Three days after the Valencia match, Lucia finally came downstairs.
She had spent most of those seventy-two hours sequestered in her room with the door firmly shut, playing music just loud enough to signal that she wanted space. Lorenzo had respected her distance completely. He brewed coffee in the mornings, headed to the training ground during the day, came back home in the evenings, and listened to the occasional muffled sound of her moving around upstairs, never once knocking on her door.
On the third evening, just after seven o'clock, he was sitting at the kitchen table reviewing the remaining La Liga schedule when he heard her door unlatch. Heavy footsteps descended the wooden stairs, and a moment later, she appeared in the doorway.
Her dark hair fell loose across her shoulders, which was immediately unusual for her; Lucia almost always kept it tied back. She was wearing an oversized hoodie, barefoot, looking like someone who had spent three solid days building up the courage for a single moment and was now desperately trying not to lose her nerve.
"Hey," she said quietly.
"Hey."
"Can we talk for a minute?"
Lorenzo pushed his tablet to the side. She walked over to the kitchen table, their table, the exact spot where almost every important conversation they had ever shared took place, and sat down directly across from him.
For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The villa was completely still, save for the soft hum of the refrigerator.
Lucia stared down at her hands, tracing the grain of the wood, before finally raising her eyes to meet his.
"I've been trying to figure out how to say this for about three weeks," she began, her voice carrying a slight rasp. "I've written it out in my head maybe fifty times, and it never comes out looking or sounding the way I want it to. So I'm just going to say it badly and hope you understand what I mean."
Lorenzo stayed silent, holding her gaze with the unshakeable calm that was second nature to him. He didn't look detached or cold, just quietly composed, the way he got whenever he realized the next few minutes carried genuine weight.
"I have feelings for you, Lorenzo," Lucia said, delivering the words straight without blinking. "Not friend feelings. Not 'I'm proud of you' feelings, though I obviously am, disgustingly proud of you. I mean the other kind. The kind that makes me write text messages I can never bring myself to send."
She took a quiet breath. Her eyes glistened in the lamplight, but she wasn't crying yet.
"And I know about Cecilia," she continued, her posture rigid. "I know what she means to you. I've watched it unfold all season long. The late-night phone calls, the way she links her arm through yours, the way she looks at you like you hung the moon and she's just happy to stand in the moonlight. She's incredible, Lorenzo. She really is. I'm not standing here trying to compete with her or demanding that you pick a side."
"Lucia—"
"Please...., just let me finish."
Lorenzo gave a single, quiet nod.
"I just needed you to hear it directly from me," she said, her voice remaining surprisingly steady. "Carrying this around in secret was starting to turn me into someone I don't like. I was getting jealous. I was going quiet when I should have been talking, getting defensive over stupid things, and leaving places early because watching you with her was hurting me in a way I couldn't make sense of anymore."
She didn't look away. But when she said the word hurting, her jaw tightened slightly. A single tear escaped, tracing a slow line down her left cheek.
She didn't bother wiping it away.
"So there it is," she said softly. "I'm in love with my childhood best friend, and I have been for much longer than I care to admit. I needed to say it out loud to the one person who isn't Cecilia, because she already knows, and she's been ridiculously kind about it, which honestly makes me feel even worse."
Silence settled over the kitchen once more. Outside, the distant rumble of a car passing on the street faded into the evening.
Lorenzo looked at her for a long, heavy moment. The fierce intensity that drove him on the pitch was fully present now, stripped of any sporting aggression and channeled entirely into his focus on her. He wanted to offer a flawless response, but he knew real life didn't offer scripted answers.
"I heard everything you said," Lorenzo told her quietly. "Every word."
"And?"
He leaned forward slightly, resting his forearms on the table. "I'm not going to sit here and pretend I haven't noticed. The way you've been acting this season, the slipping away early, the look on your face after the Copa final. I picked up on all of it. And I didn't say anything because I honestly didn't know what the right response was, and if I'm being real with you, I still don't."
"At least that's honest." Lucia said.
"It's honest, but it's incomplete," Lorenzo said, his voice dropping an octave into something private that belonged strictly to the two of them in that room. "There is a connection between us that I don't share with anyone else. Not Cecilia, not anyone. You've known me since long before any of this madness started. You knew me when I was nobody, and you still treat me the exact same way you did back then, with a blunt honesty that makes me want to put my head through a wall sometimes."
A tiny, involuntary smile flickered at the corner of Lucia's mouth before vanishing.
"But I can't give you a definitive answer right now," he said steadily. "Not because I feel nothing for you, but because I'm feeling too many things at once right now. The season is reaching its peak and my head is split across three different competitions. Lucia, you deserve an answer from someone who is fully present, not someone mentally preparing for the league run-in and a final match, while talking to the person who matters most."
Lucia paused, her breath hitching slightly. "The person who matters most?"
"Don't make me repeat it."
Lucia's eyes welled up again, both of them this time. She blinked, letting two more tears fall, but a genuine smile broke through. It was the expression of someone who had received the exact piece of truth she needed to hear, even if it wasn't a neat resolution, and had decided that it was more than enough for tonight.
"After Lisbon," she said quietly. "So you're asking me to wait until after Lisbon's final match, right?"
"I'm asking to talk after Lisbon," Lorenzo corrected gently. "When the league is wrapped up, the fixtures are clear, and I can sit at this exact table with you and give you the real conversation you deserve instead of a rushed, half-baked version."
Lucia let out a soft, amused huff. "That is such a classic Lorenzo answer."
"Is it acceptable?"
"You saying things with honesty is always acceptable with me."
She pushed her chair back and stood up. She remained by the edge of the table for a lingering second that felt thick with everything that had been said and everything still unsaid between them.
She reached across the wooden surface, squeezed his hand firmly once, and let go.
"Good luck against Bayern, Lo," she said. "I'll be watching."
"I know that you're always watching."
"Yeah," she offered a faint, dry smirk. "That's pretty much where all my problems started."
She turned and walked toward the hallway, her bare feet silent on the floor. The door to her room upstairs closed with a soft click, leaving the villa to return to its peaceful evening quiet.
Lorenzo remained at the table for a long time. He simply sat there in the warm light, thinking about the girl who had known him long before the world knew his name, and had finally let him see what it had cost her.
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