Chapter 1

The Scarlet Tide play Ascot United in twenty minutes. Sold-out home stadium, perfect weather, opening day. Everything lined up for a win.

My entire career depends on getting one.

Every match is the match of the season, whether we’re at the start of it or the end. The fans want to win, the board wants to win, the media wants us to win, and I want it more than all of them put together. It’s why I’m in the job. I don’t do failure, not on my watch and not when it comes to football.

I’m Lexa Delvaux, and I’m the best player in the United States Women’s Football League, possibly in the world, though I’ve never once said that part out loud.

Greatness brings pressure, and the pressure gets worse when your parents founded the club you play for, your sister runs its marketing, and her husband is the one who picks the team. We all live and breathe football, and we all want to win.

My father’s favorite phrase is that there are no prizes for second place. He’s been repeating it to me since he started training me at six. But unlike my mother, who’s warm and kind and thinks the world of me, my father’s love is conditional. His affection is based on my success on the field. He’s never told me he loves me unless I’ve won a match.

All that’s left is the part I’m good at.

I’m not nervous.

I’m never nervous.

My fingers are a little tingly. My heart is beating a little faster. My knee won’t stop bouncing. It’s how I am before every single match, a rush of energy that courses through me and makes me feel alive.

Rebecca drops onto the bench beside me and shoves her shoulder into mine, hard enough to move me six inches down the wood.

“Stop it,” she says.

“Stop what?”

“That.” She nods at my knee, which is still going. “You’ve been doing it since the bus. You’re going to score, they’re going to sing your name, and your dad’s going to say something almost nice in the tunnel. Same as every year.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I’ve known it for four seasons.” She starts taping her left wrist, teeth on the roll, the way she’s done it since the day I met her. “Ask me who wins.”

“Becca.”

“Ask me.”

“Who wins?”

“We do,” she says around the tape. “Obviously. I’m playing.”

My knee stops. She doesn’t say anything about that either, which is the reason I let her sit there.

Coach Declan enters the dressing room. It’s time for his speech. He’s always a calm presence, even when we’ve lost. He’s a good coach and a fair one, and out there he’s just Coach, never my brother-in-law.

He claps his hands together once. “Ladies.” He has our attention instantly.

“This is the opening match of the season. It’s at home. It’s our chance to show them what we’re made of. We’ve trained all summer for this. We know how they set up. We know where they’re soft. Now it’s time to go out there and get what’s ours. The trophy is at the end of the road, but the journey starts today. Let’s take that first step together.”

A chorus of “Yes, Coach” fills the room, Rebecca’s loudest of all, because she has never once in her life been quiet on purpose. Maeve bangs the flat of her hand against a locker. Lydia crosses herself. Mia, who is nineteen and has not played a minute of senior football, mouths along with the end of the speech like she’s been rehearsing it.

This team is a family. We’ve got each other’s backs, on and off the field. We’re the Scarlet Tide, and we’re here to win.

One by one, we file out. The roar of the crowd is deafening. I love it. This is where I belong. The cheers are like a drug, and I’m an addict. The louder they get, the more I want to give them something to cheer about.

As the captain, I’m at the front of the line, leading my team out. The sun is high, the field is cut in fresh stripes, and the air smells of grass and fried onions from the concourse. It’s a perfect day for a match. I close my eyes for a second, soaking it all in.

This is my home.

This is my life.

This is what I was born to do.

When I open my eyes, it’s kick-off.

---

Ascot come to defend and they’re good at it. They sit two banks of four across the edge of their box and dare us to find a way through, and for forty-five minutes we can’t. We have the ball and nowhere to put it.

Rebecca hits the side netting in the twentieth. Maeve forces a corner in the thirty-first that comes to nothing. Every time the ball reaches me, two of them arrive with it.

Their goalkeeper, a brick wall of a woman named Jensen, is having the match of her life. At half-time, Coach pulls us into the dressing room, and for once he lets his frustration show.

“Lexa,” he says, voice low. “They’re marking you out of the game. They put two on you every time you touch the ball. You need to find a way to shake them.”

I nod, my jaw tight. He’s right. They know I’m the key, and they’re shutting me down. Heat coils in my gut. I hate being contained. I hate feeling like I’m not in control.

“We need to change it up,” I say. “Give me the ball wide. I’ll draw them out, create space.”

Coach considers it for a moment, then nods. “Okay. But be smart about it. Don’t take unnecessary risks.”

We’re back on the field, the second half kicking off. The score is still 0-0. Fifty thousand people are making the restless kind of noise a crowd makes when it came for goals and hasn’t been given any.

