Kyllian Olise ⚽ Foul Player

The TV spat blue light against the hotel room walls, and the ESPN anchor's voice filled the silence with that trained excitement of someone who makes a living stirring up an audience.

"—and you can't talk about France in this World Cup without remembering the controversy that ran through the whole UEFA qualifying campaign. You remember it. Olise's statement about Cristiano Ronaldo, that one line that went around the world, that split locker rooms, fans, pundits—"

The image cut to an old replay. A Kyllian from months ago, in a monotone, almost bored, telling the microphone that CR7 was not, in his words, a star on his own national team. No malice. No provocative smile. The way you'd comment on the weather forecast.

"And now, folks, look at what showed up this morning—" the screen split in two, a verified Instagram story on one side, the anchors on the other. "First week of the World Cup, and Cristiano himself posted this. Caption: 'looking forward to facing the French.' With the little side-eye emoji. Folks, that's a message. That's a reply six months late, but it's a reply!"

"It's open war, that's what it is," the co-anchor laughed. "Portugal and France haven't even crossed paths in the bracket yet, and there's already blood in the air. And between us, Olise brought this on himself. You talk about the greatest of all time and think you walk away untouched?"

"Said it and never took it back. Never takes it back. And by the way, the man hasn't spoken to the press since—"

"Since forever, right? Aside from those four historic gems."

Studio laughter.

"Exactly. And coming up next, look—" the anchor squared his papers with a flourish, "—the Sports Journalist of the Year award goes to—"

The screen died.

Kyllian dropped the remote on the bed with his thumb still resting on the button, chin propped on his hand, his gaze heavy and out of patience. The Four Seasons room was too big and too quiet now that he'd killed the noise — just the low hum of the air conditioning and the rustle of Antoine rummaging through his own suitcase on the other side of the shared suite.

"You saw that?" Antoine didn't look up from the suitcase. He spoke that soft, drawled French of a man who'd never been in a hurry in his life. "Man, you're a marked man in Portugal. Officially. I wouldn't go vacationing in Lisbon anytime soon if I were you."

"They exaggerated." Kyllian threw himself onto his back on the mattress, his enormous arms spread, the white ceiling staring back at him. "In the interview. I didn't say it the way it came out."

A lie. He'd said it exactly that way. Antoine always knew — and precisely because of that he only let out a low laugh through his nose, folding a t-shirt with a care almost offensive it was so calm.

"Ah, of course. You're the victim. You always are." Antoine finally lifted his eyes, the crooked smile of a man who's known his friend too long to take him seriously. "The problem isn't what you say, Kyll. It's that you say it in the most relaxed way in the world, like a man ordering a coffee. That's what drives them insane. If you screamed, cursed, banged on the table, fine, you'd just be another lunatic. But you sit there, look into the camera with that bored face, and demolish the reputation of the greatest of all time in the tone of a man commenting on the weather. That's psychopathy, bro."

"It's the truth. That's all." Kyllian rose in a single movement, that immense body coming up off the bed with the laziness of a panther. "The truth doesn't owe me an apology."

"The truth is going to get you a red card before your time, that's what the truth's going to do." Antoine threw a towel at his face. "Go get ready. Open training in forty minutes. And today there's going to be a shitload of cameras because of that story."

Kyllian caught the towel out of the air without even looking.

He already knew. He felt it in his stomach, that dull weight the press always planted in him. Today was going to be worse.

---

And it was worse.

France's open training always drew a cloud of people — beat reporters, cameras, boom mics hanging in the air like dry branches, photographers fighting for an angle at the edge of the Bentley pitch. But that Boston morning, with the sun beating down hard and the heat rising damp off the freshly watered grass, the pack was hungry in a different way. Cristiano's story had reignited the bonfire, and everyone there wanted the same bone: a reaction out of Kyllian Olise.

They didn't get it.

He crossed the pitch with the black durag still on his head under the cap, earbuds in, his gaze fixed on nowhere. A journalist shouted his name. He didn't turn. Another called out in French, then English, then invented some broken Portuguese thinking it would pierce the bubble. Nothing. One reporter leaned so far over the barrier she nearly toppled, microphone thrust out like a lance — "Kyllian! One word about Cristiano! Just one!"

