Chapter 3: Y
The morning air in the Säbener Straße training complex was sharp with the smell of cut grass and anticipation. Vanja moved through it like a ghost, her posture perfect, her portfolio tight against her chest. She had dressed in armor: a severe black blazer, tailored trousers, her hair in a ruthlessly efficient knot. Every mirror in her apartment had reflected a capable, impenetrable professional. She almost believed it.
Her first session was with a group of three academy goalkeepers, boys of sixteen with limbs too long for their bodies and dreams too big for their hearts. She lost herself in the work, in their nervous jokes, in the cognitive mapping exercises she had them perform. For forty-five minutes, she was Dr. Vran, and the world narrowed to reaction times and stress inoculation.
The illusion shattered the moment she stepped back into the main building’s corridor.
“—so you’re telling me you just let her walk out?” Thomas Müller’s voice, laced with theatrical disbelief, echoed from an open doorway to one of the player lounges. “Manuel, Manuel, Manuel. The woman is a genius and she looks like that? You’re slipping, old man.”
Vanja froze, her blood turning to ice in her veins. She couldn’t see them, but she could picture it: Müller leaning against a table, that knowing grin on his face; Manuel, a brooding statue.
“What could I possibly want with an intern, Thomas?” Manuel’s voice was a low, gravelly snap. It was the sound of a man stretched taut. “It was a mistake. A complication I don’t need.”
“She’s beautiful,” Müller pressed, the joker not sensing the live wire he was tugging.
“So are a thousand other women in this city,” Manuel shot back, the volume rising just enough to carry. “I’ve just gotten divorced. I have no interest in being shackled again, not to anyone, and certainly not to some… university recruit who’s going to be underfoot here every day.”
The words were physical blows.Shackled. University recruit. Underfoot. Each one landed with precision, tearing through the fragile professional membrane she’d constructed. Vanja felt the heat of humiliation flood her cheeks. She wanted to vanish, to melt into the polished floor.
Scheisse, Manuel muttered, the curse sharp and immediate.
He’d seen her.
He appeared in the lounge doorway, his face pale beneath his training sweat, blue-grey eyes wide with something that looked like horror. Müller popped up behind him, his grin vanishing as he took in Vanja’s frozen form and Manuel’s stricken expression.
For a long, suspended second, their gazes locked. She saw the regret flash in his eyes, saw his mouth open to form words that would never fix this. The hurt in her own eyes, she knew, was plain as day—a raw, open wound he’d just salted.
So she shut it down. She wiped every flicker of emotion from her face, leaving it a smooth, impassive mask. With a slight, polite nod—the exact same nod she’d give a stranger in an elevator—she turned and walked down the corridor, her heels clicking a steady, unhurried rhythm against the tile. She passed within three feet of him. She didn’t look at him, didn’t slow, didn’t breathe. She was air, she was nothing, she was a university recruit going about her business.
The click of her office door locking was the loudest sound she’d ever heard. She slumped against it, the portfolio spilling from her numb fingers. A dry, heaving sob wrenched itself from her throat, but no tears came. She was too empty, too scraped raw. She slid down to the floor, pulling her knees to her chest, and stared at the blank wall opposite. The pain was a cold, leaden weight in her stomach. He had reduced everything—their night, her profession, her very presence—to an inconvenient complication. A shackle.
She didn’t know how long she sat there. A knock eventually came, firm and professional.“Vanja? It’s Joshua. We have the one-on-one session now?”
She cleared her throat, forcing strength into her voice. “Yes. One moment.” She stood, smoothed her clothes, fixed her face in the reflective glass of a framed diploma. The woman who opened the door was composed, if pale.
The session with Kimmich was a lifeline of normalcy. He was perceptive, talking about the pressure of being the tactical engine of the team, the weight of constant expectation. She listened, offered insights, asked questions. It was real work, and it grounded her. As they wrapped up, he lingered.
“It’s a fishbowl here,” he said quietly, gathering his water bottle. “People say things.Often stupid things. Especially when they’re scared.” He gave her a brief, meaningful look before leaving.