I make my move, hugging the touchline, drawing my markers with me. It works. They follow me, leaving a gap in the middle. I see the opening, a sliver of space, and I take it. I cut inside, my feet moving in a dizzying dance, the ball glued to my foot. I’m past the first marker, then the second. The goal is in sight.

I can feel the defenders closing in, their breath on my neck. I don’t hesitate. I shoot.

The ball flies flat and hard toward the bottom corner. The crowd rises as one. My chest locks. It’s in. I know it’s in.

And then, a blur of red and black. Jensen gets across and gets a hand to it, just enough to send it spinning wide of the post.

The crowd groans. My heart sinks. I was so close. So damn close.

I turn away, my hands on my hips, trying to catch my breath. I look up to the directors’ box for my father. He doesn’t say anything, but I know what he’s thinking.

Second place is the first to lose.

I shake my head, pushing the thought away. There’s still time. We can still win this. I have to make this happen.

The match continues, a relentless back-and-forth. The minutes tick by, each one a small eternity. I can feel the fatigue setting in, my muscles screaming in protest. But I push through, driven by a need to prove myself, to make my father proud, to win.

Then, in the 77th minute, it happens. A corner kick for us. The ball is whipped into the box, in a chaotic scramble of bodies. I’m there, in the thick of it, fighting for position. The ball drops, a loose ball in a sea of legs. I see it, a flash of white and black. I lunge for it, my foot connecting with a solid thud.

The ball hits the back of the net. GOOOOOAL!

The stadium erupts in a deafening roar of pure joy. I’m mobbed by my teammates, their hugs and shouts a blur of celebration. Rebecca gets to me first and gets both arms around my ribs and lifts, which she is not strong enough to do and does anyway. I look for my father and find him. His smile is genuine.

It’s all I need.

The goal breaks them. Ascot push bodies forward looking for an equalizer, and the space they leave behind is the space I’ve been asking for all afternoon.

In the 81st, Maeve wins it back in mid-field and slides it into the channel. I’m through before their last defender has turned. Jensen comes out to narrow the angle and I lift it over her, soft, almost gentle. Two.

In the 86th, they lose it cheaply on the halfway line. I take one touch to set myself and hit it from twenty-five yards. It goes in off the underside of the bar with a sound like a door slamming. Three.

I turn toward the directors’ box with my arms already up, because this is the one he’ll want, this is the one that goes in the montage at the end of the season.

He isn’t watching. He’s turned in his seat, angled toward a man I don’t know, a man in a suit that costs more than the seats around it. My father is talking with his hands the way he does when he’s selling something.

Then Alycia says something and he looks up, and he’s on his feet, and he’s roaring, and everything is exactly the way it’s supposed to be.

I put it down to business. There’s always business.

They pull one back in stoppage time, a long-range shot that curls in over Lydia’s fingertips and into the top corner. It’s a beautiful goal. It’s also worth nothing.

The final score is 3-1.

A good win.

As we walk off the field, the crowd chanting my name, my shoulders finally come down. We started the season with a win.

My family waits in the tunnel, a small island of celebration amid the chaos.

“Lexa!” My sister, Alycia, pulls me into a tight hug. She smells of expensive perfume. “That was incredible! Three goals! You’re on fire.”

My mother is half a step behind her, and she stays there a moment longer than she needs to. When she does come forward, her embrace is soft and warm and exactly as long as it always is.

“I was so worried when the first half ended goalless,” she whispers, and her voice catches on it. “But you pulled it out. You always do.”

She says it to me and over my shoulder at the same time. My father is three feet away with his back to us, still on the phone.

She’s tired. She does forty events a season and she’s been on her feet since eleven.

My father, Ewan, is last. He puts the phone in his pocket and claps me on the shoulder, his grip firm. “Well played,” he says. “You didn’t let us down.”

It’s not “I love you,” but for him, it’s a declaration of affection. I’ll take it.

Declan, my brother-in-law and coach, gives me a nod of approval. “Smart move in the second half,” he says. “Drew them out perfectly.”

I shrug. “Just doing my job.”

“You did more than your job,” he says. “You won us the match.”

“This is going to be great for the club’s image,” Alycia says, already thumbing at her phone. “We can use this for the next campaign. ‘Lexa Delvaux: The Heart of the Tide.’”

I tune her out, my mind already on the post-match interviews and the ice bath that awaits. I’m exhausted, my body a symphony of aches and pains. But it’s the good kind of ache that comes from a hard-fought victory. I’m already thinking about the next match, the next challenge, the next win.

Because one win is never enough. Not for me. Not for my father. Not for the Scarlet Tide.