“Seriously?” Carlos scoffs. “You benched me mid-interview?”
“Carlos, you just admitted to intentional misconduct. On record, I might add.”
“And?”
I stare at him, because surely there's a joke coming. Surely nobody is this dense.
“And?” I repeat.
Carlos shrugs. “He deserved it.”
My eye twitches. “Whether he deserved it isn’t the point.”
“The media loves this stuff.”
“The media loves train wrecks too,” I snap. “That doesn't mean we hand them the matches.”
Carlos rolls his eyes. “They'll move on tomorrow.”
“No. They'll spend the next week asking whether you have a discipline problem. Whether the club has a discipline problem. Whether we've lost control of the dressing room.”
His expression finally shifts, just slightly. It's enough to tell me he hadn't thought that far ahead.
I lower my voice. “You've got enough talent to make headlines for your football, Carlos. Stop making them for everything else.”
For the first time, he doesn't have a comeback ready.
His jaw tightens, then he looks away.
“Fine.”
I turn back to the media and force a smile, but then I feel it.
A stare.
I look past the cameras and find Oliver. His brow is furrowed and his arms are crossed. I know that look. It’s the same one he gives the team when he thinks someone made the wrong call.
Shit.
Because suddenly I don't know whether he's upset about what Carlos said—
Or what I did.
I tug one of Oliver’s shirts over my head and fluff my hair back into place. The cotton hangs loose on me, smelling faintly of laundry detergent and him.
Oliver isin the bathroom brushing his teeth while I sit on the edge of his bed, scrolling aimlessly through my phone.
“I’m just saying,” he calls, words muffled by toothpaste, “I don’t think pulling him from the interview was the right move.”
I stare down at the floor. There it is. The thing we've been dancing around all day.
“And I’m just saying there was a bigger picture,” I reply.
Oliver spits into the sink. “I know there was.”
“Do you?”
He appears in the doorway a second later, toothbrush still in hand. “Yes.”
