplicity of that night in Grünwald, now poisoned. She cried for the horrible, complicated reality of this morning. She cried until her head throbbed and her eyes were raw.
Then she stopped. She dragged the back of her hand across her face, smearing mascara. She was a professional. She had a job to do. She had players, kids, depending on her to be steady. She couldn’t fall apart over a man who clearly believed the worst of her.
She stood, went to the small sink in the corner, and splashed cold water on her face. She fixed her makeup, her hands steadying with each practiced motion. She looked at her reflection—the golden-green eyes, now slightly red-rimmed, but clear. You are here to work, she told herself. Nothing else.
A knock at the door, polite and firm.
She opened it. Joshua Kimmich stood there, dressed similarly to Manuel but with a more open, if serious, expression. “Ms. Vran? I’m Joshua Kimmich. Dr. Schuller said I should come by for an introductory chat. If you have time.”
“Of course. Please, come in.” She stepped back, her voice professional, warm. “And please, call me Vanja.”
He entered, his eyes taking in the sparse room with a quick, athlete’s scan. “This is temporary. They’ll get you something better with a view of the pitch. It helps, believe me.”
They sat. He was direct, intelligent, asking thoughtful questions about her methods. The conversation was easy, a lifeline back to her purpose. For twenty minutes, they talked about performance anxiety, about the mental transition from academy to first team. He was engaged, respectful.
As he got up to leave, he paused at the door. “You’ll see a lot of… intensity around here. The pressure is constant. It makes people act in ways they sometimes regret.” He met her eyes. “Welcome to the machine.”
The rest of the day was a blur of HR paperwork, facility tours, and overwhelming information. She avoided the canteen, opting for a lonely sandwich at her desk. The shadow of Manuel Neuer seemed to inhabit every corridor.
Evening found her back in her modest apartment, her cat purring in her lap. The silence was a relief. She tried to read, to focus on her doctoral thesis, but the words swam. All she could see was his hardened face, the accusation in his eyes.
Her phone buzzed. An unknown number. A text, in German.
You said you didn’t know. I believe you.
Her heart stopped. Then, a second later, another message.
It doesn’t change the fact that you left without a word. That you wrote a fucking thank you note like I was a hotel concierge.
The anger in the text vibrated through the screen. She stared at it, her fingers trembling. Before she could think, she typed back.
What did you want? A farewell speech? You were asleep. The script seemed clear.
His reply was instant.
There is no script. You made one up. My house. Now.
Two words that were not a request. They were a summons. Every sane cell in her brain screamed to ignore it, to block the number, to protect the professional boundary she’d just sworn to uphold. But a deeper, more visceral part of her, the part that remembered the weight of him and the feel of his mouth, was already standing up, reaching for her coat.
The taxi ride to Grünwald was a replay of a week prior, but the tension was different now, a wire pulled taut. The gate opened. The house was dark except for a single light in the vast living room.
He was standing by the window, silhouetted against the night, a glass of amber liquid in his hand. He didn’t turn when she entered.
“You accused me of something vile today,” she said, her voice echoing in the spacious room.
He turned then. The hardness from the morning was still there, but underneath it was a raw, simmering frustration. “You vanished. You turned something real into a one-night stand. Forgive me for trying to find a reason that didn’t feel like a rejection.”
“It wasn’t about rejection,” she fired back, stepping closer. “It was about reality. Your reality. The articles. The divorce. The ‘private player.’ I was a beautiful distraction. I spared us both the awkward morning-after conversation.”
He set the glass down with a sharp crack. “You don’t get to make those decisions for me.” He closed the distance between them in three swift strides. “You don’t know what I felt.”
“Then tell me!” she shouted, the professional veneer gone, all her hurt spilling out.
“I felt fucking alive!” he roared, his composure snapping. “For the first time in years, I wasn’t thinking about the next game, the next save, the next fucking headline about my failed marriage! I was thinking about you. About the sound you made when you came. About the way you argued about synaptic pathways. And then I woke up and you were a goddamn note.”
The truth of it hung between them, violent and honest.
His hands came up and gripped her face, not gently. “You want reality? This is reality.” His mouth crashed down on hers.
It was nothing like the first kiss. This was all anger and pent-up frustration and a desperate, clawing need. It was a battle for dominance, teeth clashing, tongues warring. She fought back just as fiercely, her hands fisting in his hoodie, pulling him closer. He tasted of whiskey and fury.