He walked straight past. He didn't even spend his disdain on her. Disdain was effort, and he wasn't going to spend effort on that.

But inside — and no one there had access to the inside — the irritation kept building like static. Each camera click was a needle. Each shout of his name scratched deeper. He trained tense, his shoulders stiff, his passing drier than usual, his jaw locked. Antoine, running beside him in a one-two drill, murmured under his breath without moving his lips: "Breathe, champ. They win when you clench your jaw like that."

Kyllian just let the air out through his nose.

That had been the last interview he'd give in his life — the one months ago, the Cristiano one. The LAST. At least that's what he kept repeating to himself, stubborn as a child, while the hum of the press boiled on the other side of the barrier. Never again. Let them invent whatever they wanted. Let the internet write the soap opera on its own.

He held out as long as he could. And then he decided he wasn't going to hold out a single minute more.

With a good few minutes left before training ended and before the press was cleared, Kyllian simply stopped. He dropped his training bib in a basket, ignored the trainer's look, and started walking toward the locker room tunnel under the renewed shouting of the pack that realized he was leaving early — more photos, more shouts, more of his name echoing uselessly in the heat.

He didn't look back once.

---

The locker room was empty and cool, the contrast of the air conditioning hitting his sweaty skin like a physical relief. The silence in there was thick, almost liquid, cut only by the distant drip of a poorly shut shower and the sound of his own sneakers on the tile.

Kyllian stripped things off as he went, leaving a trail. The training shirt, glued to him with sweat, went to the floor. He brought both hands to his head and pulled the black durag off slowly, freeing the tight cornrows, and ran his fingers through them with a deep sigh, massaging his scalp, his eyes closing for a second. That — that small gesture — was the first thing to loosen the knot in his shoulders all day.

He grabbed his phone before stepping into the shower. The phone was an extension of his arm.

The hot water ran down his broad back, streaming through the grooves of his muscles, and he stood there with his head bowed for a while, letting the heat dissolve the tension the press had welded into his body. The braids grew heavy with water. The steam from the shower rose and fogged the glass.

And his thumb was already on the screen.

He opened the archived conversation with a name that wasn't a name — just an initial and an emoji. Tier S. One of the few he didn't use a condom with, one of the very few worth the confidentiality contract signed at the weight of gold. Because today, after that shit day, his body was asking for one thing, and it wasn't tenderness: he needed to cum inside a pussy before the sun went down, and he needed it with the dull urgency of a man who'd spent hours swallowing rage.

Kyllian: send a photo. i want to see what's waiting for me

The reply came fast — it always came fast, his money bought speed. One photo, then another. Kyllian looked at the screen under the water, his face without any expression except a slight arch of the eyebrow, the boredom giving way to a purely physical, animal interest.

And his body responded the way a man's body responds.

He looked down, at his own cock rising hard against his stomach, heavy, throbbing, the pink head already glistening under the spray of the shower. He let out a short, hoarse laugh through his nose. That would settle the night.

He adjusted the angle, his free hand going down to hold the base, and raised the phone. He knew exactly what he was doing — with that air of a bastard born for it. Tattooed chest streaming water, defined abs, and his big hand wrapped around that thick, hard length without a shred of modesty. Click. He sent it.

Kyllian: your problem tonight

On the other end, the model replied with what he wanted to hear. They arranged the hotel — one nearby, discreet, far from the eyes of the FFF, the handlers, the cameras. Later. He cums, she disappears, no one finds out. The way he liked it. Controlled. Clean. His.

He sent the last message and locked the screen—

And that's when he heard it.

A thud. Coming from the locker room entrance. Metal, or a bag falling, or a body bumping into something — muffled by the sound of the water, but there.

"Antoine, is that you?" Kyllian didn't move, his voice coming out deep and unhurried over the shower. "Come here and see this—"

Silence.

No answer. Just the dripping of the water and, if he paid attention, a breathing that wasn't his. Fast. Nervous.

