I woke up to the smell of coffee and the sound of sizzling bacon. The morning sun was streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows of our penthouse apartment in Dulwich, casting long, golden shadows across the room.
I rolled over, my body still aching from the intensity of the past few days: the drive up to St. George's Park, the sleepless night, the assessment, the raw emotional weight of finally earning the A Licence and saw Emma standing in the open-plan kitchen, a vision in one of my oversized training shirts and not much else.
Her fiery red hair was a glorious, chaotic mess, and she was humming to herself as she moved around the kitchen, a picture of domestic bliss that felt both completely alien and wonderfully, intoxicatingly real.
I lay there for a moment, just watching her, a slow, easy smile spreading across my face.