He walked her backwards, shoving a low table aside with his foot. Her back hit the cold glass of the window overlooking the dark forest. He ripped her shirt.
Buttons scattered across the floor like tiny pearls. The cold glass seeped through her thin bra. He tore the delicate lace down the center, the fabric giving way with a sharp sound. Her breasts spilled free into the cool air, and his mouth was on them immediately, a hot, wet brand of possession.
“You think you know my reality?” he growled against her skin, his teeth scraping a nipple. “You have no fucking idea.”
His hands shoved at the waistband of her trousers, yanking them and her underwear down her hips in one brutal motion. The air hit her damp sex. She gasped, her head thudding back against the window. He freed himself from his track pants, his cock springing out, thick and already brutally hard. He didn’t wait, didn’t tease.
He hooked one of her legs over his arm, hoisting her up, and drove into her.
The entry was a swift, burning stretch that made her cry out. He filled her completely, a ruthless invasion. He held there, buried to the hilt, his forehead pressed to the glass beside her head, his breath fogging the pane. “This,” he hissed, his voice ragged. “This is what you walked away from.”
Then he fucked her. Hard, deep, punishing strokes that shook her body against the glass. Each thrust was an accusation, a correction. She could do nothing but take it, her arms locked around his neck, her other leg scrambling for purchase on his hip. The world narrowed to the slam of his hips, the slick, wet sound of their joining, the heat coiling savagely in her gut.
“Tell me you didn’t feel it,” he demanded, pistoning into her. “Tell me that night was just a ‘distraction.’”
“It was—” she started, but he angled his hips and hit a spot that shattered the lie.
She screamed, her nails digging into the muscles of his back. Pleasure, sharp and shocking, lanced through her. Her body clenched around him, betraying her.
“Liar,” he spat, his pace becoming frantic. He was chasing his own release, using her body to exorcise a week of torment. His hand fisted in her hair, pulling her head back. “You felt it. I saw it in your eyes when you came on my tongue. You fucking trembled.”
His words, filthy and true, pushed her higher. She was close, teetering on a brutal edge. The anger was melting, morphing into something darker, more primal. She wanted to hurt him back, to mark him, to prove she was not just a receptacle for his frustration.
He crushed his mouth to hers again in a searing, breathless kiss. It was all teeth and dominance. And she answered.
She bit down on his lower lip.
Not a nip. A hard, sharp clamp of her teeth, breaking the skin. The coppery tang of blood flooded her mouth.
He jerked back with a shocked, guttural sound. His eyes, wide and wild, locked on hers. For a heartbeat, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the slick, rhythmic noise of his cock still moving inside her.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across his blood-smeared mouth. “Good.”
The acknowledgment unlocked something. He slid his hand between their sweat-slicked bodies, his thumb finding her clit. He pressed hard, circling in time with his thrusts. “Come on,” he urged, his voice a rough whisper against her ear. “Come on my cock and show me it’s real. Show me you’re still here.”
The orgasm tore through her, brutal and convulsing. She screamed into his shoulder, her body clamping around him in violent pulses. The sensation tipped him over the edge. With a raw groan, he buried himself deep and emptied into her, his own release a hot, claiming flood.
He held her there, pressed against the window, both of them shuddering, spent. The only light came from the garden below, casting their tangled reflection in the dark glass—a phantom portrait of ruin and release.
Slowly, he lowered her. Her legs wouldn’t hold her. They slid down the glass to the floor, a pile of torn clothes and trembling limbs. He sank down beside her, his back against the window, his head in his hands. The blood from his lip dotted his knuckles.
“I believe you,” he said finally, the words hollowed out. “About the job.”
She drew a shaky breath, pulling the remnants of her shirt around her. “But?”
He looked at her, his eyes exhausted. “But you still left. You decided for both of us. That’s the part I can’t… that’s the part that fucks with my head.”
She had no defense. In the stark, post-coital silence, her reasoning felt flimsy, a coward’s script. They sat in the dark, not touching, the scent of sex and blood hanging in the air between them—a new, complicated reality neither of them knew how to navigate.
The cold from the window seeped into her bones, or maybe it was the silence. It stretched, taut and brittle, between their ragged breaths. Vanja pulled the shredded fabric of her blouse tighter, a useless gesture against the chill now working its way inward. She stared at the vague, dark shapes of the furniture, anything but the man beside her.
