All Chapters of My Ex's Football Rival Wants Me: Chapter 21 - Chapter 27

Carmen's POVThe meeting to discuss and sign the contract happened two days later at a private office in the same building as the one where Andre had first asked me to be his girlfriend and I had said no, which felt like it should have meant something symbolic but mostly just made me nervous walking into the lift.Victor Salazar turned out to be younger than I expected, sharp-suited, and just denoted someone whose entire job was managing chaos before it became a catastrophe. Andre's agent was there too, an older man named Roberto who said almost nothing the entire meeting and appeared to exist mainly to nod at appropriate intervals. Andre sat across the table from me, composed, watching everything with an intensity.Victor laid it out clinically. The relationship would last eight months and during this period, there would be staged public appearances at a manageable frequency, enough to establish the relationship as credible without exhausting either of us. A managed social media pres

Carmen's POVVictor’s statement about the paparazzi photos were out on a Thursday morning. He had granted an interview with one of the media personnel and spoke about it so lightly that I would have easily believed myself if I didn’t have an idea of this whole drama. He'd called me the evening before to talk through the wording, treating me like an actual stakeholder in the decision rather than someone he was managing around, which I appreciated even though I suspected it was strategic on his part too."We want the tone light," he'd explained. "Almost dismissive of the drama, not defensive. Defensive reads as guilty but a light would show everyone we are unbothered, which indicates everything is real.""So the goal is to sound like none of this matters.""Yes, exactly! A private relationship being made public against your will is annoying, not devastating. People who are actually hiding something sound devastated. People who are just mildly inconvenienced sound like you."I hadn't ex

Carmen's POV"You haven't been to the apartment in nine days." Andre said to me over the phone. I was standing in my kitchen, trying to decide whether reheated pasta counted as dinner or a cry for help."I've had coursework.""You've had coursework for nine days straight.""It's a demanding programme, Andre.""Carmen."I paused and took a deep breath. He already knew I was lying and wasn't going to waste breath calling me on it directly.The truth was uglier than coursework and I had no intention of saying it out loud to him or to myself if I could avoid it. The truth was that every time I thought about walking into that apartment, sitting across from him at that kitchen island, existing in a space designed specifically for the two of us to learn each other's habits, my whole body went on high alert and it really was a complicated scenario.“I will come to the apartment when I am free, it’s really nothing”He didn’t say anything again until I hung up, not fully resolving anything, whi

Carmen's POVI had been to football matches before, mainly when Russell and I used to date and I was already familiar with the some stadiums that were half full and you could hear individual voices from the pitch, but walking toward Real Numancia's stadium for the first time was something I had not prepared for. The building was enormous and I could see that the photographs had really failed to communicate its size. There was white concrete rising above the surrounding streets, and even an hour before kickoff, the crowd moving toward the entrances was loud enough that I had to raise my voice to thank the driver who dropped us off.Sofia had collected me from my apartment at noon, which gave us four hours before the match and, according to her, just enough time to get me through the family accreditation process without either of us losing our minds.She had not been wrong about that part.The first camera found me before I found my seat, which I say because I need the record to show th