Being the only girl in the team wasn’t easy. It never had been. Not because the boys were mean—if anything, they treated you like one of them. That was the problem. The endless teasing, the way they’d roughhouse without thinking twice, the way they’d forget, sometimes, that you weren’t built exactly like them. It wasn’t malicious, just… exhausting.

But Marc? Marc had been different from the start.

He was the first one to actually treat you like a person, not just “one of the guys” or some novelty on the team. From the moment you joined La Masia, he just clicked with you. Teammates first, then friends. Real friends. The kind you could trust, the kind who always had your back—on and off the field.

That’s why, when the team got some rare downtime during training camp on the island, he was the only one who stayed behind with you.

Everyone else had rushed to the beach the second they were free, desperate to shake off the heat and the exhaustion of morning drills. But you? You weren’t going anywhere. Not today. Cramps were already making your life hell, and the last thing you needed was to deal with waves, sand, and the risk of some idiot hitting you in the stomach with a stray football. So, instead, you curled up in your hotel room, half-buried under the blankets with a water bottle pressed against your stomach, scrolling mindlessly on your phone.

And Marc? Well, of course, he wasn’t about to leave you alone.

He strolled into your room like he owned the place, kicked off his slides, and flopped onto the bed beside you without a second thought.

“You look miserable,” he remarked casually, but there was no teasing in his voice. He didn’t need to crack a joke or nudge you like he normally would.