Off Limits

Leah has learned how to live in public. She knows how to answer questions, how to lead under pressure, how to give enough of herself to satisfy the world without giving too much away. Her private life is exactly that: carefully protected, deliberately unseen.

Until one question crosses the line.

It isn't crude. It isn't explicit. But it reaches for something that isn't football, and once it's asked, it can't be unheard. In the days that follow, the implication spreads: through articles that read between the lines, through online speculation that treats silence as invitation, through strangers who begin to feel entitled to what she's never offered.

What hurts isn't exposure, but erosion. The sense of being watched not for who she is on the pitch, but for who she might be when the cameras are gone.

As the tournament unfolds, Leah holds tighter to the life she's kept separate, learning how much strength it takes to say nothing at all, and how lonely it can be to protect something no one else can see.