Scared. The word rattled around her hollowed-out core. What did Manuel Neuer have to be scared of?
The rest of the day was a blur of administrative tasks. She avoided common areas, ate lunch at her desk. As evening tinted the sky indigo, she gathered her things, desperate for the sanctuary of her apartment, her cat, her books—a world where she wasn’t an ‘underfoot’ nuisance.
The players’ car park was mostly empty, the expensive vehicles gleaming under the security lights. She was fumbling for her keys when a shadow detached itself from beside a Range Rover.
Manuel.
He looked wrecked. His hair was messy, as if he’d been running his hands through it for hours. There were dark smudges under his eyes. He was still in his training kit, a duffel bag slung over his shoulder.
“Vanja.” Her name was a plea.
She kept walking towards her small, leased Volkswagen.
“Vanja, please.” He caught up, his long strides easily matching hers. He stepped in front of her, blocking her path to the driver’s door. “What you heard… I didn’t mean it like that.”
She stopped, finally looking up at him. The controlled anger she’d mastered all day finally found its voice, cold and sharp. “Why are you talking to me, Manuel? I’m just an intern. And as you so eloquently stated, there are so many other beautiful women in Munich waiting for the great Manuel Neuer to grace them with a one-night fun.” She threw his words back at him, each one a shard of ice.
He flinched. “I was angry.At myself. I was talking shit to Thomas because I didn’t know how to…”
“To what?” she interrupted, her voice rising. “To process the catastrophic error of fucking the virgin psychologist? Is that the complication? The shackle?”
His jaw tightened. “That’s not fair.”
“Fair?” A bitter laugh escaped her. “You publicly dismissed me as a gold-digging groupie before you even knew me. You then accused me of being a careerist spy. And today, you declared to your friend that I’m a shackle you have no interest in. Please, enlighten me on the definition of fair in your world. I’m fascinated.”
He had no answer. The wind whistled through the parking structure, carrying the distant sound of traffic. The fluorescent light above them buzzed like an angry insect.
“I saw the sheets,” he said finally, the words gruff and low.
Everything inside her stilled.
“I didn’t know,” he continued, his gaze boring into hers, fraught with a torment she couldn’t fully decipher. “You have to believe I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have… I was too rough. At the window. I’m…”
“Sorry?” she finished for him, the word a flat, dead thing. “Don’t be. It was fitting. A brutal end to a brutal little fantasy.” She moved to sidestep him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I don’t want to be underfoot.”
He caught her arm. Not hard, but with an undeniable firmness. The contact sent a bolt of unwelcome electricity through her. “Stop.”
“Let go of me.”
“No.” His voice dropped, a low thrum that vibrated in the space between them. The apology was gone, replaced by something darker, more possessive. The raw emotion he usually kept locked down was boiling over. “You don’t get to call it a fantasy. You don’t get to reduce it to that.”
“You did! In there!” She jerked her head towards the complex.
“I was protecting myself!” he roared, the sound echoing off the concrete pillars. His composure was in tatters. “From this.” His other hand came up to cup her face, his thumb brushing her cheekbone. The touch was startling in its tenderness, a violent contrast to his shout. “From feeling like my guts have been ripped out for a week. From seeing you in that fucking canteen and wanting to pin you against the coffee machine and demand to know why you left me. From finding your blood on my sheets and feeling like the worst kind of monster.”
His confession hung in the cold air. His breath came in white puffs. His eyes were desperate.
“So you insult me to your friends instead,” she whispered, but the fight was leaking out of her, diluted by the shocking vulnerability in his face.
“It was cowardly. It was pathetic. It was the act of a man who is terrified.” He leaned closer, his forehead almost touching hers. The scent of him—clean sweat, grass, and his own unique, masculine spice—enveloped her. “You terrify me, Vanja.Your mind. Your honesty. That fucking note.” He released her arm only to frame her face with both hands, forcing her to hold his gaze. “You left a piece of yourself in my bed, and you walked away without a backwards glance. Do you have any idea what that did to me?”
She was trembling. The cold, the adrenaline, the sheer exhausting whiplash of the day. “What do you want from me?”
