Chapter 218: [218] "Rose Part 10"

Zara lay flat on her back, staring up at the overcast sky. "I survived. It’s over. I am never falling for this ever again."

"Get off the grass, you dramatic idiot," Rose laughed, walking over and kicking Zara lightly in the side of the sneaker. "You’ll catch a cold and complain about it to me later."

Luc walked over to the portable speaker, picking up a sealed bottle of water that Rose had brought in a small tote bag. He twisted the cap off and took a long drink. The cold wark hit the back of his throat, grounding him.

"Come on," Luc said, looking down at Zara. "There’s a bench over there. Let’s sit for a minute before my temperature drops and I get scolded for trying to get myself sick."

Zara groaned, rolling onto her side and slowly pushing herself up from the grass. She brushed the chill off the back of her black hoodie.

The three of them walked toward the edge of the clearing, where a weathered wooden park bench sat beneath the sweeping branches of a massive, leafless oak tree.

Luc sat down on the far right side, extending his right leg out straight to prevent the knee joint from stiffening in the cold. Zara immediately claimed the far left side, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around her legs to conserve body heat.

Rose sat in the middle, perfectly comfortable in her windbreaker.

The park was quiet again. The music was gone. The wind picked up slightly, cutting across the open grass and rustling the bare branches above them.

"So," Rose said, breaking the silence. She leaned back against the wooden slats of the bench, turning her head to look at Luc. "How is the actual injury? Because you looked fine doing the grapevine, but I know how you mask pain."

"It’s fine," Luc answered honestly, keeping his eyes on the empty clearing. "No pain. The contusion is healed. The bone absorbed the lunges without any issue. I’m going to text Juliette and the club medical staff when I get back to the apartment. I should be fully cleared for training tomorrow."

"Sunday is who this time? Côte d’Azur right?," Zara muttered from the other end of the bench, her chin resting on her knees. "I saw a breakdown on the sports network last night. The pundits are predicting a loss because Blažek is out."

Luc frowned slightly, the impending fixture creeping back into his mind. "The pundits don’t know what they are talking about half the time, but they aren’t entirely wrong on this one. Côte d’Azur plays a wide four-four-two. They cross the ball relentlessly. If Pinto doesn’t come off his line to claim crosses, then it’s a mismatch."

"So how do you fix it?" Rose asked, her tone shifting from the energetic instructor to a genuine curiosity.

"We stop the crosses at the source," Luc explained, his brain engaging effortlessly. "Gabriel and Dário...or whoever plays wing is going to have to track back hard. They can’t just hover at the halfway line waiting for a counter. They have to double-team the wingers or wide midfielders before the ball gets airborne. And I have to hold the ball up. If we dominate possession, they can’t cross. I have to pin their center-backs deep and give our midfield time to breathe."

"You’re putting a lot of pressure on yourself for a guy who just got off crutches," Zara pointed out dryly.

"It’s the job," Luc replied.

"It is the job," Rose agreed, her voice softening slightly. "But you don’t have to carry the entire club on your back every single week, Luc. You saw what happened against Aquitaine. Hugo and Max carved them open. Cillian and Mallorca locked the midfield down against Nantaise. They know how to fight."

"I know they do, both I just love playing. Any chance I get, I want to be on that pitch, scoring goals," Luc said. He remembered watching the 3-0 victory from his sofa. He remembered the pride he felt seeing the system function flawlessly without him. "But Nantaise proved that the margin for error is zero right now. Phocéen won. Fresko scored twice. The Golden Boot is down to one goal, and the title race is tight. If we drop points against Côte d’Azur, the narrative shifts. The media will call us out."

"Let them," Rose countered dismissively. "You play better when people doubt you anyway."

A sharp gust of wind swept across the park. The temperature seemed to drop five degrees in a matter of seconds.

Zara shivered violently, pulling the drawstrings of her hoodie tight until only her nose and eyes were visible.

Rose shivered as well, crossing her arms tightly over her chest. The thin material of her neon windbreaker was not designed for sustained exposure to the March wind without the benefit of movement to generate body heat.

She shifted her weight on the wooden bench, closing the small gap between herself and Luc.

Without a word, without any hesitation or awkwardness, Rose leaned over to her right. She rested her head gently against Luc’s shoulder, pressing her arm against his side to siphon off some of the residual warmth radiating from his thick windbreaker.

It was a natural move for her. There was no romantic tension in the action, simply the comfortable and established boundary of two people who understood each other. She had anchored him in the past, long before the captain’s armband and the thirty league goals.

Luc didn’t stiffen or pull away.

He adjusted his posture slightly to accommodate her weight, letting his right arm rest casually along the back of the wooden bench behind her shoulders.

They sat there in silence, watching the gray clouds shift slowly across the morning sky. The stress of the title race, the forgotten ache of the contusion, the pressure of the upcoming away fixture, it all felt manageable in the quietness of the park.

From the far end of the bench, Zara slowly turned her head.

She looked at Luc, staring out at the trees with calm. She looked at Rose, resting comfortably against his shoulder, her eyes closed against the wind.

Zara let out a silent exhale, her eyes rolling toward the overcast sky.