Chapter 1: Champagne and Confessions
The noise from the upper deck was a physical thing, a pounding bassline of laughter, shouted jokes, and clinking bottles that vibrated through the worn planks beneath Juda’s feet. Her head swam pleasantly, a warm, fuzzy buzz clinging to her thoughts. Legal. Finally. She grinned to herself, running a hand through her auburn waves, still unused to the feel of the team’s celebration including her in the drinking, not just tolerating her presence with soda.
Borussia Dortmund had crushed their opponents at home, a decisive, beautiful win, and the energy had spilled out of the stadium and into the city. The team’s dumb, brilliant idea to hire a boat for a private party down the local river was the kind of chaotic logic that only made sense after three rounds of shots. Upstairs, it was chaos. Down here, it was quiet.
Just the low, rhythmic groan of the engine and the slap of water against the hull.
She found him in the corner of the lower deck, a shadowed figure swallowed by a large leather seat. The single bulb overhead flickered, casting erratic light over the polished mahogany of the small bar, the half-empty ice bucket, the forgotten champagne bottles. The air smelled of damp wood and old smoke.
Erling was a statue. He sat slumped, his broad shoulders curved inward, his face illuminated by the cold, stark glow of his phone screen. The light etched the sharp lines of his jaw, the tension in it so severe it looked painful. His usual quiet presence had curdled into something dense and heavy.
“Hey,” Juda said, her voice softer than she intended. The playful roar from above felt a million miles away. “Party’s that way, big guy. You’re missing Marco trying to dance on a table.”
He didn’t look up. His thumb scrolled slowly, mechanically, down the screen.
She moved closer, the leather of her boots creaking. “Erling?”
His blue eyes, when they finally lifted to meet hers, were glassy. Hollow. Not with drink, but with something worse. A flat, stunned devastation that made her own buzz instantly evaporate.
“What is it?” she asked, sinking into the seat opposite him. “You look like you just watched your dog get run over.”
A bitter, short sound escaped him. Not a laugh. “Something like that.”
He turned the phone around. The screen showed a grainy, zoomed-in photo from a gossip magazine site. A familiar blonde woman, Isabella, was tangled in a passionate kiss with a man in a tracksuit outside a chic hotel. The man’s face was clear. A midfielder for a rival club. The headline was brutal, all caps.
“Oh,” Juda breathed. The word felt useless. “Oh, shit.”
“Yeah.” Erling’s voice was a rough scrape. He dropped the phone onto the seat beside him as if it had burned him. “Team publicist just sent it. It’ll be everywhere in an hour. They’ve already got a statement prepared for me to approve.” He stared at the dark wood of the bar, his jaw working. “A statement. About my life.”
The engine pulsed. A shout of triumphant laughter filtered down the stairs, grotesquely cheerful.
Juda’s mind raced. This was the guy who terrified defenders, who celebrated goals with a roar that shook stadiums. Now he just looked… young. And wrecked. She acted on instinct, the same one that drove her to intercept a pass before she’d even fully seen it.
“Do you… I mean, do you need to be comforted?” she asked, the words tumbling out. “I’m here. I can… I don’t know. Be a distraction. Talk about something stupid. Whatever.”
He was silent for so long she thought he hadn’t heard her over the water sounds. Then his eyes locked onto hers, that piercing blue now dark with a raw, unguarded need. “Just for a little bit,” he whispered, the admission sounding ripped from him.
“Okay,” she said, shifting forward. “Okay, good. That’s what I’m here for.”
“What did you mean, though?” he asked, his voice low. “By ‘comforted’?”
The question hung in the damp air.
And then it hit her. How it must have sounded. In the dim light of a boat, away from everyone, after news like that. Her cheeks flushed with a sudden, searing heat.
“Oh! God, no,” she stammered, her words tripping over each other in a rush. “No, no, no. I didn’t mean—I would never—I just meant, like, a shoulder! A shoulder to cry on. To talk. To just… sit. Not… anything else. Jesus, Erling, I’m sorry, that was a terrible word choice.”
She buried her face in her hands, embarrassment burning through her. “I’m an idiot. Ignore me. My brain is still half-prosecco.”
When she dared to peek through her fingers, he wasn’t laughing at her. He was just watching her, that intense, vulnerable study. The flickering light caught the damp sheen in his eyes.
“A shoulder,” he repeated, his voice thick.
“Yeah. The most platonic, supportive shoulder in the Bundesliga. Promise.”
He nodded slowly, then looked away, back into the shadows. The silence stretched, but it was different now. The awkwardness had punctured the sheer misery, just for a second.
