My Ex's Football Rival Wants Me
Russell James called me plain. He said I didn't have what it took to drive a man crazy, then crawled back into bed with the supermodel he'd been hiding from me. I found out the hard way, with my own eyes and what little dignity I had left. By then, he'd already signed his professional football contract, become a rising star, and decided I was no longer in his league.
A year later, my life is falling apart. My mother's surgery is unaffordable. My younger brother's hockey dreams are slipping away. My final semester fees are overdue.
Then my half-sister offers me a deal.
Seduce a powerful fashion executive at an elite Madrid nightclub and help secure her place in Europe's most prestigious fashion show. In return, my family's problems disappear.
I say yes.
I spend the night with the man she described.
By morning, I discover I've slept with the wrong man.
"Connor?" he repeats, amused. "My name's Andre."
Andre Fernandez.
Real Numancia de Madrid's golden boy. Europe's most sought-after footballer. Forty-eight million followers. A €150 million market value.
And the biggest rival of the ex-boyfriend who shattered my heart.
Before I can process what happened, Andre finds me. He clears my family's debts and makes one impossible demand:
"Be my girlfriend."
I say no.
Andre Fernandez clearly isn't used to hearing that word.
When paparazzi catch us kissing at a high-profile party, the internet explodes. To save Andre's reputation, his PR team pushes us into a fake relationship complete with staged appearances, rehearsed interviews, and public displays of affection.
None of it is supposed to be real.
Except the longer we pretend, the harder it becomes to remember where the performance ends.
Russell sees the photographs and is annoyed at his rival's proximity to me.
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Chapter: 73: TuscanyCarmen's POVMonday arrived faster than I expected, the way departure dates always seem to once you've actually agreed to something.I spent the morning finishing a load of laundry I should have started days earlier, folding sundresses I hadn't worn since before university consumed my entire wardrobe in shades of black and grey. Antonia sent three separate messages demanding photo evidence once I landed, and Elena called just to ask, twice, whether I had packed sunscreen, as though I hadn't spent my whole life in a country that received roughly the same amount of sun as Tuscany did.The flight to Florence was short and unremarkable, the kind of flight where you barely settle into your seat before the descent begins. I spent most of it half asleep against the window, waking somewhere over the Alps to a view worth the interruption and drifting off again before we'd finished crossing it. Jennifer had arranged a car at the airport, a driver holding a small sign with my name on it who load
Last Updated: 2026-09-25
Chapter: 72: Back in MadridCarmen's POVAndre's note had acquired two new creases by the time my flight landed in Madrid. I noticed it when I reached into my handbag for my passport and pulled the card out with it. Somewhere between the airport, the security line and the flight home, I had apparently been opening it often enough to soften the fold down the middle.I had to put it away before I could read it again.Madrid met me with dry heat, traffic and sixteen notifications I had ignored in the air. Most were congratulations I still had not answered from graduation. Two were from Antonia. One was from Mateo asking whether Formula 1 drivers ate normal food.There was also a message from Andre's mum.Jennifer: Welcome back. Lunch tomorrow if you are free? There is no agenda, I promise.I smiled before I could help it. The breakup had changed many things, but Jennifer had made it clear very quickly that she did not intend to become a stranger simply because Andre and I had stopped being together. She had sent me
Last Updated: 2026-09-25
Chapter: 71: FlowersCarmen's POVWhen I arrived home, what was waiting for me was a vase of white peonies, garden roses and eucalyptus large enough to take over half the dining table.I stopped just inside the apartment with my paddock pass still hanging around my neck and stared at it. For a second, I assumed Tomas had sent them. It would have made sense after the weekend, especially after the way his mother had spent part of Sunday politely informing me that women like me were not usually included in whatever picture she had once imagined beside her son.I saw a card shoved in between the flowers, my name written across the front in handwriting I recognized immediately. It was from Andre.I set my bag down without taking my eyes off it.The apartment had been quiet when I left that morning, and it was quiet now, except for the faint hum of the air conditioning and the city beyond the windows. After an entire day of engines, crowds and people speaking over one another, the silence should have felt peace
Last Updated: 2026-09-25
Chapter: 70: Sunday CompanyCarmen's POVTomas's mother was the first person that Sunday who made me miss the Formula 1 race on Friday. I had been back inside the paddock for less than twenty minutes when Tomas stepped aside outside his team's hospitality unit and introduced us. Until then, the morning had been easy. Race day had transformed the place I had explored two days earlier into something louder and more deliberate, with fuller grandstands beyond the paddock, guests moving between hospitality buildings in carefully planned streams and team personnel carrying the focused expressions of people who no longer had another practice session in which to fix a mistake.I liked the change, and I even liked that I no longer needed to keep checking the map or examining my paddock pass as though somebody might discover it had been issued to me by accident.Tomas had met me near the entrance between obligations, already dressed in a team kit and clearly operating on a schedule that did not belong to him anymore."Yo
Last Updated: 2026-09-24
Chapter: 69: He Saw the PicturesAndre's POVCARMEN LOPEZ SPENDS FRIDAY PRACTICE WITH TOMAS CARVALHO AFTER FERNANDEZ SPLITThe headline sat beneath a photograph of Carmen walking through the paddock beside Tomas, her visitor pass hanging against her jacket while she looked up at him with the kind of expression that meant she was listening properly. There was nothing intimate in the picture. They were not touching, he was not leaning into her, and anybody with sense could have looked at it and seen two people having a conversation.I looked at it long enough to lose the right to call myself sensible.Numancia were in another country for a European fixture, and the coaching staff had given us the evening after dinner to ourselves as long as nobody left the hotel. Most of the squad had taken over one of the private lounges downstairs, where a card game had spread across one table and somebody had connected a console to the television. I had been half-listening to all of it until the first photograph appeared on my phone
Last Updated: 2026-09-24
Chapter: 68: Friday in the PaddockCarmen's POVEngines were already warming somewhere beyond the garages by the time I stepped out of the car, and the sound alone made it clear this was not the kind of event I could wander into casually. Tomas had told me to come early, before practice, so I could see the paddock before it turned into the version everyone watched on television. Now that I was standing in front of it, gates and fences and men with earpieces stretching in every direction, I understood why he had insisted.The paddock pass was heavier than I expected. It hung from a black lanyard against my chest, thick enough to feel more like a credential than an invitation, and every few minutes I caught myself touching it to make sure it was still there. By the time I followed Tomas through the second security checkpoint, I had already learned that almost everything about a Formula 1 weekend happened behind another door, another barrier or another person checking whether your name belonged on a list.Tomas glanced ba
Last Updated: 2026-09-23
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