Freed From Desire

Part 25

Katie

What had I done now? I honestly couldn't think of anything that could've gone wrong between the warmup and now. I'd been out on the pitch for god's sake. She couldn't be mad at me because of the yellow card? It was such a stupid one, just for kicking the ball away.

I was so deep in thought that I didn't notice when Viv nudged my shoulder. "You asleep, granny?" she smirked and I shot her a glance.

"Granny?" I asked, not really getting the reference. I was just a year older than she was.

"Grannies get sleepy early, don't they?" the dutch woman shrugged as she grabbed her bag. I was already showered and dressed, waiting on her.

Viv's car had broken so I offered to loan her mine since I was catching a ride with Nora anyway. At least I hoped I still was. I hadn't seen her since that weird handshake moment.

"Did Nora seem weird to you after the game?" I asked randomly as we walked out. She was still nowhere to be seen. 

"Oh god, what did you do now," Vivianne groaned and I shoved her shoulder. Gently though, wouldn't want to break her just as she was returning.

"I don't exactly know..?" I replied and sighed deeply. We reached the doors and a bunch of fans were there, being held back by security.

"You're gonna stay and sign some stuff?" I asked before we left the building, stopping just shy of the glass doors, acutely aware that they could all see inside.

Viv frowned and nodded then. "I was going to, yeah."

I nodded too and grabbed the car key, handing it over to her. "I'm not feeling it. Have a good one!" I quickly gave her a hug and then walked outside, doing my best to ignore the young fans' calls. It felt like shit to just walk past them, but I really didn't have it in me to put on a happy face and take photos.

At least Nora was there, waiting behind the wheel of her car. She was tapping on the wheel nervously and I hoped to see that wide smile on her face when she noticed me. But instead she just looked for a few moments and then looked down again.

And my heart dropped.

I opened the back door first, placing my stuff on the back seat, and then sat in the passenger seat next to her.

"Seatbelt, please," she said instead of a hello. Okay maybe it was too much for me to expect a kiss since the car park was still visible to the group of fans. But this felt.. cold.

I put my seatbelt on and she put the car in drive, heading onto the road. I could tell Nora was anxious and I gently placed my hand on her thigh. Some of the weight lifted when she put her hand on top of mine and laced our fingers together.

---

The drive wasn't long but it felt like a whole eternity with absolute silence in the car. I didn't even turn the radio on, just staring out the window and waiting for us to arrive. I sensed that we would talk about whatever was going once we got inside. And I was equally impatient to get to that point and also scared of what was coming.

The door closed with a click behind us and I watched as Nora took her shoes off before picking up Cooper and nuzzling her face into his fur, the cat purring in agreement to the attention he was getting. Almost made me a little jealous.

Okay not almost, it absolutely did. I took the cat from her arms, giving him a kiss as an apology before dropping the meowing creature on the floor. Stepping closer, I pulled Nora into my arms and we both sighed simultaneously as she leaned into me, her arms wrapping around my waist.

We stood there for a good while, the anxiety slowly seeping out of both of our bodies until Nora pulled away the tiniest bit to give me a soft kiss. That pushed the last worried thoughts out of my head and now I just looked at her curiously. "What happened?"

Instead of answering she reached into her coat pocket to grab her phone. After tapping a few times, she handed it over to me and I frowned, not knowing what to expect.

I definitely couldn't expect that.

She had opened the page to her tagged posts and almost all of the latest one were the same video posted by different McCabe fan accounts. 

Us dancing.

A few newer posts were from today's game and I clicked on a video. In it, someone commented on Nora being my girlfriend and she looked well.. shocked. The video had been edited too, adding fake thought bubbles with the words "oh crap, busted" inside.

I looked up at Nora, who was anxiously biting her lower lip as her eyes darted from the phone to me and back to the phone. This was definitely more attention than she was used to. Not to mention the fact that this relationship was now very public. I didn't even want to know what was happening on tiktok.

"Okay. A lot to unpack here," I said eventually, shoving the phone in my backpocket for now. I took my jacket off and helped Nora with hers too, grabbing her hand then and walking with her to the couch. Once there, I took her phone in my hand again and sat down, pulling Nora into my arms.

"First I'll show you a few useful settings to make this a little less overwhelming. And then we'll talk, okay?" I offered and smiled when Nora nodded quickly.

I walked her through on how to hide tagged posts from her profile and how to set up manual approval for tagging. We went through her profile together, deleting inappropriate comments and overall cleaned it all up, also kicking the members who had managed to start following her before she'd made her account private.

And finally when we felt good with what had been accomplished, I placed her phone on the table and pulled her in for a kiss. 

I could feel how she'd calmed down a lot during all this and I almost just wanted to keep kissing her. But we did still need to talk about this.

"What are you thinking?" I asked, after pulling away just a bit.

"Currently that I want to kiss you more," Nora smirked, mirroring my own thoughts.

"I was asking about the photos and videos," I laughed, trying to guide her mind onto the right track.

"The ones where you looked sexy as fuck? What about them?" Nora asked innocently, leaning over to kiss my neck now.

I groaned involuntarily. We had time, we could talk later. I made a silent promise to myself on that and then pinned her to the couch, our lips meeting once again.