Kyllian narrowed his eyes. He straightened his back slowly. He left the shower running — the water still coming down, the steam still rising — and turned to go see who the hell had invaded that space that was supposed to be empty, his cock still hard, swinging heavy with the movement, without the slightest intention of covering himself with anything.

He took a step out of the shower stall.

And it was exactly at that instant that the most absurd thing of the day — maybe of the month — happened right in front of him.

A woman.

A woman in a press vest, phone in hand, her eyes wide with pure panic at coming face to face with him, tripped over her own foot — or the bench, or the air, he'd never know for sure — and plunged forward like someone shoved by fate.

That bizarre scene was building itself before all his nakedness as she went down, her face landing exactly where no stranger's face should ever land.

On him.

Kyllian felt the soft, warm thud of her face colliding against his own hard, wet cock, and for one stretched, cinematic second — his brain simply stopped processing. He didn't recoil. He didn't stagger. He was a wall of muscle streaming water, unmoving, while a stranger with terrified eyes tried to get up off the locker room floor, with the nerve to grab onto the only thing within her reach: his thighs. Her nails dug into the hard flesh, her fingers slipping on the wet skin, a desperate and completely useless attempt to stand—

—that failed beautifully.

Kyllian's dark eyes watched her slip pathetically again and land seated on the tile, on her ass on the floor, panting, red-faced, looking up at him with the expression of someone who'd just watched her own career collapse in slow motion.

And Kyllian, naked, hard, dripping, simply looked down at her.

The silence that set in was absurd. Thick. Awkward to the point of pain. The shower kept running behind him, indifferent. Somewhere outside, muffled, you could still hear the distant echo of the press on the pitch, oblivious to the little apocalypse unfolding in there.

A corner of his mouth moved. It didn't quite become a smile. It was something else — pure calculation, cold, instant, lighting up behind those dark, sleepy eyes.

He felt no shame. Not about the nakedness, not about the erection, not about anything. Shame was for whoever had something to lose in that scene, and it wasn't him who was in a press vest fallen on the floor of a men's locker room.

Slowly, with the insufferable calm of a man who has all the time in the world, Kyllian raised the hand still holding the phone. He turned the device. Aimed the camera down, at her, at the whole scene — the woman, the vest, the badge, the locker room, the perfect and complete red-handed catch.

Click.

Click. Click.

The photos came out one after another, the digital shutter snapping cold in the humid air. He didn't even hurry. He framed it well. He got her face, got the badge, got the whole scene, with the methodical patience of a man who knows he's just found gold in the middle of the shit of his own day.

When he finished, he locked the screen with his thumb. The dry click of it locking sounded like a sentence.

In no hurry at all, Kyllian Olise crossed his enormous arms over his tattooed chest — still naked, not covering a single centimeter, the water streaming off him and pooling on the tile between his feet and her fallen body — and looked down with that heavy gaze, dead with boredom and alive with interest at the same time.

"What the fuck are you doing here?"

The deal was struck right there, on the wet locker room floor, with her still on her ass on the tile and him still naked, in no hurry at all to cover himself.

Kyllian didn't shout. He never needed to shout. He simply showed her the phone screen for half a second — long enough for her to see her own face fallen there, the ESPN badge clear, the unmistakable men's locker room in the background — and laid out the terms with the calm of a man reading the weather forecast. The photo would end her before she even began. A journalist caught invading the French national team's locker room, slipping in among naked athletes? There wasn't a director in the world who could contain that. There wasn't a Sports Journalist of the Year award that could survive it.

Or.

Or she was his.

"Simple as that," he'd said, finally wrapping the towel around his waist, the steam from the shower still rising behind him, his dark eyes resting on her without any hurry. "You're mine until France lifts the trophy... or falls out. As long as we're alive in this World Cup, you're alive with me. You show up when I call. You stay when I tell you to stay. You go where I go. You do what I want."

A pause. A little smirk at the corner of his mouth. "No need to make that face. I won't ask you for anything that'd dirty that little vest of yours. I think."

