Read Chapter 10: Aftermath: Cooling Down

The club’s meeting room smelled of stale coffee and panic. Camille stood against the back wall, arms crossed, watching the men around the table argue over images she’d already memorized. The MRI was up on the screen, glowing white and grey, the tear in Julien’s supraspinatus tendon a dark rift that seemed to swallow the light around it.

Dr. Faure, the club surgeon they’d flown in from Lyon, tapped the screen with a pen. “It’s not a tear. It’s a rupture. Full thickness, with retraction of the muscle belly. The tendon has pulled back about two centimeters.” He paused, letting the weight settle. “He’s been playing on this for months. The tissue is macerated. There’s fatty infiltration beginning.”

“How bad is bad?” Delacroix’s voice was flat, controlled, but Camille could see the vein pulsing in his temple.

“Bad enough that if he’d come to me six weeks ago, we might have had a surgical repair with a decent prognosis. Now?” Faure shook his head. “We’re looking at a much more complex procedure. Tendon transfer, possibly. And the timeline for return is measured in months, not weeks. If he returns at all.”

Moreau slammed his palm on the table. “He played yesterday. He played like a goddamn hero. And nobody checked him?”

Camille felt the eyes turn to her. She kept her face still. “He hid it. I suspected, but he didn’t confirm until after the match.”

“You suspected,” Moreau repeated, his voice low and dangerous. “And you didn’t say anything?”

“I had no proof. He’s a grown man who chose to play. You can’t force someone to be honest about their own body.”

“This is the club’s body,” Moreau snapped. “His body is the club’s asset.”

Julien hadn’t spoken since they’d walked in. He sat at the far end of the table, arms loose at his sides, his face unreadable. The ice pack on his shoulder had been replaced by a basic compression wrap, but Camille could see the way he favored it, the slight hunch of his left side.

“I’m not having surgery,” he said.

The room went quiet.

Faure blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You heard me. Surgery means months. Surgery means I lose the season. I’m not having it.”

Delacroix stepped forward. “Julien, you don’t have a choice. This isn’t about playing through pain anymore. This is about your shoulder ceasing to function.”

“Then I’ll play with one arm.”

“You’ll be a liability.”

“I’m always a liability,” Julien said, and there was something almost like a smile on his face. “That’s why you all love me.”

Moreau’s phone buzzed. He glanced at it, his face going pale, and Camille knew without looking that it was Aubert. He stepped out of the room without a word.

The meeting dissolved into logistics after that. Faure explained the timeline for surgery if they chose that route—four to six weeks of pre-habilitation to reduce the fatty infiltration, then the operation, then a six-month recovery that would bleed into next season. Delacroix talked about alternative options, about bringing in a temporary fly-half on loan from another club, about managing the media narrative.

Camille stopped listening. She watched Julien instead. He wasn’t looking at the screen or the doctors or the coaches. He was looking at the window, at the grey afternoon light slanting through the blinds, at something far beyond the room they were all trapped in.

They applied the cast in the medical office an hour later. Faure did it himself, efficient and practiced, layering fiberglass over the padded wrap. Camille stood beside him, holding the limb steady while he worked.

“You need to keep this completely immobile for at least two weeks,” Faure said, not looking at Julien. “No training. No gym. No lifting anything heavier than a glass of water with your left hand.”

“I’m right-handed.”

“Then you’re lucky,” Faure said dryly. “Try to keep it that way.”

Julien didn’t respond. He stared at the ceiling while the cast hardened, his jaw tight, his free hand gripping the edge of the exam table until his knuckles went white.

Camille walked him out. The evening air was cool off the Mediterranean, carrying salt and the smell of jasmine from the gardens that lined the club grounds. Julien’s car was parked in the lot, a black Land Rover that looked like it had never seen a day of dirt.

“You shouldn’t drive,” she said.

“I’m not an invalid.”

“Your dominant hand is in a cast up to your elbow. You’re not driving.”

