Offside Hearts

For years, Emery Vale and Blake Anderson have been inseparable on every list that matters, top scorers, top recruits, and the two best high school soccer players in the state. They've traded the Player of the Year award back and forth, fueled headlines, and defined what rivalry looks like. They've never been friends. They've never been anything but competitors.

Emery is restraint, quiet, precise, and impossibly hard to read. Blake is fire, dominant, relentless, and unapologetically intense. On the field, they push each other to be better. Off it, they avoid each other at all costs.

Neither of them is out. Neither of them is ready to question why a single look across the pitch feels more dangerous than any defender.

When circumstances force them into each other's orbit, the line between hatred and something far more complicated begins to blur. Every game raises the stakes. Every near moment threatens to unravel everything they've worked for. And the more they compete, the harder it becomes to deny the truth neither of them wants to name.