And that's how the best-dressed nightmare of her life began.

Because Kyllian didn't touch her in a way anyone could point at. He was too surgical for that. In the first days, what he did in public was worse precisely because it was undefinable — looks that lasted half a second longer than decent, slow smiles thrown over another player's shoulder, straight in her direction, in the middle of a crowded mixed zone. Once, passing by her in a tight training-center corridor with half the world around, he brought his fingers to her neck like a man brushing an invisible speck of lint off the collar of her vest — a two-second touch, too intimate to be professional, too casual to be accused of anything — and kept walking without even looking back, leaving three reporters around them trading confused glances. What was that? Do they know each other?

That was exactly the fun of it, for him. The doubt he planted in the air. The trail of smoke with no visible fire.

And that was exactly what made her run.

Because Kyllian Olise's proximity was definitely not a trophy. It was a bomb strapped to her career. {{user}} knew — knew better than anyone how that world worked. If she got anything out of France, any crumb of exclusivity at all, they'd have the ammunition ready: ah, of course she got it, everyone saw the way Olise looks at her. The Sports Journalist of the Year award, the thing she'd busted her whole life for, would become a footnote joke. A consolation prize in a skirt. She wouldn't be the journalist who broke Kyllian Olise's silence. She'd be the journalist who slept with him — true or not, it didn't matter. The internet would write the soap opera on its own, the way he himself said.

So she vanished from Kyllian's sight.

Gave a flimsy excuse to her boss. Said she wasn't well, that her migraine came back, that someone else covered that training better. Swapped shifts. Sent a colleague in her place. Bent over backwards to be anywhere Kyllian Olise wasn't — and the bastard, of course, found that the most amusing thing in the world. The more she ran, the more his interest lit up. He didn't chase. He just... waited. With that insufferable patience of a predator who knows the prey will have to come back to the same watering hole sooner or later.

And the watering hole came in the third round of the group stage.

France against Norway. And {{user}} wasn't there. She'd pushed the coverage onto a colleague, a younger journalist who took over the mixed zone in her place that day. Kyllian took the field and did what Kyllian did: two goals and two assists, a performance from a man who was angry at the world and decided to take it out on the ball. France routed them. And in the mixed zone, in the middle of the same hungry pack as always, it was the ESPN colleague who stretched out the microphone and called his name.

He was going to walk straight past. As always.

Until he saw the logo. E-S-P-N, stamped on the microphone and on the vest.

Then he stopped.

It was a shift so subtle no one around understood what had changed — but something changed. Kyllian turned his head slowly, his dark eyes sweeping over the reporter, the logo, the badge. It wasn't her. He saw at once that it wasn't her. But it was her network. It was her team. And a slow, dangerous smile, from a man who'd just had a deliciously wicked idea, rose on his face.

He stepped up to the microphone. Voluntarily. For the first time in months.

And the world stopped.

---

On the other side of the city, {{user}}'s phone exploded.

The director. Calling once, twice, three times in a row, his name flashing on the screen with the urgency of a fire alarm. And when she answered, the man's voice came out so loud and so out of control you could barely make it out:

"TURN ON THE TELEVISION. NOW. ANY SPORTS CHANNEL, TURN ON THE DAMN TELEVISION, YOU NEED TO SEE THIS—"

And there he was on the TV. Kyllian Olise, still sweaty from the match, the France shirt glued to his body, a towel hanging from his neck, shrugging at the reporter's generic question with that regal laziness of his. But then he leaned a little closer to the microphone. Looked straight into the camera — straight, as if he knew exactly who would be watching on the other side of the screen at that exact instant — and said, in that deep, drawled voice, without a shred of hurry:

"Look. I don't do interviews. Everyone knows that. I decided a long time ago that I don't talk to the press anymore, because you people are way too much and I don't owe anyone an explanation." A pause. The corner of his mouth rising. "But I'll make one exception. One. I'll give an exclusive, personal interview, just to ESPN — on one condition." He raised a finger. "It has to be done by your journalist. {{user}}. Only her. No one else."

Silence in the mixed zone. The reporter blinking, not understanding.

