Page 91 of Rookie Rules

"And I have been paying for them."

Rowan crossed his arms. Defense made physical. He forced them down.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Stop asking that like I'm giving you a public-relations problem."

"I need something specific."

"Fine." Luca's voice remained level. "When no one is watching, don't act like I disappear the second we stop touching."

Rowan stared at him.

"I asked you to stay."

"For twenty minutes."

"You stayed longer."

"I know. It mattered to me. Then you messaged after the game like I was a player whose recovery time you had to manage."

"Recovery matters."

"Of course it does. That's not all I am asking you to see."

The word asking struck harder than accusation. Luca was not demanding a label. He was asking Rowan to acknowledge continuity: the person at the rink and the person in his bed did not stop being the same man because the location changed.

"I praised you," Rowan said, and heard how inadequate it was.

"You praised my timing. You praised my work. You always know how to tell me what I do well."

Luca crossed the living room and stopped beside the bookcase. His gaze touched the development photograph, the same one he had noticed the first night Rowan brought him here.

"When I left after recovery, you kept the food where you could see it," he said. "I know because you used the same container tonight. You asked me to stay, then counted past the twenty minutes without moving. You checked my hand before dinner."

Rowan remembered each act. None had felt accidental.

"Then after a game, you send me recovery time. You don't ask if I got home. You don't say you wanted me here. You make me do the math."

"I knew you got home."

"How?"

Rowan had watched the team parking feed from his car until Luca's vehicle left the garage. He had known the drive to Luca's building took fourteen minutes without traffic. He had waited eighteen before sending the message.

The facts sounded worse held silently.

"You see?" Luca said. "You probably checked. You always check. But you would rather let me think I imagined the care than admit it belongs to me."

"Those things matter."

"To the team."

"To me."

The answer came too fast to control.

Silence held it between them.