He looked at her for a long moment, then sighed and handed over the keys. They drove in silence through the narrow streets of the old town, past shuttered shops and cafés spilling golden light onto the cobblestones. Julien directed her to a modern apartment building on the edge of the harbor, all glass and steel, overlooking the yachts.

“You live here?” she asked.

“It’s not mine. Club housing.” He shrugged. “They thought I’d want somewhere nice. I don’t really care.”

She parked and followed him up. The apartment was sparse—white walls, a grey couch, a kitchen that looked untouched. No photos on the walls, no personal effects except a stack of books on the coffee table and a rugby ball on the floor by the window.

“Do you want me to stay?” she asked.

“Why would you?”

She didn’t have an answer for that. She had nowhere else to be, but that wasn’t the reason. Something about the empty space of his apartment, the hollow echo of it, made her want to fill it with something. Even just her presence.

“I’ll make tea,” she said, walking to the kitchen.

He didn’t argue.

She found a box of tea bags in the cupboard and boiled water in a kettle that had a thin film of dust on it. When she came back to the living room, Julien was sitting on the floor by the window, his back against the glass, a photo album open on his knees.

She set the tea down on the coffee table and sat on the couch, giving him space. He didn’t speak for a long time. The light outside was fading, turning the harbor silver and then deep blue.

“He was five years older than me,” Julien said finally. “Vincent. Everyone thought he was the talented one. My father used to tell people that Vincent was going to play for France one day. He said it like it was already decided. Like it was just a matter of time.”

He turned the page. Camille could see the photographs from where she sat—two boys in rugby kits, arms around each other, grinning into the sun. They looked alike, same dark hair, same sharp jaw. One of them—the older one, Vincent—had his arm thrown around Julien’s shoulders like he was protecting him from something.

“My father never said that about me,” Julien continued. “He never said anything about me at all. I was just the little brother. The one who came later. The one who wasn’t part of the plan.”

He closed the album and set it aside. His good hand rested on his knee, and Camille could see the tension in his shoulders, even the injured one.

“Why did you come to France?”

The question hit her sideways. She’d been so focused on him, on his wounds and his secrets, that she hadn’t been ready for him to turn the lens on her.

“I needed a change,” she said.

It was the lie she’d rehearsed. The lie she’d told herself until it felt almost true. Paris had been too loud, too fast. She’d wanted the south, the sun, the slowness of the coast. She’d wanted to disappear.

But even as the words left her mouth, she felt the weight of what she wasn’t saying—the brother she’d lost, the guilt she carried, the reason she’d run so far she couldn’t see the shore anymore.

Julien looked at her, and for a moment she thought he could see through it, down into the hollow where the truth lived. But he just nodded and picked up his tea.

“Change is good,” he said. “Change is easier than staying.”

She didn’t ask what he meant. She didn’t want to know. Or maybe she did, but she was afraid that if she started asking questions, he’d start asking more of his own.

They sat in silence as the last of the light drained from the sky. The tea cooled in their hands. The city hummed below them, indifferent to their confessions and their silences.

“You should eat something,” she said eventually.

“I’m not hungry.”

“You should sleep, then.”

“I don’t sleep much.”

She knew that. She’d seen the dark circles under his eyes in the mirror of her memory, the way he looked like a man who’d been running for years without stopping.

“I’m not leaving you alone tonight,” she said.

He looked at her, something shifting in his face—surprise, maybe, or suspicion. “Why?”

She didn’t have a good answer. She wasn’t sure she owed him one. She was tired of secrets, tired of the careful construction of lies that held her upright like a scaffolding around a falling building.

“Because I’m here,” she said. “That’s all.”

He studied her for a long moment, then nodded slowly and turned back to the window. Outside, the harbor lights flickered on one by one, stringing gold across the dark water.

Camille stayed where she was, on his grey couch, watching him watch the night. She thought about the letter in her bag, Vincent’s words she still hadn’t read, the mother who might be hers too, the journalist who wanted to pull her lie apart stitch by stitch.

But none of that was here. Here, there was just the sound of the sea and the quiet breathing of a man who had let her stay, even when he didn’t have to.

She closed her eyes and let the moment hold her.