Then he moved.
It wasn’t slow or hesitant. It was a sudden, decisive uncoiling of his large frame. He crossed the small space between their seats and sat beside her, the old leather groaning under his weight. He didn’t look at her. He just leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and put his head in his hands.
“It’s just…” he started, then stopped. A tremor ran through his shoulders. “You see it coming, you know? You feel the distance. You tell yourself it’s the travel, the pressure. You make excuses. But you know. And then you see it, and it’s…” He exhaled, a shaky, broken sound. “It’s like being tackled when you’re not looking. All the air is just… gone.”
Juda didn’t speak. She placed a careful hand on the tense curve of his back, feeling the powerful muscles locked tight under his thin shirt. He didn’t flinch. He leaned into the touch, just slightly.
They sat like that for minutes, the boat pushing steadily through the dark river. The party above was a distant galaxy.
Finally, he sat up. He didn’t shrug off her hand. He turned to look at her, his face inches from hers in the shadowy corner. The vulnerability in his eyes was terrifying in its completeness.
“I don’t want to think,” he said, the words barely audible. “For one hour. I don’t want to think about her, or the press, or my phone, or any of it. Can you do that? Can you just… be here? And not let me think?”
Before she could answer, before she could even process the question, he closed the distance.
His kiss wasn’t gentle. It was hungry and desperate, a search for an anchor in a sudden storm. His hands came up to cradle her face, his touch surprisingly tender despite their trembling. He tasted of champagne and salt, and the sheer, shocking need in the kiss stole the breath from her lungs. It lasted a lifetime, and it lasted a second.
He pulled back just as suddenly, his forehead resting against hers, his eyes screwed shut. His breathing was ragged.
“Just for tonight,” he whispered, a plea, a confession, a prayer. “Juda. Please. I just need you for tonight.”
The engine thrummed. The world above kept spinning. And down in the flickering dark, everything had changed.
And down in the flickering dark, everything had changed.
The plea hung between them, a live wire. Juda’s mind was static, then a single, clear thought: He is broken, and he is asking you for glue. It wasn’t sense. It was a reaction, pure as a reflex save. Her hands, which had been frozen at her sides, came up to rest on his chest. She could feel the frantic beat of his heart through his shirt.
His mouth found hers again, slower this time but no less urgent. This kiss was deeper, a search for silence, for oblivion. He tasted like the end of something. Her own hesitation dissolved into a surge of empathy so sharp it felt like pain. She kissed him back, a soft press that was both permission and question.
A small, helpless sound escaped her throat.
Erling drew back, just enough to study her face in the gloom. His blue eyes were dark pools, unreadable. Then he lowered his head, his lips leaving a trail of fire down the line of her jaw. He found the sensitive spot just beneath her ear, and her body arched against him of its own volition, another quiet moan slipping out.
He responded not with words, but with a focused, patient exploration. Each whispered gasp from her lips was a map. He learned the curve where her neck met her shoulder, the specific pulse point that made her fingers clutch at his arms. He lingered there, his breath hot against her skin, until her breaths were shallow and she was melting into the worn leather.
One of his large hands, which had been splayed against her back, journeyed downward. His fingers found the zipper at the side of her dress. He tugged on it, just once, a tentative question in metal teeth. The sound was obscenely loud in the cramped space.
Juda went very still. The reality of the zipper, the cool air on the newly exposed skin of her ribs, cut through the haze. His lips were on her collarbone, his other hand cradling the back of her head. The sensations were a riot, overwhelming, beautiful. But this was tipping into a territory she had only ever imagined.
“Erling,” she managed, her voice muffled against his shoulder.
“Hmm?” His murmur vibrated against her skin.
She took a shaky breath. The words were clumsy, tripping over the feel of his mouth on her. “I’ve… I’ve never actually… you know. Been with anyone. Before.”
He stilled. For a second, the only movement was the steady thrum of the boat’s engine and the distant echo of a cheer from above.
Then, against her neck, she felt it. A low, warm chuckle. It wasn’t cruel. It was surprised, disbelieving, almost fond. He lifted his head to look at her. His eyes searched hers, the raw need in them momentarily tempered by something else—awareness, a dawning sense of the weight in his hands.
“Never?” he whispered, his thumb brushing her cheekbone.
She shook her head, unable to speak, her face burning.
He let out a long, slow breath. The frantic energy that had possessed him seemed to settle, condense into something more deliberate. He didn’t move his hand from her zipper, but his grip softened from a pull to a hold.
“Okay,” he said, the word a vow.