Page 62 of Rookie Rules

Luca slid off the stool and walked to the windows. Beyond the glass, the grass held even lines from that afternoon. Rowan had paid someone to cut it while he was at practice. A life maintained in his absence.

"Do you ever have people here?" Luca asked.

"You are here."

"That's not what I meant."

"Teammates. Occasionally. Leadership dinner before camp."

"They sit where?"

Rowan indicated the living room.

"And no one wanders upstairs?"

"Adults generally understand stairs."

Luca turned. "I'm trying to figure out whether privacy is something you want or whether being known feels like a home invasion."

The muscles across Rowan's shoulders locked.

"You agreed not to ask for more."

"No. I agreed to four rules. You haven't made one against questions."

"Add it to the list."

Luca's face closed.

Regret arrived at once, clean and useless.

Rowan could have apologized. The word formed and remained behind his teeth. Apology would require explaining what the question had touched. He did not have language for the distance between protecting a life and discovering there was almost nothing inside it another person could know.

Instead he turned toward the stove. "Have you eaten?"

Luca stared at him. "Is that rule five?"

"There is pasta."

"You invited me for a boundary negotiation and made dinner?"

"I made enough dinner."

"That is not the same sentence."

Rowan opened the refrigerator. The sauce was in a glass container. He had prepared it after morning skate because cooking kept his hands occupied and because Luca had once told Finn that the temporary apartment's kitchen was suitable only for cereal and regret.

He had not made it for Luca.

He had made enough.

"Are you staying?" Rowan asked.

Luca watched him remove the container. Some of the guardedness eased, but not all of it.

"For pasta," he said.

Rowan set a pot of water on the stove. Luca reached for the salt cellar.