Read Chapter 39: The Decision

The call came at seven in the morning, the day before the final match of the season. Camille was already awake, sitting at the kitchen table with a cold cup of coffee, staring at the Mediterranean through the window. The light was pale and thin, the sea flat as glass. Julien was still asleep in the bedroom, his breathing slow and even, his body finally at rest after months of fighting.

Her phone buzzed. Coach Marchand. Not the interim coach—the new one, the man Delacroix had tried to bury along with the reform.

She answered.

"Camille." His voice was brisk, professional. "I need to see Julien. Today. Before the team selection."

"I don't think—"

"I know what you think," he cut her off. "That's why I'm calling you first. I need to know if he can play tomorrow."

The words hung in the air like a challenge. She gripped the phone tighter.

"His recovery is on track," she said carefully. "But contact training is months away. I've told him that. I've told you that."

"One match. Final match of the season. Championship on the line. He comes in late, fresh legs, forty minutes maximum. No contact in training before then—he just needs to be cleared."

Cleared. The word felt heavier than it should have.

"I'll talk to him," she said. "But I'm not promising anything."

"I'm not asking you to promise, Camille. I'm asking you to consider it. He's the best finisher this club has ever had. He deserves the choice."

She ended the call and sat in silence, the coffee growing colder in her hands.

Julien appeared in the doorway, barefoot, hair still mussed from sleep. He watched her for a moment before speaking.

"Who was that?"

"Marchand."

He walked over and sat across from her, his eyes searching her face. "And?"

"He wants to offer you a spot in tomorrow's match. If you're cleared."

Julien didn't move. Didn't blink. The silence stretched between them, filled with everything they hadn't said in weeks.

"What do you want, Camille?" His voice was quiet.

"I want you to be honest with me."

"I am honest with you. That's the problem." He leaned forward, elbows on the table. "I promised you I'd stop the moment I felt pain. I meant it. But I need you to understand something—I've felt pain every day since I was nineteen years old. It's part of the game. It's part of who I am."

"That's not what I'm asking, and you know it."

He sat back. "Then what are you asking?"

Camille closed her eyes. When she opened them, she saw Vincent's face—not in the frame on the wall, but in her memory. The way he'd looked at her after a match, exhausted and triumphant, his body held together by tape and willpower.

"I'm asking you if you're ready to walk away," she said. "Not because I want you to. Because you said you might be at peace with it. And I need to know if you actually believe that, or if you're just saying it to make me happy."

Julien's jaw tightened. He looked out the window at the sea, then back at her.

"Three years ago, I woke up in a hospital in Marseille with no memory of the tackle that put me there. I couldn't walk for a week. The doctors told me I'd never play again. I proved them wrong." He paused. "But I knew, even then, that the clock was running out. Every match since has been borrowed time."

"That doesn't answer my question."

"It does. You just don't like the answer." He stood up, paced to the window. "When I was sixteen, my father told me rugby would either make me a man or break me. He was wrong. It did both. It made me who I am, and it nearly destroyed who I could have been. But sitting here, with you, watching the sunrise over the ocean—I don't feel broken anymore."

He turned to face her.

"I'm not going to lie to you, Camille. I want to play tomorrow. Not because I need to prove something to Delacroix or the club or the fans who'll forget my name in ten years. I want to play because I've never had the chance to end this on my own terms. I want to choose when it's over."

"And if I say no?"

"Then I'll respect that. I'll watch from the stands, and I'll be at peace with it. But I won't pretend I don't want it."

She studied him—the lines around his eyes, the slight tremor in his hands that never fully went away after the surgery, the fire still burning beneath all the careful restraint.

"Walk with me," she said.

They went down to the beach, the sand cold under their bare feet. The tide was low, revealing dark rocks and the skeletons of ancient boats half-buried in the sediment.

"Vincent used to tell me," Camille said slowly, "that rugby was the purest thing in his life. Not because it was clean—it wasn't. But because everything else was complicated. Money, relationships, his family's expectations. On the field, it was simple. You either wanted it or you didn't."

Julien walked beside her, quiet, listening.

"When he died, I buried myself in work. I thought if I could fix enough bodies, I could make sense of a world that had taken his. But I never actually asked him the one question that mattered."

"What's that?"

"If he had known how it would end, would he have played anyway?"

Julien stopped walking. Camille turned to face him.

"I need you to answer that question for yourself," she said. "Not for me. Not for the coach. Not for the championship. For you."

The waves hissed against the shore. Gulls cried overhead. For a long moment, Julien said nothing.

Then he looked at her, and his eyes were clear.

"I would play anyway," he said. "Even if I knew that one match would be the last one. Even if I knew I'd wake up tomorrow in more pain than I can imagine. Because the alternative is a life where I never know what I'm capable of. And I can't live like that."

Camille felt the words land in her chest, heavy and true. She didn't want to accept them. She wanted to argue, to protect him, to wrap him in safety and never let him near a pitch again.

But that wasn't love. That was fear.

"Tomorrow," she said. "You go in late. You don't take a single hit you don't have to. The moment you feel anything—anything beyond normal exertion—you stop. No heroics. No pushing through. You promise me."

"I promise."

"And after the match, whatever happens, we talk about the future. For real. Not about rugby. About us."

Julien stepped forward and took her hands in his. They were warm despite the morning chill, his grip steady.

"I had a dream last night," he said. "We were on a boat, somewhere in the Aegean. The water was so clear you could see the bottom. You were laughing at something I'd said, and I realized I hadn't thought about rugby in days. Weeks. It was just us."

"And?"

"And I woke up happy." He squeezed her hands. "I don't think I've ever woken up happy before."

Camille felt tears prick at her eyes. She blinked them back.

"Then tomorrow," she said. "You play. And then you come back to me."

"Always."

They stood on the beach as the sun rose higher, the water turning gold. In the distance, she could hear the sound of the stadium, empty now but waiting. Tomorrow it would be full. Tomorrow the world would watch.

But in this moment, it was just the two of them, and the promise they'd made to each other.

When they returned to the apartment, Camille picked up her phone and dialed Marchand's number.

"He's cleared," she said. "Practical session today, light workload. He comes in as a substitute in the second half, no earlier. And Coach—if he flags even once, you pull him. No questions."

"Understood."

She hung up and turned to Julien, who was watching her with something like wonder.

"What?" she asked.

"I just realized I've never trusted anyone with my body before. My coaches, my doctors, my agents—they all wanted something from me. You're the first person who just wants me to be alive."

She walked to him and placed her hand over his heart.

"Then stay alive," she said. "That's all I ask."

He leaned down and kissed her, soft and slow, the taste of salt on his lips.

Tomorrow, the final match. Tomorrow, the last whistle.

Today, this.