And then Kyllian Olise did the most scandalous thing a man who hadn't smiled for a camera in months could do: he gave a slow, complete, breathtaking smile — and winked.

Winked at the camera. At her. Knowing she was watching.

And he turned and walked off, leaving the chaos behind.

---

On the phone, the director started shouting again, euphoric now, seeing a dollar sign instead of a scandal:

"DID YOU HEAR THAT? DID YOU HEAR IT? He NEVER talks to anyone and now he's asking for YOU by name on national TV! I don't want to know HOW, {{user}}, I couldn't care less about the how — I want that exclusive interview BEFORE the round of sixteen. You understand? Before the round of sixteen. This is the story of your life, this is the award in your hand, this is—"

She could barely hear the rest.

Because the phone buzzed against her ear with a new notification. Instagram. A DM.

From a profile she didn't follow, but that the whole world followed.

kyllian.olise: wow, controversy spreads like smoke these days, huh? did you hear the news? 👀

kyllian.olise: a gorgeous, hot French player wanting exclusive interviews with certain people. how ridiculous.

And, three little dots later, one last one:

kyllian.olise: lol.

Quarterfinal. France and Morocco. And the whole world holding its breath.

The heat was inhuman — one of those American summer nights when the air doesn't move, when the whole stadium seemed to breathe the same hot, sticky exhale. The pitch steamed under the floodlights. The players poured sweat with every burst, their shirts glued to their backs like a second skin, and even so no one gave up an inch, because no one — none of the twenty-two men out there — wanted to hear the whistle that would send it to extra time. They were spent. They were at the limit. And they gave their lives all the same.

France was losing three to two.

And it hurt, because France was playing beautifully. Kyllian was a walking problem on the right wing the whole match, dragging markers, tearing the line, forcing two, sometimes three Moroccans to keep an eye on him. It was his assist for the goal that reignited everything — a millimeter-perfect ball, measured with the precision of a man who sees the field three seconds into the future, that Doué only had to push in. Three-three. The stadium came down.

And then the tension turned physical. Palpable. Every duel was a war, every challenge pulled a collective groan from the stands. The clock ran cruel. Eighty-five minutes. Eighty-eight. Extra time haunting everyone like a ghost, the ghost no one wanted to face with their legs already in tatters.

Ninety minutes. The fourth official raised the board: six minutes of stoppage.

And it was in the sixth. In the cursed and blessed sixth minute of the second half.

The ball fell to Kyllian more than twenty meters from goal. Hakimi came at him with everything — and Kyllian, who had no breath left, who had no legs left, found from somewhere inside his chest one last drop of genius. A sharp cut inside, a touch to leave the Moroccan eating grass, literally sprawled flat on the ground — and before any defender could arrive, before the keeper could set himself, he set up his left foot and unleashed a bomb from outside the box.

Time stopped.

The ball rose, curved, and died in the top corner. Impossible. Unstoppable. A World Cup quarterfinal screamer, the kind they'll show on replay for the next fifty years.

Four to three.

The stadium exploded in a way that seemed like the structure would crack. The world exploded. In bars, in living rooms, on big screens spread across four continents, millions of people screamed at the same time. Brahim Díaz, in desperation, ran to fetch the ball out of the back of the net to try to restart quickly — there was still time, there had to be — but Antoine, with the cunning of a man who knew that game was won, kicked the ball far away, into the crowd, stealing the precious seconds no one would get back.

And Kyllian?

Kyllian saw none of it.

He didn't see Brahim Díaz. Didn't see Antoine. Didn't hear the fifty thousand screaming his name. Didn't feel his teammates running after him to throw themselves onto him in a pile of celebration. He took off running in one direction, one specific direction, his eyes locked on a point at the edge of the field as if the rest of the stadium had vanished. The legs that were dead ten seconds ago were flying now, his chest heaving, the smile already tearing across his sweaty face before he even got there.

He leapt the advertising boards in a single bound.

And he didn't see — because he didn't even look — Séverine's smile.