A harsh, ragged sound escaped him. “Everything.”
His mouth crushed down on hers.
This kiss held none of the morning’s anger, none of the window’s punitive fury. This was pure, unchecked hunger. It was a claiming, yes, but also a surrender. His lips were desperate, moving over hers with a starving intensity. He tasted of mint and desperation. A weak sound, half-protest, half-surrender, vibrated in her throat, and he swallowed it, his tongue sweeping into her mouth, deep and possessive.
Her hands, which had come up to push against his chest, curled into the damp fabric of his training jacket. The rational part of her mind screamed that this was a disaster, that she was letting him obliterate every boundary she’d tried to build. But her body, traitorous and alive, was arching into him, her breasts crushing against the hard plane of his chest.
He broke the kiss, breathing heavily. His eyes were wild, pupils blown. “My car. Now.”
It wasn’t a question. He took her hand, his grip iron-strong, and pulled her towards the Range Rover. He hit the fob, yanked the passenger door open, and practically lifted her inside. He slammed the door, rounded the hood, and got in. The engine roared to life with a violent purr.
He drove not to Grünwald, but to a sleek, modern apartment building in the city center. A penthouse. He said nothing in the elevator, just held her hand, his thumb stroking frantic circles on her palm. The doors opened directly into his living space—a vast, minimalist expanse of glass, steel, and dark wood, with a breathtaking, glittering view of Munich’s night skyline.
The moment the elevator doors closed behind them, he was on her.
He backed her against the cool glass of the floor-to-ceiling window, the city lights sprawled like a stolen jewel-box below them. His mouth found hers again, his hands everywhere—tangling in her hair, pulling her blazer off her shoulders, sliding under her blouse to find the warm skin of her back.
“I need to see you,” he growled against her lips, his fingers working the clasp of her bra. “All of you.”
She was pliant, all resistance burned away by the inferno of his need and her own answering hunger. Her blouse and bra were discarded in a heap on the pristine floor. He looked his fill, his eyes blazing as they roamed over her bare breasts, the peaks already tight and aching. He bent his head and took one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue flicking the taut bud.
A sharp cry tore from her, her fingers diving into his hair. He switched to the other breast, lavishing it with the same devastating attention. His hands went to her trousers, unbuttoning, unzipping, shoving them and her underwear down her legs. She kicked them away, standing naked and trembling before him against the vast backdrop of the city.
“So perfect,” he breathed, his voice thick. He stepped back, stripping off his own clothes with frantic, jerky movements. His body was a masterpiece of athletic power—the sculpted chest, the defined abdomen, the powerful legs. And his erection, thick and jutting, proof of his all-consuming want.
He came back to her, his skin hot against hers. He turned her gently but decisively to face the window. “Look,” he commanded, his mouth at her ear. “Look at that city. And know that right now, all I see is you.”
His hands settled on her hips, pulling her back against him. She felt the hard length of him press against the cleft of her ass. One hand slid around her waist, cupping her breast, kneading it possessively. The other hand trailed down over her flat stomach, through the soft thatch of curls, and found her core.
She was already wet, desperately so. He moaned into her neck as his fingers slid through her slickness. “This,” he muttered, circling her clit with a relentless, slippery pressure. “This is for me. All of this. Say it.”
She couldn’t speak. Her head fell back against his shoulder, her eyes on the thousand points of light below, seeing none of them. Her world was the heat of his chest against her back, the sinful expertise of his fingers.
“Say it, Vanja.” He pushed one finger inside her, then another, scissoring them, stretching her. A groan was torn from her throat.
“It’s for you,” she gasped, the confession leaving her in a rush of shame and desire.
“Who do you belong to right now?” He pumped his fingers, curling them to stroke a spot that made her knees buckle.
“You.” The word was a sob.
He withdrew his hand. Spinning her around, he hoisted her up. She instinctively wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. He carried her like that, her back against the cold glass, to a large, low leather sofa. He laid her down on it, coming over her, his weight settling between her thighs.
