Read Chapter 12: The New Regime

The email from Delacroix arrived at 6:47 a.m. Camille read it twice on her phone, coffee cooling beside her. *New training protocol effective immediately. Mandatory attendance. Yoga, breathwork, and mental conditioning.* She could almost hear the league of old-school coaches turning in their graves.

She arrived at the club an hour early and found the yoga mats already unrolled in the team's conditioning room—a space that still smelled of liniment and sweat despite the scented candle someone had placed in the corner. The instructor was a wiry man named Étienne with a shaved head and the patience of a saint. He was arranging straps and blocks when Delacroix swept in, his jaw set.

"You've all seen the schedule," Delacroix announced to the empty room. "This isn't a suggestion. The board wants results, and the research is clear—resilience comes from the mind as much as the body."

Delacroix's phone buzzed. He glanced at it, frowned, and excused himself into the hallway. Camille watched him go. Moreau's name flickered on the screen before he disappeared. The phone call from the meeting. Aubert. Still unresolved.

The team filtered in slowly, most of them looking like they'd rather be anywhere else. Baptiste was the first to drop onto a mat with surprising grace. Sébastien followed, muttering about his hamstring. Then the forwards arrived like a herd of unhappy cattle, filling the room with noise and the distinct smell of disapproval.

Julien came last. His arm was still in the temporary cast, the fabric of his training top stretched awkwardly over it. He stood in the doorway, surveying the scene with the expression of a man who'd walked into the wrong funeral.

"You've got to be joking," he said.

"Not joking. Sit down." Delacroix had returned, phone now pocketed. "This is Étienne. He's going to work with you on mobility, breathing, and focus. You will treat this with the same seriousness as any tactical session."

"I don't do yoga."

"You will today."

Julien's jaw tightened. His eyes found Camille across the room, and something passed between them—a shared recognition that this was a battle neither of them had chosen. She gave him a small, almost imperceptible nod. *Don't make this harder than it needs to be.*

He sat. Gracelessly. The mats were arranged in a loose grid, and Julien positioned himself at the back, using his cast as an excuse to keep his movements minimal. The other players stole glances at him, waiting for the explosion. It didn't come. Not yet.

"Begin with your breath," Étienne said, his voice soft but carrying. "In through the nose. Hold. Out through the mouth. Let the shoulders drop."

Camille watched from the side where she'd set up her treatment table, ostensibly to work on a minor calf strain for one of the backs but really to observe. The dynamic was fascinating. Julien, who could terrorize a locker room with a single glare, sat cross-legged with his eyes closed, his good hand resting on his knee. His lips twitched. Once. Twice.

Then he opened his eyes and looked directly at Étienne.

"Question," Julien said. "Does this count as the warm-up, or is this the part where we're supposed to start feeling our feelings?"

Laughter rippled through the room. Baptiste snorted. Sébastien's shoulders shook. Even the forwards, usually stone-faced, cracked smiles.

Étienne smiled too, unbothered. "The part where you start feeling is up to you. Some people take longer than others."

"Five years in the professional game. I've been feeling things I didn't want to feel since I was nineteen." Julien's tone was dry, almost wry. "Maybe this is the problem. Too much feeling."

More laughter. Louder this time. Camille found herself smiling despite herself. The monster. The volatile star. The man who'd shoved her against a locker barely a week ago, who'd hidden a torn tendon for five months, who'd dissolved into tears in her arms in his empty apartment. Now he was cracking jokes about emotional intelligence and the whole team was laughing with him, not at him.

She watched him more closely. He was performing, yes—Julien was always performing something—but there was a genuine ease in his posture that she hadn't seen before. His shoulders, even with the cast, had dropped. His breathing was slower. The constant hum of tension that seemed to radiate from him in the locker room and on the pitch was quieter here. He looked, for the first time since she'd met him, like a man who wasn't actively fighting something.

Étienne guided them through a sequence of gentle stretches. Julien adapted, working one-armed, his concentration visible in the line of his jaw. When they moved to a standing balance pose—tree pose, Étienne called it—Julien wobbled immediately, his cast throwing off his equilibrium. He grabbed Sébastien's shoulder for balance, and Sébastien, instead of shoving him off, steadied him without a word.

"Teamwork," Julien said, straightening. "Who knew it extended to yoga?"

"If you fall, we all fall," Sébastien replied. It was meant as a joke, but there was something sincere underneath it.

Camille filed that away. The team was shifting. Whether it was the injury, the scandal, or just the sheer absurdity of the French international star doing yoga in a cast, something had loosened between them.

After the session, the players dispersed to their various treatments and meetings. Julien lingered, adjusting the strap on his cast. Camille crossed to him.

"That wasn't so terrible," she said.

"It was boring. Boring is worse than terrible." He looked at her, and his expression softened. "Thanks. For the nod."

"You looked like you needed permission not to fight it."

He didn't deny it. "My mother arrives this afternoon. Train at four."

"I know." She'd checked the schedule. She'd also checked the café near the station where Élise liked to meet—a small Algerian place she'd been to years ago, according to the file. "Are you going to see her?"

"I don't know." He said it quickly, like he'd been waiting for someone to ask. "I keep thinking about what she'll want. Probably an apology. Probably an explanation. Definitely the money she thinks my father left somewhere."

"Maybe she just wants to see her son."

Julien's laugh was hollow. "You don't know my mother."

Camille did not push. She had her own secrets stacked like stones in her chest—the unaccredited degree, the journalist, the lie about why she'd come to France. Every time she pressed Julien for honesty, a voice in the back of her head whispered her own name.

He was watching her now with that intense focus he reserved for important moments. "You said we'd be honest with each other. So I'll tell you something." He paused. "I've been dreaming about Vincent. Every night since the surgery talk. Not the accident. Just him. Playing. Laughing. The way he was before."

Camille's throat tightened. "That's not unusual after—"

"I know it's not unusual. That doesn't make it easier." He glanced toward the door where the rest of the team had gone. "Today was the first day I didn't think about him for more than an hour. That's something."

Before she could respond, his phone buzzed in his pocket. He pulled it out with his good hand, frowned at the screen. A message. From his mother, probably. Or perhaps not.

He read it in silence, his face unreadable, then looked up at Camille. "She's not coming to Toulouse anymore. She's in Montpellier. Wants me to meet her there tomorrow."

"That changes things."

"It changes nothing." He pocketed the phone. "It's still a no."

"Julien—"

"I said no. I'm not ready." He started for the door, then stopped, turning. "But thank you. For today. For staying. For not asking me to be someone I'm not."

He left. Camille stood alone in the room that smelled of candle wax and old sweat, her phone buzzing in her own pocket. She pulled it out. A message from an unknown number.

*I'm still waiting, Camille. I have a deadline. The story runs on Friday unless we talk.*

The journalist. She'd almost forgotten about him. Almost.

She looked at the empty doorway where Julien had stood, then at the message on her screen. Two men who wanted her to make choices she wasn't ready to make. Two futures hanging in the balance. And only one of them had ever told her the truth.