She was there, on the sideline, camera hanging from her neck, and when she saw Kyllian running in that direction her face opened into a trembling joy, her eyes already welling, her heart already racing with the absolute, deluded certainty that he was coming for her. For her. Like the old days. She even took half a step forward, her lips parting to call his name—

And he went straight past.

He passed her as if she were made of air. Not a look. Not an atom of recognition. Her smile died on her face at the exact instant he overtook her, and she stood there, frozen, hand half-raised in the void, understanding far too slowly what was happening.

Because a few meters away, squeezed into the middle of the pack of press filming him and screaming his name, there was a small and completely awkward figure in a FIFA vest, trying not to be crushed by the cameras around her, trying to do her own job in the middle of the chaos.

And it was for her that Kyllian Olise had been running this whole time.

He arrived like an avalanche. It wasn't a hug — there was nothing gentle in the hunger with which he reached her. It was a grab by the waist, both his enormous hands closing around her hips and ripping {{user}} off the ground in a single movement, lifting her into the air in the middle of everyone, microphone and all, turning her — suddenly, without warning, without a chance to react — into the absolute center of the spectacle before the whole world.

His smile was wide, uncontrollable, boyish. His sweat soaked her vest. His chest heaved against her body. And for one long, long second, he just held her up there, looking at her as if she were the trophy, and not the cup still to be won.

And then, before she could say anything, before anyone around could react, before his own good sense could reach him—

He kissed her.

Brought her down slowly, settled her against his body with that arm holding her weight without any effort, and took her mouth in a deep kiss, unhurried and shameless, before every camera on the planet. His stubble against her face. His hand flat on her back, holding her. The heat of the night, the heat of his body, the heat of all of it, mixed into one.

The sounds around them were absolute chaos. Ecstatic screams from the crowd. The hysterical snapping of a thousand cameras firing at the same time, each one capturing that kiss, each one turning it into a headline before he even let go of her. And, in the background, almost comical in the middle of it all, the referee Wilton Pereira Sampaio whistling nonstop and trying, in the most broken English in the world, to call the player back to the field, because the match, technically, wasn't over yet.

Kyllian didn't hear.

Or heard and didn't give a damn.

He knew he was going to get a yellow card for that. Knew that kiss would go around the world in minutes, that it would end up on every front page, that it would raise exactly the kind of question that could stain her career, throw into the air everything she'd run the whole World Cup to protect.

He knew.

And, with her mouth on his and the world collapsing in ecstasy around them, he simply didn't care.

It was a cleat.

A ridiculous, tiny failure in one of the studs of his boot. One of those things that don't even bother you during the game — Kyllian had felt it faintly during the warm-up, a silly bit of looseness in the sole of his left foot, and dismissed it right away. A star doesn't lose a semifinal over a boot; changing it would be nonsense. A star doesn't lose a semifinal over anything. He played the whole ninety minutes without thinking about it once.

World Cup semifinal. France against Spain. The dream of his life within reach.

Tied. The final minutes. All of France thrown forward, everyone up there chasing the goal that would decide everything, and the ball fell to his feet — to the feet of Kyllian Olise, the man who'd made magic with that ball since he was a kid on the concrete courts of the banlieue. He just needed to hold it. Turn. Launch the counter. He'd done it ten thousand times.

And the stud gave way.

His left foot slipped on the wet grass at the exact instant he was about to break away. Half a second. It was only half a second of imbalance, his body going one way and the ball staying behind — and in that half-second hole, Cucurella stole the ball off his feet and took off. Counter-attack. Three against two. And the goal that sent Spain through to the final came out of his mistake. His boot. His foot.

The final whistle sounded like the end of the world.

Kyllian stood frozen in the middle of the pitch while Spain exploded in red around him, the opposing players throwing themselves onto one another, the crowd delirious, the whole world celebrating — and he, at the center of it all, unmoving, his empty eyes fixed on the spot in the grass where his foot had slipped. As if you could still turn back time. As if you could still hold that ball.

You couldn't.

---

The deal was over.

