Read Chapter 4: First Tackle

The pool was tucked behind the main training block, a squat building that smelled of chlorine and damp concrete. Camille had arrived early, before the cleaners, and the water lay flat and silver under the fluorescent lights. She’d set out two towels, a resistance band, and a stopwatch on the bench. Professional, methodical. The way she used to work in Paris, before the burnout, before the quiet escape south.

Julien walked in ten minutes late. No apology. He wore board shorts and a loose t-shirt, and the tattoo of the scrum cap sat dark against his chest hair. He looked at the pool, then at her, then at the equipment on the bench.

“You want me in there?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He laughed, short and ugly. “I’m not a child, Camille. I don’t need water wings.”

“Aquatic therapy reduces joint loading by up to fifty percent. Given the state of your lumbar spine, it’s the safest place to start.”

“I know what it is. I’ve been through rehab before.”

“Then you know the drill.” She kept her voice even. “Get in.”

He didn’t move. He crossed his arms, and the tendons in his wrists stood out like cables. His right hand was still bandaged from the mirror. She’d cleaned the cuts herself, felt his pulse jump under her fingers, watched his jaw tighten against the sting of antiseptic.

“I’ve played rugby for twenty years,” he said. “I’ve got a surgeon in Lyon who’s seen me through three operations. You think I need a physio from Paris telling me how to kick my legs in a kiddie pool?”

“I think you need someone honest with you,” she said. “And the doctor in Lyon isn’t here. I am.”

Something flickered behind his eyes. Not anger—something older, more tired. He turned and walked toward the changing rooms.

“Where are you going?” she said.

“Out.”

“Julien.”

He didn’t stop. She watched his back, the slight tilt of his left shoulder, the way his right foot landed heavier than his left. There it was. The limp. Subtle when he walked slowly, but there. A tell he probably didn’t even notice anymore.

She grabbed the goggles off the bench and threw them. They spun through the air and smacked against the back of his skull with a hollow thwack.

He stopped.

The silence stretched. He touched the back of his head, then turned around slowly. His face was unreadable.

“Did you just throw something at me?” he said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because you weren’t listening.” She walked toward him, stopping a few feet away. “And because I’m not afraid of you, Julien. I’ve read your file. I know what you’ve been through. I know what you’ve been hiding. And I know you’re in pain right now—not just in your back or your knee, but everywhere. You can’t sleep. You wake up screaming. You’re running on adrenaline and spite, and it’s going to break you before the season does.”

He stared at her. The anger on his face shifted, like weather changing over the sea. Something raw underneath.

“Get in the pool,” she said quietly. “Or walk away. But if you walk away, don’t come back asking me to lie for you.”

He bent down and picked up the goggles. Turned them over in his hand. Then, without a word, he walked to the edge of the pool and stepped in. The water swallowed him to the waist, then the chest. He winced as the cold hit his back, but he didn’t stop until he stood in the shallow end, water lapping at his shoulders.

She followed to the edge, crouched down. “Good. Now walk toward me. Slow.”

He did. The water resisted each step, and she watched his body adaptation—the way he favored his right leg, the subtle hitch in his hip.

“Stop,” she said. “Turn around. Walk back.”

He complied. After the third pass, he looked up at her with something close to irritation. “What are you looking at?”

“Your gait.” She pulled her phone from her pocket, tapped the screen, and held it up. She’d recorded him from the moment he’d walked in, from the bench, without him noticing. The video played: Julien crossing the changing room floor, the limp unmistakable in high definition.

“You see this?” She pointed at the screen. “Your right foot lands flat. You’re not pushing off. You’re not rolling through the strike. And your shoulder—” She paused the frame. “You’re carrying the whole load on the right side.”

“I’m not limping,” he said.

“You are. You just don’t feel it anymore because your body has compensated for so long it thinks this is normal.” She put the phone away. “You can play through that. You can grit your teeth and ugly your way through every match of the season. But by March, the cartilage you have left in that hip will be gone. By April, you won’t be able to walk up stairs without holding the railing. And by June—” She let the sentence hang.

“By June what?”

“By June, you’ll be done. Not retired. Done. In a wheelchair for your fifties, wondering if it was worth it.”

He was quiet a long time. The water rippled around his chest with his breathing.

“You don’t know what I’m playing for,” he said finally.

“You’re right. I don’t.” She sat back on her heels. “But I know what you’re losing.”

His eyes dropped to the water. For a moment, he looked younger. Less like the captain who shattered mirrors, more like the boy in the photograph she’d found in the kit bag—the one wearing a scrum cap too big for his head, grinning next to a brother who looked nothing like him.

“Vincent,” she said softly.

His head snapped up.

“I saw your emergency contact,” she said. “Vincent Roussel. Your brother.”

The name hit him like a physical blow. He took a step back in the water, sloshing.

“How do you know that name?” he said.

“It’s on your file.”

“No one sees my file.”

“I do.” She held his gaze. “I know he passed away. I know you carry him with you.” She touched her chest, over her heart. “I know that tattoo isn’t just about rugby.”

His jaw worked. The water stilled around him.

“My brother’s name was Vincent too,” she said. “Vincent Roussel. He died ten years ago. Car accident on the A8. He was coming to visit me in Paris.”

The color drained from Julien’s face.

“That’s not possible,” he said.

“What isn’t?”

He shook his head, backing away toward the deep end. His breath came shallow and fast. She’d misread the situation. Miscalculated. She’d thought mentioning a name would build trust—instead, it had cracked something open she didn’t understand.

“Julien,” she said. “Talk to me.”

But he was already climbing out of the pool, water streaming off him, dripping across the tiles as he grabbed his towel and headed for the door. He paused at the threshold, hand on the frame, back to her.

“What was your mother’s maiden name?” he asked.

The question caught her off guard. “What?”

“Your mother’s maiden name. What was it?”

“Roussel,” she said. “It’s still her name. She never remarried.”

Julien stood motionless for a long moment. Then he laughed—a hollow, broken sound that echoed off the tiled walls.

“Julien, what’s going on?”

He turned his head, just enough that she could see the profile of his face. His eyes were wet.

“Vincent’s mother,” he said, his voice rough and frayed, “was a woman named Élise Roussel. She was my mother too.”

The words landed like a blow to her sternum. Her mother. Élise. Who had left Paris twenty-five years ago after a divorce, who had remarried and never spoken of her first husband, who had a child from that marriage she never mentioned, never visited, never—

“My mother’s name is Élise,” Camille said, her voice barely a whisper.

“Then we’re not strangers,” Julien said.

He walked out, leaving her alone in the echoing silence of the pool, the water already still again, flat and unreadable as the surface of everything she’d thought she knew.