Chapter 149: [149] "Rough morning after"
The alarm on Luc’s phone went off at seven.
But he didn’t move.
It rang for the full thirty-second cycle, chirping into the silence of the apartment. He was face down in the pillow. His right arm was hanging off the edge of the mattress. His boots from last night were still on the floor where he had dropped them, caked in Dijon mud that had since dried and solidified onto the floor.
The alarm stopped.
Silence.
Then it started again because he had a backup alarm set at seven-oh-two.
He reached a hand out blindly and pressed the screen until it shut up.
He tried to move his legs. A dull, radiating throb wrapped around his left hamstring and shot upward into his lower back. Pain that wasn’t sharp enough to be an injury warning but was too persistent to be ignored.
The Endurance Surge had worked spectacularly during the Dijon match. It had given him thirty borrowed minutes of artificial freshness at the hour mark, allowing him to press a tired center-back, win headers against all odds, and drive a second goal past a keeper who had assumed the isolated striker was long since depleted.
What the system didn’t tell him was that borrowed time was borrowed from somewhere else.
He lay still and stared at the wall. The bedroom was in a particular brand of quiet that only existed when Juliette was already gone. No coffee machine running in the kitchen. Nothing being reviewed at the kitchen table. Just the low sounds of the city starting its morning beyond the windows.
She had left a note on the nightstand, the small square of paper leaning against the lamp.
He didn’t reach for it yet.
He just looked at it from across the pillow.
...eventually, he read it.
Her handwriting was clean and slightly hurried, all compact, disciplined lines:
Mud on the hallway floor. Disgusting. Don’t train today. Don’t argue about it either. I’ve already called Henri. You have a mandatory rest day. Eat something proper. I’ll be home late. Don’t be stupid. Please.
Luc put the note back against the lamp.
He lay back down.
---
By nine, his phone had accumulated sixteen unread messages. He could see the number without unlocking the screen. He chose not to unlock the screen.
By nine-thirty, it rang.
Not a message. An actual call.
He squinted at the screen.
Hugo Blanc.
He pressed accept and put the phone to his ear without lifting his head from the pillow. "What."
"Good morning," Hugo said. His voice was entirely too alert for nine-thirty on a rest day. "Juliette texted me."
"Huh."
"She said you might not move much today."
"I’m moving. I answered the phone."
"That’s your arm. The rest of you hasn’t moved since last night, I’m guessing."
Luc closed his eyes. "What do you want, Hugo."
"Cillian and I are coming over."
"No you aren’t."
"We already left," Hugo said. "Cillian is driving. He borrowed someone’s car. I don’t know whose, he wasn’t specific."
"Hugo."
"We’re bringing food. Cillian wanted Burgers. I said no. We settled on something from the place near the complex."
"You aren’t coming over."
"We’ll be there in twenty minutes," Hugo said, and hung up.
Luc stared at the ceiling.
He thought about getting up to lock the front door.
---
They arrived in eighteen minutes.
Luc heard the key turn in the lock. Juliette had apparently provided that too.
"Captain!" Cillian’s voice boomed through the apartment the exact second the door opened, completely indifferent to the possibility that the man he was visiting might be sleeping. "Captain, we’re here! Rise and shine!"
"Keep your voice down," Hugo said somewhere near the door.
"He’s not asleep, Jules said he’s been awake and staring at the ceiling since she woke up."
"That doesn’t mean you shout at him."
Footsteps down the hall. The bedroom door was already open.
Cillian appeared in the frame first. He was wearing a hoodie with the hood up, carrying a brown paper bag that smelled of something warm. His face broke into a massive grin the moment he saw Luc horizontal under the duvet.
"Look at the state of him," Cillian said.
"Don’t," Luc said.
Hugo appeared behind Cillian’s shoulder. He was in his training jacket. He surveyed the room with the same dead-eyed tactical assessment he brought to studying opposition footage. Muddy boots on the floor. Duvet pulled up to Luc’s chin. Phone face-down on the nightstand.
"You look terrible," Hugo said.
Luc said. "Leave me alone."
"Nope."
Cillian walked in uninvited and dropped the paper bag on the end of the bed. "Breakfast. Hugo ordered half the menu because apparently you need protein for muscle repair and I need to stop having opinions."
"I said the meals were for recovery," Hugo corrected. "I didn’t say stop having opinions."
"You heavily implied it."
Hugo ignored him, walking to the window and pulling the blinds up. March light flooded the room.
Luc put an arm over his eyes.
"That was unnecessary," Luc said.
"Light helps regulate... something," Hugo said. "Juliette told me."
"She tells everyone to be against me, huh."
"You were going to lie in the dark all day," Hugo said. "That’s not recovery. That’s just being depressed."
"I’m not depressed."
"You’re in the same position you were in when she left this morning."
Luc moved his arm off his eyes and looked at the seventeen-year-old standing at his window. "How do you know what time she left."
"She texted me at six-oh-three," Hugo said simply. "She was already at the complex. She wanted someone to check on you before ten."
Luc let out a long exhale through his nose.
The brown paper bag was sitting at the foot of the bed, radiating warmth and the smell of eggs and something toasted.
He sat up slowly.
The hamstring protested. His lower back sent a sharp reminder that yesterday’s borrowed energy had come at a price. He sat at the edge of the mattress with his elbows on his knees, breathing through it, letting the pain settle from sharp to dull before he tried to stand.
"Slowly," Hugo said.
"I know how to stand up," Luc muttered.
He stood up. Slowly.
---
The kitchen table had apparently become a rehabilitation center.
Cillian had unpacked the bags with the chaotic enthusiasm of someone who genuinely believed a well-organized spread of food solved most problems. Two containers of scrambled eggs. A bowl of fruit. Something that looked like oatmeal. Toast. A bottle of electrolyte drink that Hugo had clearly insisted on despite Cillian’s protests.
"I wanted to bring orange juice," Cillian said, pulling out a chair and sitting backward on it. "Hugo said the sugar-to-vitamin ratio was wrong for post-match recovery. I said it was just breakfast. He said—"
"It wasn’t just breakfast," Hugo cut in, sitting across from Luc. "Eat the oatmeal first."
Luc looked at the oatmeal.
"There’s honey," Cillian offered. "Hugo let me add honey."
"I didn’t let you. You did it while I was paying."
"That’s basically permission in most cultures."
Luc picked up the spoon.
The oatmeal was actually decent. He ate without talking for a few minutes, letting the warmth settle into him.