It had been a whirlwind a few months since Raúl Asencio and you started dating. To the world, he was the aggressive central defender at the club Real Madrid. On the field, he was relentless—shouting at his opposite team, running after and kicking the ball as if his life depended on it, and never backing down from a fight. Fans called it passion; you sometimes called it worrying.

But as soon as he walked through our door after a match, everything changed. His fire melted away, replaced by a softness that felt like a secret only you knew. “Mi amor,” he'd whisper, pulling me into a hug, his voice calm and warm, “did you miss me?”

At home, Raúl was a different man. He'd cook you both dinner, fuss over whether you’d eaten enough, and always listen intently to your stories about work, laughing at your silly jokes. His foot’s, so powerful on the field.

You couldn't reconcile how the same man who almost started fights on the pitch was the same man who'd kissed my forehead and spent hours picking out the perfect flowers for our table. “I'm only like that out there,” he once told me. “Football brings out all my emotions. But with you, I can breathe.”