“You decided for both of us,” he repeated, his voice a rough scrape in the dark.
A dam inside her cracked. The tears came then, not the angry sobs from her office, but a silent, hot overflow of exhaustion and shame. They tracked through the smudged mascara on her cheeks, dripping onto her torn collar.
He heard the shift in her breathing. “Vanja?”
She shook her head, a useless movement he probably couldn’t even see. “You don’t understand.”
“Then make me understand.” Frustration edged back into his tone. “Just fucking talk to me.”
“I left,” she whispered, the words sodden and thick, “because I thought that’s it. That that’s all I can give a man like you.”
He went very still. “A man like me?” The question was quiet, dangerously soft. He shifted, turning towards her shadowed form. “What does that mean? A famous man? A rich man? A divorced man?” His voice began to rise, laced with a fresh wave of anger. “You reduced me to a category and walked away. That’s fucking cowardice.”
“I’m twenty-five!” The cry tore from her, louder than she intended, echoing in the vast room.
The sudden outburst halted his building tirade. He stopped, waiting.
She wiped her nose with the back of her hand, a childish, vulnerable motion. “I never had a boyfriend.” The admission hung in the air, naked and absurd. “Not a real one. Dates, yes. But never… that.”
Manuel said nothing. The silence was absolute.
“Did you check your sheets?” Her voice was small now, hollowed out.
“What?”
“After we fucked. Did you check your sheets?”
He blinked, thrown by the non-sequitur. “They’re dark grey. I don’t… I didn’t change them.” His confession was grudging, raw. “I liked the smell of you on them.”
A broken, wet sound escaped her—a laugh or a sob. “Check the sheets, Manuel.” She pushed herself up, her body protesting, a live wire of aches and tenderness. “In cold water.”
With that, she leaned over in the gloom. Her lips found his, not in passion, but in a final, sealed punctuation—a salty, bloody, tragic kiss. Then she was moving, gathering her ruined clothes, stumbling towards the door.
He didn’t stop her. He sat frozen on the floor, his mind a stalled engine trying to process her fragmented words. Check the sheets.In cold water.
Long after the front door had clicked shut, he stood. His legs were stiff. The house was a tomb. He walked to the bedroom, a place that had felt like a sanctuary for a week because it held her ghost. He stared at the rumpled, dark grey duvet cover.
Feeling utterly, certifiably crazy, he yanked it from the bed. He carried the bundle to his massive, clinical bathroom. He shoved it into the empty bathtub and turned the faucet to cold. The water gushed, shockingly loud in the silent night.
He watched, leaning against the marble vanity, as the water soaked into the fabric. It swirled, clear at first. Then, as the water penetrated, a faint, rusty bloom began to appear. Not a stark red, but a dusky brownish-pink, diluted across the linen. It was a small stain, about the size of his palm, smeared near the center.
His breath left his body in a rush.Blood.
The memory assaulted him: her tightness, the initial, exquisite resistance that had made him shudder with pleasure. He’d thought it was just her, just the intensity. He’d been too lost, too selfish, to consider anything else.
She was a virgin.
The realization detonated in his gut, a nausea of understanding. Her flight.Her note. Her tears. Her accusation. A man like you. She hadn’t meant famous or rich. She’d meant experienced.Worldly. A man who had been married. A man who’d had a life she couldn’t fathom. She’d given him something irrevocable and then, believing it was a mere token to him, had tried to slip away with her dignity.
“Fuck.”
He sagged against the vanity, his head in his hands.
“Fuck.” Louder this time, to the sterile, white room.
“FUCK!” He roared it, a raw, anguished sound that bounced off the tiles and died in the empty air. He swept a crystal tumbler from the counter. It exploded against the shower glass, a violent rainfall of shards.
---
In her apartment, Vanja stood under a scalding shower, scrubbing at the smell of him, of sex, of her own foolish hope. The water ran clear. She wrapped herself in a towel and collapsed onto her bed. Her cat nestled against her side, purring.
Then the tears came again, silent and endless. She cried for the girl who had saved that part of herself, not for prince charming, but for a feeling that had felt real. She cried because she’d thrown it at the feet of a man who thought she was playing games. She cried because now she had to see him tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that, in the cold light of a professional world where this secret would forever scream between them.
She wept until her throat was raw, buried in her pillow, utterly alone.