Page 161 of On His Team

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

He looks at me. “Because we need breakfast.”

I lean against the counter as he turns the stove on. I watch him pull a pan out of the cabinet without asking where it is. That gets me more than it should.

“Also,” I say, “you do realize this is my apartment. You’re acting like you live here.”

“I’ve been here three times.”

“Exactly.”

He cracks an egg. “That’s enough to know where the pans are.”

I roll my eyes and climb onto the counter beside him. He makes eggs and toast while I drink coffee and talk about the clinic. That is basically what my life has become. Everything leads back to the clinic.

I have forty-eight kids. Seven volunteers. One main sheet. Two locker rooms. A youth-program coordinator who answers emails at five-thirty in the morning and has started every message to me this week with Just one more thing.

I have registration tables, waiver packets, name tags, extra tape, rental skates, helmets, water, snack bags, a thirty-minute buffer between check-in and ice time that Ives told me was too much until I explained that forty-eight children do not put hockey gear on in thirty minutes unless the United States military gets involved.

Rowan is listening while he flips eggs. “You need another person at check-in. You only have two there.”

I purse my lips to the side. “I know.”

“Put Gary there.”

I sigh. “Gary is on equipment.”

“He said he’s been around rinks eleven years,” he says.

I nod. “He has.”

“So he can move after check-in.”

I point at him. “That is actually useful.”

“Thanks.”

I tease, “Don’t get excited. You’re still not running my event.”

“I know.”

“Ives already told me I need to stop treating every suggestion like a hostile takeover.”

Rowan slides eggs onto a plate. “Sounds right.”

I kick his thigh lightly with my heel. He catches my ankle. It happens so quickly that I don’t have time to react before his hand is wrapped around me. We both stop. His thumb moves once against the inside of my ankle. I look down at his hand. Then up at him.

“Breakfast,” he says.

I smile. “Breakfast,” I confirm. “I don’t know what other thoughts were running through your head.”

I jump down.

We eat on the couch with my laptop open on the coffee table because I cannot currently consume food without also staring at some version of a staffing schedule.

Rowan lasts maybe ten minutes before he reaches over and closes it.