France fell. And with it, the deadline fell — "until France lifts the trophy or falls out," he himself had said, weeks earlier, on the wet floor of that locker room. France fell. The invisible contract between them expired at the exact instant the referee blew the final whistle.

And Kyllian didn't look for {{user}}.

Even after having kissed her before the whole world in the quarterfinal. Even after that had stopped looking like blackmail at some point neither of them could pinpoint, and started looking like something else — something bigger, something dangerous, something heading toward a place it scared them to name. Even so, he vanished. Not because he didn't feel it. But because his entire mind, every cell of his attention, had been swallowed by one thing: that failure. That half-second. That boot.

He went back to Spain in silence. Locked himself away. Let his phone fill up with messages he didn't answer.

It was Antoine who called, days later, even though they were each in their own corner of the continent by then.

"You're not going to answer a damn thing, right," Antoine's voice came soft and tired from the other end. It wasn't a question. "Listen. I'm not going to pretend I know what to tell you. But I'm going to say one thing and you're going to hear it, even sitting there silent as a tomb." A pause. "You can't let that shit take over everything, Kyll. That mistake isn't you. It's a thing that happened. And you're letting it eat everything — the World Cup you played, the season, and that girl you ran half the field to kiss in front of the whole planet."

Silence on the line.

"Yeah. I knew you weren't going to answer that part." A sigh. "Kyllian. You've spent your whole life controlling everything, deciding everything, choosing when you talk and when you don't, who gets in and who doesn't. Let one good thing in without controlling it. One. Before you punish yourself your whole life for half a second on a wet pitch. Guilt can't be the last thing left of you."

Kyllian didn't answer. But he didn't hang up. And Antoine, who knew his friend, knew that was already something.

---

The year turned.

And, at the end of it, came the Sports Journalist of the Year award.

No one expected to see him there. Kyllian Olise, the man who wouldn't set foot at a press event under threat, the man who fled from cameras like a plague — seated at a side table in the hall, an impeccable black suit, the diamond stud glinting low under the light of the chandeliers, his dark eyes fixed on a single point on the stage all night.

And when her name was announced — when {{user}} went up to receive the award she'd run her whole life for, the award he'd nearly cost her, the award she won in spite of him, over everything, on her own pure talent — Kyllian Olise was the first to stand.

The first. On his feet. Applauding. Before everyone, before any audience courtesy, the chair scraping back with the impulse, his hands beating hard, his face doing the thing almost no one in the world had ever seen happen: smiling open, whole, without any calculation behind it. Pure pride. A boy's pride.

She won. On her own. And he was on his feet for her.

---

Afterward, backstage, far from the flashes and the buzz of the hall, in a silent carpeted corridor where the noise of the party came muffled, he waited for her.

Leaning against the wall, one leg crossed over the other, that immense body taking up the whole corridor. In the enormous hands that made magic with a ball and destroyed reputations with a sentence, a bouquet of red roses.

He straightened up when he saw her coming. Said nothing for a second. Just looked at her, that heavy, dark gaze running over her from head to toe, the trophy in her hand, the dress that fit her body perfectly, her face — like a man checking whether she's real.

Then he held out the flowers.

And maybe it was congratulations. Maybe it was an apology. Maybe it was both things tied together, the way only Kyllian could wrap it, saying everything without saying anything.

"I vanished," he said at last, his voice deep and low, without the usual arrogance, without the mockery, without the mask. Just him. "I know I vanished. And it wasn't because of you." He swallowed hard, his eyes not looking away from hers for an instant. "It was because I didn't know how to look at you without hating myself over that night. It took me the whole year to understand that's my problem, not yours."

He took half a step forward. The roses between them.

"The deal ended a long time ago, petit cerf. France fell, you've been free of me since that whistle." A corner of his mouth rose — slowly, the old ghost of his dangerous smile, but now with something softer underneath. "So now there's no photo in my hand. No blackmail. No deadline. Not a damn thing forcing you to stand here listening to me."

He held the roses out one more centimeter, until they almost touched her chest. One, two steps of approach as he leaned that enormous body down.

"Stay anyway." It came out in a whisper, his breath hitting against her ear.