Page 107 of On His Team

That is what I have.

I walk past the bathroom. Rowan’s door is shut. For about three seconds, I stand outside it, wondering if I have lost my mind. Then I knock. There’s movement inside before the door opens.

Rowan is in grey sweats and a T-shirt, his hair wet and pushed back from his forehead. He looks surprised to see me.

“G.”

“Hi.”

He glances toward the bathroom and then back at me. “What are you doing?”

I step past him. “Nothing.”

He turns as I enter his room. “You’re in my bedroom.”

“Excellent observation.”

The confidence lasts until he closes the door. Then I become acutely aware that I am in Rowan Laurens’s bedroom on purpose.

I have only been in here once before. His bed is under the window. There are hockey sticks against one wall, two water bottles on the desk, a pile of clean clothes on a chair, and a wet towel hanging over the footboard. The room smells like detergent and whatever he uses after he showers, and that is more information than I needed while trapped inside a room containing his bed.

Rowan stays by the door. He’s watching me look around. “What are you doing up here, G?”

“You asked if I’d be at Hawthorne.”

“Yeah.”

“So I’m here.”

His mouth moves. “Yeah.”

I point at him immediately. “Don’t.”

He laughs. The sound loosens something in me.

This is still Rowan.

That’s the strange part. I expected kissing him to transform something fundamental, but he’s standing in front of me looking exactly like the man I was arguing with about the word okay a week ago. I just know what he tastes like now.

“Were you going to kiss me again?” I ask.

His answer comes immediately. “Yeah.”

My stomach flips. “When?”

He shrugs against the door. “Eventually.”

“Eventually?”

“We’ve been surrounded by people since you got here.”

“So?”

He gives me the flat look. I know exactly what it means.

“Your brother is downstairs,” he says.

Heat runs up my neck, because there’s something about Rowan saying that while standing between me and a closed bedroom door that is considerably hotter than the sentence deserves to be.