Just like that, a few days passed with Leo returning his attention to the on-pitch side of things, but he didn’t forget what was going on outside of that, too.

Sometime in the course of the week, Noah called Leo just after a session in the gym.

"Got the contract," Noah said.

"Everything looks right. You’re officially a commercial entity now, not just a footballer." 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

At that, Leo laughed a bit.

"Should that scare me?"

"Probably a little," Noah said, and Leo could hear the smile in it.

"But that’s my problem, not yours. Your only job is the pitch. You focus on getting ready for what’s coming and let me handle what’s outside of it."

"And trust me when I say it’s only going to get bigger from here. The Skechers people have pushed their timeline back slightly, to early July, so you’ve got time to work more on your game, and I hope you use it well."

"I will," Leo said.

"I know," Noah replied before ending the call.

The week following that one settled into a rhythm that Leo was starting to find the heads and tails of.

It wasn’t like most things he was used to, but it was a nice change of pace.

His mornings now consisted of driving lessons, which were going better than expected.

His final test too was fast approaching, and now he could confidently say that the instructor had stopped looking quite so tense in the passenger seat as opposed to earlier in his training, when the instructor sometimes had to hold onto her seat despite having her seatbelt on.

Leo could have sworn she wanted to disqualify him from driving even before his test, but it had all worked out in the end.

His afternoons, though, were spent at the training complex in long sessions on whichever pitch was available.

During those periods, he’d continued working through things he’d been wanting to work on since before the hamstring had interrupted everything and made just staying fit the main objective.

And in the evenings, his phone.

The earlier days after she left were okay, but as the days passed, Vittoria’s messages had been coming less frequently.

He hadn’t thought much of it since it had happened before, though that was on him purely for not reaching out, but it didn’t feel nice.

Still, he hadn’t said anything about it and only waited for her to come to him, if she wanted, with whatever was going on with her, but in the course of it, he started to care less and began losing himself in his training instead.

It was nearly seven in the evening when the groundskeeper came through the far gate of the training pitch pushing a maintenance cart, and he stopped when he saw Leo still out there, lying flat on his back in the centre circle with both arms spread wide, chest rising and falling with the specific heaviness of someone who had asked more of themselves than was strictly necessary.

The groundskeeper looked at him for a moment.

"You good?" he said, not unkindly.

At that, Leo lifted his head at the source of the voice.

"Five minutes?" he replied after seeing that it was one of the groundskeepers.

The man looked at him, then at the pitch, then back.

"Take all you need," he said, and pushed his cart toward the far end and busied himself there instead.

Leo put his head back down and looked at the sky, which now had that shade of early evening that sits between blue and something warmer.

A second later, he got back to his feet before walking towards the loose balls all over the pitch and getting them back to the net he had taken them from.

In Italy, the apartment Vittoria used when she was in Milan still had her bags at the door, still unpacked.

She had been back for almost two weeks, and yet, she hadn’t felt the need to.

And at the moment, she was feeling more tired than ever.

She was sitting on the edge of her bed looking at the photographs her father had laid in front of her some hours ago, printed out, which felt deliberately old-fashioned and therefore deliberately serious.

They were from Manchester.

And one of those pictures had what looked to be her and her chin in the hands of a masculine man who was wiping away whatever he was with the tissue he had in hand.

The angles the photographer had caught made it look like more than it was, or maybe exactly what it was.

She wasn’t even sure herself anymore.

In the midst of that, her phone sat squeezed between her shoulder and ear.

"Your father has been managing the Italian side of it," her mother was saying.

"They gave us notice before releasing because of who we are. The photos will still go out. That’s their livelihood, but we’ve gotten enough time to prepare."

"I know," Vittoria said.

"The angles at least. Most of them don’t show his face clearly."

"I know," Vittoria replied, sounding more than relieved.

"So who is he?"

Vittoria closed her eyes briefly.

"Mama."

"It’s a simple question."

"I can’t tell you. At least not for now. Things haven’t gotten that far yet," Vittoria said.

The silence on the other end was the kind that meant her mother had heard something in the sentence she was now turning over carefully.

"So there is someone," she said as Vittoria looked at the ceiling.

"Personally, I thought it was things being taken out of proportion, but there really is someone!"

"Yes," Vittoria said, sighing almost.

"Does your dad know who he is?"

"No. He asked, but I didn’t tell him. You know how he gets!"

"If things develop the way I’d like them to," she said, keeping her voice even, "everything will be known in real time. I don’t want to put pressure on something before it’s ready to have pressure put on it. And I haven’t told him certain things yet, so I’m asking you not to make this bigger than it needs to be right now."

Her mother was quiet for a moment.

"You know I wouldn’t normally push," she said, which was partially true.

"But you are going to be at the head of this family, Vittoria. Whether you want it or not, people will watch you differently because of that. You can’t give them ammunition and then ask them to put it down."

Vittoria said nothing.

"Your father is trying to minimise the impact of whatever story they are trying to cook up," her mother continued, "but he can only do so much. And—" she paused, "he’s calling me on the other line. We’ll be back in Italy in a few days, so let’s talk properly then, okay?"

"There’s nothing to talk about," Vittoria said.

"Yes, Vittoria, there is. See you soon, okay, love you," her mother said before the line went quiet.

Vittoria set the phone on the bed beside the photographs and looked at them for a moment longer.

She thought about texting Leo.

Then she thought about what she’d say, and then about what she hadn’t told him yet, and then she picked up the photographs, put them face down on the nightstand and went to make herself something to drink instead.