He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head of his cock nudging against her sensitive flesh. His eyes, dark with lust and something fiercer, held hers. “No walking away this time,” he said, his voice guttural. “You stay. You take everything I give you.”
Then he pushed inside.
It was a slow, inexorable invasion, a breathtaking fullness that made her gasp and dig her nails into his shoulders. He filled her completely, a perfect, stretching fit. He held himself there, buried to the hilt, his body trembling with the effort of restraint.
“Look at me,” he ordered.
She opened her eyes, golden-green pools of surrender and fire.
He began to move. A deep, rolling withdrawal, then a powerful, driving thrust. It was a different rhythm than before—not punitive, but deliberate, claiming, profoundly intimate. Each stroke was deep and sure, hitting a place inside her that felt like the center of her soul.
“You’re mine,” he grunted, his pace increasing. The slapping sound of their bodies meeting filled the room, a raw, erotic counterpoint to their ragged breaths. “This tight, perfect cunt is mine. Your brilliant mind is mine. Your fucking heartbreaking notes are mine.”
His words were filth and poetry, and they undid her. The climax built not as a sharp shock, but as a deep, rolling wave, starting in her core and radiating outwards until her entire body was convulsing around him. She cried out, a wordless, choked sound of release, her inner muscles milking his length.
The sensation tipped him over. With a hoarse shout, he drove into her one last, brutal time, his hips shuddering as he emptied himself deep inside her. He collapsed on top of her, his sweaty body heavy and welcome, his face buried in her neck.
They lay like that for long minutes, the only sound their slowing breath. The city lights twinkled, indifferent.
Finally, he shifted his weight, though he didn’t pull out of her. He propped himself up on his elbows, looking down at her. His expression was stripped raw, all defenses gone.
“I’m a jealous, prideful bastard,” he said quietly. “And I’m sorry. Not for this,” he emphasized, shifting his hips slightly inside her, making her gasp. “But for the things I said. For hurting you.”
She looked up at him, her body still humming, her heart a vulnerable, bruised thing in her chest. The shackle.The complication. The words still echoed, but they were muted now, drowned out by the feel of him still nestled within her, by the stark honesty in his eyes.
“I’m here,” she whispered, the only promise she could make.
The city’s lights blurred behind her closed eyelids. His weight was an anchor, pinning her to the present, to the reality of his skin against hers, the slowly softening connection between them. “I’m here,” she had whispered. It felt like surrendering a war.
He finally rolled off, the cool air rushing to kiss her sweat-damp skin. They lay side by side on the sofa, not touching, staring at the ceiling. The silence wasn’t comfortable, but it was charged, a live wire of shared aftermath.
“You have to be professional at work,” she said finally, her voice hoarse. She turned her head to look at him. His profile was sharp against the ambient glow. “And you cannot be jealous. You cannot look at me the way you did in the parking lot. It can’t happen.”
He let out a long, controlled breath. “I can’t promise that.”
“You have to.” She sat up, gathering her clothes from the floor. The fabric felt alien. “Or this ends now. I won’t be a secret or a spectacle.”
He watched her dress, his expression unreadable. “Understood.”
The next two weeks were a masterclass in tension. Vanja was impeccable—engaged with the academy players, precise in her reports, friendly but detached with the senior squad during their mandated psychological profiling sessions. She called him “Herr Neuer” in the corridors, her tone coolly respectful.
Manuel held his part of the bargain, but it was a brittle performance. He was polite, distant. And he watched.
He saw her laughing with Joshua Kimmich in the recovery pool area one afternoon. They were leaning against the edge, voices low. Kimmich was gesturing, a rare, slightly overwhelmed expression on his face.
“…and she’s just exhausted all the time, and I’m flying to Brussels for the match and I feel like I’m failing before I even start,” Kimmich was saying, running a hand over his face.
Vanja nodded, her expression soft with understanding. “It’s a new kind of pressure. But Joshua, a family, especially raising your own… it often grounds players. It gives a purpose beyond the pitch. The chaos has meaning.”
Kimmich laughed, the sound relieved. “When you say it like that, it doesn’t sound like a disaster.”
