Read Chapter 8: The First Test Match

The morning air carried the low rumble of a crowd already gathering in the stands, a sound that made Camille’s stomach tighten. She stood at the edge of the pitch, clipboard pressed against her chest like a shield, watching the Étoile reserves warm up in their pale blue jerseys. The opposition, a semipro side from Narbonne, looked loose and confident, and that was before Delacroix had even opened his mouth.

“He plays,” Delacroix said, strolling up beside her with the casual authority of a man who had never once been questioned about his decisions. “Twenty minutes. Maybe thirty if he looks decent. You’ll be on the sideline with a bag of ice and a prayer, and if he limps off, I’ll say I told you so.”

Camille turned to face him. The head coach was a block of a man, gray at the temples, with a permanent scowl etched into his features. She had learned to read him over the past weeks: the scowl meant nothing. The set of his jaw meant everything.

“He’s not ready,” she said. “His gait is still compromised. I’ve been tracking his weight shift under load, and he’s compensating with his hip. One twisted tackle and that knee goes from aggravated to ruined.”

Delacroix snorted. “He’s been playing rugby since he could walk. The body remembers.”

“The body remembers pain, not how to avoid it.”

Something flickered in his eyes—not anger, but acknowledgment. He looked past her, toward Julien, who was jogging slow laps at the far end of the field, long limbs moving with a fluidity that belied the damage she knew was hidden beneath. To anyone else, he looked ready. To anyone without a physiotherapist’s eye, he looked like a man who had never been hurt.

“The president wants a proof of fitness,” Delacroix said, quieter now. “There’s money on this season. Sponsors. The league is watching. If Julien can’t hold up against a bunch of dockworkers from Narbonne, he can’t hold up against Perpignan.”

“That’s politics, not medicine.”

“Welcome to professional sport, Camille. The two are the same thing.” He clapped her on the shoulder, a gesture that was almost kind, before walking off to shout at the forwards.

Julien finished his lap and jogged over, sweat darkening the collar of his training shirt. His eyes were bright, too bright, a hunger there that she had seen before in men who measured their worth in collisions.

“You heard?” he asked.

“Everyone heard. Delacroix wanted you to know he was overruling me.”

“He’s not overruling you. He’s giving me a chance to show you I’m fine.”

Camille shook her head. “You’re not fine, Julien. You’re better than you were a month ago, but you’re not fine. There’s a difference, and it’s the difference between a smart comeback and a career-ending collapse.”

He stepped closer, close enough that she caught the salt-and-soap smell of him. “I’ve been careful. I did your exercises. I stopped fighting the pool sessions. I let you poke and prod me like a lab rat. But I didn’t come back to France to sit on a bench and watch other men play. I came back to finish something.”

“Your brother’s season.”

The words hung between them. For a moment, his mask slipped, and she saw the raw edge underneath, the grief he carried like a second spine. Then it was gone, replaced by that fierce grin she was beginning to distrust.

“Exactly. So I’m going to play, and I’m going to play well, and then you’re going to tell Delacroix that I’m ready for the real matches. Deal?”

“That’s not how this works.”

“It’s exactly how this works. You watch. You’ll see.”

He turned and jogged back to the group, leaving her standing at the sideline with the taste of copper in her mouth. She wanted to pull him aside, to explain that his body wasn’t a negotiation, that she couldn’t fix him if he kept throwing himself at the problem. But the whistle blew, and the match began, and there was no room for words.

Julien started on the bench. Camille stood behind it, ice packs ready, her eyes fixed on the pitch. The first twenty minutes were uneventful—the reserves held their own, the Narbonne side was scrappy but unpolished, and the score stayed level. She let herself breathe.

Then Delacroix turned and nodded at Julien.

The substitution came during a stoppage in play. Julien stripped off his tracksuit and jogged onto the grass, and the crowd—small but vocal—erupted. Even the Narbonne players turned to look at the famous number 10 trotting into their half. Camille saw the shift in their posture, the sudden tension. They knew who he was. They knew what he was capable of.

What they didn’t know was that his left knee had the structural integrity of a shoelace holding up a brick.

Julien received his first pass within thirty seconds. He took it flat, at full speed, and stepped through a defender like the man wasn’t there. The crowd roared. He made another break, offloading in the tackle, and the reserve winger scored in the corner. Then Julien kicked a conversion from the touchline like it was nothing, the ball curling between the posts with a lazy finality.

Camille couldn’t look away. He was beautiful out there, all rage and grace, every movement purposeful. But she was watching his mechanics more than his brilliance. The way his left foot planted slightly wider than his right. The way his hips torqued a fraction more on that side. The way he took contact directly on his terms, never letting anyone hit him from an angle.

Twenty minutes had never felt longer.

The tackle came in the twenty-ninth minute.

Narbonne launched a counterattack from a spilled ball. Julien chased back, covering, and a young flanker with more courage than sense hit him low. The contact was legal, clean, a classic chop tackle that folded Julien’s legs beneath him. He hit the ground hard, shoulder-first, and Camille saw it instantly—the way his face contorted before he rolled, the way his right arm stayed tucked close to his body as he got to his feet.

He shook off the tackler’s apology and jogged back into position. His face was a mask of concentration now, the brightness gone.

Camille’s heart dropped.

She watched him for the remaining ten minutes of his stint. He touched the ball twice more, both times choosing to pass early, both times avoiding contact. He was hiding. He was in pain, and he was hiding it, and no one else could see it because they were watching the scoreboard and the flash of his boots and the legend of his name.

The whistle blew for his substitution. Julien walked off the pitch—strode, really, showing no limp. He grabbed a water bottle from a kit boy, took a long drink, and only then did he glance at Camille.

He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.

“Told you,” he said as he passed her. “Ready.”

She said nothing. She watched the way he held his right arm, the slight forward tilt of his shoulder, the way he flinched when a teammate clapped him on the back. She waited until his back was turned, then she saw it—a subtle wince, his jaw tight, as he rotated his arm to reach for his bag.

He was hurting. And he was lying about it.

Camille walked to the sideline and checked her medical kit, hands steady even as her thoughts raced. She had promised herself she wouldn’t be trapped by secrets again. She had left Paris to escape the weight of them. And now she was standing in the middle of a web she had built with her own silence, watching the man she was falling for fracture in front of her eyes.

The match ended. 24–7. Julien’s fifteen minutes had turned the tide. Delacroix shook his hand, clapped his cheek, praised him to the press. The president of the club, Moreau, stood in the shadow of the stands, watching with an expression Camille couldn’t read.

Julien showered, dressed, and emerged with his bag slung over his left shoulder, hiding the right. He was heading toward her when his phone buzzed. He glanced at it, and something in his face stilled.

“Trouble?” she asked.

He looked up, and for a moment he was not the fierce star of the pitch but a man holding up a wall with his bare hands. “My mother is in Toulouse,” he said. “She’s asking to see me.”

Camille’s breath caught. Élise Roussel. Her mother—their mother—was three hours away, asking for the son she had abandoned.

“What are you going to do?”

Julien’s jaw tightened. He looked across the pitch, toward the empty stands, toward the ghost of a brother he had failed and a mother he had refused to acknowledge.

“I don’t know yet.”