Seven years later…
The mop bucket tipped over before Olivia could stop it, sending dirty water sloshing across the floor she had just finished scrubbing, and somewhere behind her, she heard Mara laugh.
Seven years of this, and her hands still shook every single time.
Olivia crouched down at Hart Sports Agency, her knees aching against the cold tile, wiping at a coffee stain that had been ground into the floor since morning. Her mother's agency. The one with her mother's name still stitched into the leather chairs in the lobby, though her mother had been gone for three years now and everything that once belonged to her had slowly, quietly, been stripped away.
The door chimed. Olivia didn't look up right away. She'd learned a long time ago that looking up only invited trouble.
"Who is that janitor?" a voice asked, sharp and amused, followed by the click of expensive heels crossing the lobby.
Olivia recognized the voice before she even lifted her head. Trisha. Mara's shadow, always had been, always would be.
"This is my stepsister, Olivia." Mara's voice dripped with false sweetness, the kind that made Olivia's skin crawl. "Don't you remember her? The one who got herself pregnant with a bastard."
Trisha's laugh rang out through the lobby, bright and cruel. "Oh my god, she's so messy. If only she hadn't broken up with Killian. He'd probably be running this whole agency for us by now."
Olivia's grip tightened around the mop handle until her knuckles went white. Painful memories crashed over her all at once, the way they always did whenever Mara opened her mouth. The whispers behind her back during her pregnancy. The way Mara had smiled sweetly to her face while telling everyone else that Olivia couldn't be trusted to run a team, that she'd embarrassed the family, that the janitor's closet was exactly where a girl like her belonged.
She rose to her feet slowly, forcing her spine straight, refusing to let either of them see her hands still trembling.
"Your team is crumbling because of you, Mara." Her voice came out steadier than she expected. "You sold off every good player we had left. And now you want to stand here and blame that on me?"
Mara's smile vanished like it had never existed. "Oh, shut up, Olivia." She stepped closer, close enough that Olivia could smell her perfume, sickly sweet and expensive. "I am going to sell this entire agency. Your mother is dead. She isn't here to protect you anymore. And when I'm done, you will have nothing left. Not even this mop."
She lifted the coffee cup in her hand and, without breaking eye contact, tipped it over, letting the hot liquid splash across the freshly cleaned floor.
"Make sure you scrub that clean and shiny," Mara said sweetly, already turning to leave, Trisha's laughter trailing behind her like poison gas.
Olivia stood there long after the door swung shut, staring down at the brown liquid spreading across the tile, at her own warped reflection in the puddle. Her jaw ached from clenching it. Somewhere deep in her chest, something old and tired whispered that she was so, so sick of being small.
She dropped back to her knees anyway and started mopping.
Across the country, under studio lights bright enough to sting, Sebastian Killian Ashford sat across from a reporter with a microphone hovering inches from his face, his expression the same unreadable calm that had made him a nightmare to read on the field for six straight seasons.
"You just won the Super Bowl as the youngest MVP in league history," the reporter said, practically vibrating with excitement. "So why leave the team now, at the height of everything?"
Killian's jaw ticked, just barely, the only sign that the question had landed somewhere it wasn't supposed to.
"And sir," the reporter pressed, leaning in, "does this have anything to do with your first love? There have been rumors."
Something flickered behind Killian's eyes, gone almost as fast as it appeared. He let a slow, easy smile spread across his face, the kind that had sold a thousand magazine covers and given absolutely nothing away.
"I'm an athlete," he said smoothly, rising from his chair, buttoning his jacket with the unhurried confidence of a man who had never once had to explain himself. "I want to take my talents where they matter. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a flight to catch."
He walked out of that studio like he owned the building, like he owned the whole city waiting for him beyond it, and nobody in that room could have guessed that underneath the calm, something in him had been quietly burning for seven straight years.
In a small apartment two hours away, Olivia sat on the edge of her bed, her six-year-old son Charles curled up beside her, already drifting toward sleep with his small hand fisted in the blanket. Her friend Karen sat cross-legged at the foot of the bed, phone held up between them, the glow of the screen lighting up her excited face.
"Olivia, look." Karen practically shoved the phone closer. "Killian is rich now. Like, seriously rich. Super Bowl MVP rich."
"Really." Olivia's voice came out flat, though her eyes lingered a beat too long on the paused video, on the familiar line of his jaw, the way he still tilted his head slightly when he smiled for cameras.
"And guess what else." Karen's eyebrows shot up. "He left his team. He's coming back to Los Angeles."
Olivia's stomach dropped, though she kept her face carefully still. "So?"
"So, I think you should find a way to talk to him."
"No." Olivia shook her head hard, waving a hand between them like she could physically bat the idea away. "Absolutely not, Karen. It has been seven years. Seven years of eight hour shifts with a mop in my hand while he was out there winning championships and getting his face on billboards."
"But you have Charles."
Olivia's gaze softened as it drifted down to her sleeping son, his lashes dark against his cheeks, his small chest rising and falling in that peaceful rhythm only children ever seemed to manage. "I know. I know I have Charles. But Killian can never find out he's alive."
"Olivia." Karen's voice gentled, careful now. "You sacrificed everything for that man. Your reputation, your dignity, seven years of your life. He would understand if you just told him the truth."
Olivia said nothing. Instead, she reached over to her nightstand and slid open the drawer, her fingers finding the small photograph tucked beneath a stack of old bills, worn soft at the edges from years of handling. Her and Killian, seventeen years old, laughing at something neither of them probably remembered anymore.
She stared at it for a long moment, at the boy who used to look at her like she hung the moon, and felt something ache deep in her chest that seven years apparently hadn't managed to kill after all.
"Welcome to Los Angeles," the receptionist said, a tall, lean man with a practiced smile, holding out his hand for identification.
Killian pulled his wallet from his jacket pocket, his mind already three steps ahead, already running through the list of things waiting for him in this city. As he slid his ID free, something small slipped loose and fluttered to the marble floor.
He crouched down and picked it up without thinking, and his whole body went still.
A photograph. Small, creased, soft at the corners from being carried in that same wallet for seven straight years. Him and Olivia, seventeen and impossibly happy, her head tipped back mid-laugh, his arm slung around her shoulders like he'd never once imagined a world where she wouldn't be there.
He always carried it. He told himself it was habit. He told himself a lot of things.
His thumb brushed once over her smiling face, and something cold and steady settled into his chest, replacing whatever warmth the memory had almost stirred loose.
"Olivia," he murmured, low enough that no one else in the lobby could hear, his eyes darkening as he slid the photograph back into his wallet. "You broke my heart seven years ago."
He straightened his jacket, and the easy, camera ready smile slid back into place like a mask clicking shut.
"Now I'm here to break yours.”