Page 219 of On His Team

Chapter 20

GIANNA

A week after Senior Night, Rowan’s name is still taped to our refrigerator. His mom printed the picture before she left town, and Lucy stuck it up with one of our magnets. Rowan is standing between his parents on the ice, shoulders broad under his jersey, his mom holding flowers against one side of him and his dad’s hand on the other.

He hates the picture.

I love it.

Mostly because every time Rowan comes over, he sees it.

He is standing in front of it now with the refrigerator door open, drinking orange juice straight from the carton.

“That’s disgusting.”

He lowers the carton. “You do this.”

“I live here.”

“That doesn’t make it cleaner.”

“It makes it my bacteria.”

Rowan looks at the carton, then at me. “That isn’t how bacteria works.”

I’m sitting on the counter in one of his shirts with my bare legs hanging over the cabinet doors. It is barely eight in the morning, and Rowan is supposed to be leaving for class in twenty minutes. He came over last night after practice with his backpack, his laptop, and absolutely no intention of leaving again once he got here.

That has been happening a lot. It’s not every night. We both have lives, and Rowan has practice, meetings, lifting, class, film, and whatever other forms of scheduled suffering college hockey requires. But whenever he has room between those things, he somehow ends up here. Or I end up at Hawthorne.

He puts the juice back, closes the refrigerator, then walks over and stops between my knees.

I look down at him. “You’re going to be late.”

“I have twenty minutes.”

“You need to drive.”

“Twelve.”

“And park.”

“Three.”

“And walk.”

“Two.”

I smile. “You’ve timed this.”

“Yes.”

“Of course you have.”

His hands slide around the backs of my thighs, and he pulls me closer to the edge of the counter. There is something unfair about Rowan first thing in the morning. His hair is still slightly damp from the shower, and there is a faint crease along one cheek from my pillow. He looks more relaxed here than he ever does at the rink.

I run my fingers through the front of his hair. “You should go.”

“Probably.” He kisses me instead. Not rushed, even though he has apparently allocated exactly seventeen minutes between my apartment and whatever classroom he has to be sitting in by nine. He puts one hand behind my neck and keeps the other on my thigh while I hook my ankles loosely behind him.