“It’s not. It’s a different game. And you’ll be brilliant at it.” She smiled, a genuine, warm thing that lit up her whole face.
Manuel, loitering by the door to the gym, felt the hot spike of it instantly. It was a clean, friendly exchange, but the ease between them, the trust in Kimmich’s posture, carved something hollow inside him. He turned and walked away before they saw him.
The following day, he saw her with Leon Goretzka. They were in the canteen, sitting across from each other with lunch trays. Goretzka, tall, handsome, and single, was around her age. He was leaning forward, telling a story, his hands moving. Vanja threw her head back and laughed, a full, unrestrained sound that carried across the room.
Manuel froze mid-sentence in a conversation with the fitness coach. His knuckles whitened around his water bottle. It was safe. A player talking to a staff member. It was normal. It was nothing.
And it was everything.
Vanja glanced over, caught his stare. Her laughter faded, but the smile remained, softening at the edges as her golden-green eyes held his for a deliberate, pulsing second. Then she turned back to Goretzka, continuing the conversation.
It was a Saturday, after a tense Champions League home victory. The adrenaline was still a metallic buzz in his veins, the clean sheet a dull comfort. He found her leaving the staff wing, her bag over her shoulder. The corridors were quieter now, most everyone gone.
“Have dinner with me,” he said. It wasn’t a question. It was a raw need, stripped of all pretense.
She stopped, considering him. The professional mask was in place, but he saw the flicker beneath it. “Where?”
“Somewhere quiet. Where no one knows me.” He meant us.
They went to a small, family-run Italian place in Haidhausen, tucked away from the main streets. The air smelled of garlic and rosemary. They were led to a corner table, partially shielded by a wooden partition. He ordered a bottle of red wine she liked, remembering from Saber Straße.
Over shared bruschetta, the game slowly drained from her posture. She swirled her wine. “My internship finishes in two months,” she said, her voice practical. “After that, I either find a job elsewhere while I finish my dissertation, or, if they offer, I continue at Bayern.”
He nodded, cutting his pasta with precise, mechanical motions. “I want you to stay.”
“If I am to stay,” she said, meeting his gaze squarely, “and if we are to do this… we have to talk. And we need ground rules.”
“Rules?” He almost smiled, a real one, for the first time in weeks. The tension in his shoulders eased a fraction.
“Yes.” A slight, defiant tilt of her chin. “I thought you Germans loved rules.”
He did laugh then, a low, warm sound that seemed to startle them both. “Okay. What are the rules?”
“Discretion. At the facility, we are colleagues. Nothing more. No looks, no lingering, no parked-car confrontations.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “We tell no one. Not Thomas, not Joshua. No one. And I need to tell Dr. Schuller.”
Manuel’s fork stilled. “Tell him what, exactly?”
“That we are involved. It’s an ethical necessity. My integrity, and the club’s trust, depend on transparency.”
“What will you do if he disagrees?” he asked, his voice dropping. “If he tells you to choose?”
“Quit,” she said simply, without hesitation. She took a sip of wine. “I can’t expect you to quit, can I?”
The certainty in her words winded him. She would walk away from her career, the career she’d moved countries for, before she would secretly undermine it with him. The magnitude of what she was offering—and the stark line she was drawing—settled over him.
He looked at her then, really looked. At the fierce intelligence in her eyes, the stubborn set of her lips, the incredible life force of her that had upended his own in a matter of weeks. The fear that had haunted him—of being shackled, of losing himself—melted into something else, something terrifying and profound.
He pushed his chair back, stood, and leaned across the small table. His hand cradled the back of her head, and he kissed her. It was deep, claiming, and utterly devoid of the anger or desperate hunger from before. It was a statement.
She gasped against his mouth, her hands flying to his wrists. “Manuel,” she breathed, pulling back just an inch, her eyes darting around the half-empty restaurant. “Someone will see us.”
He didn’t pull away. His thumb stroked her jawline. He looked directly into her wide, alarmed eyes, his own blazing with a defiant, liberated certainty.
“I don’t care,” he said, loud enough for the nearby tables to hear. Then he kissed her again.