Page 144 of Rookie Rules

"No. It is not simple. It is still a choice."

Luca heard an elevator move somewhere behind the concrete wall. Machinery, cables, ordinary systems doing exactly what they had been designed to do.

Rowan lowered his voice. "We have a game tonight that can put us above the line for the first time this season. You have a campaign that will bring more attention. We are finally getting stable. This cannot become the thing that fractures the room."

"Nobody in the room knows."

"Finn knows something is wrong. Vale knows the line is affected. That is already too much."

"They know you punished a good read because you were angry with me."

"I apologized for that."

"Professionally."

"It happened at work."

Luca stared at him. Rowan's expression shifted; the sentence had demonstrated the problem without Luca needing to explain it.

For an instant Rowan looked tired rather than controlled. Thirty-two years old, hurting, frightened, and still beautiful enough that Luca's body remembered every place his hands had been.

Luca let the memory pass through him without moving closer.

"I am not asking you to be fearless," he said. "I am asking you to be honest with me when no one else is here."

"I have been honest."

"You have been accurate. That is not the same thing."

Rowan flinched so slightly another person might have missed it.

Luca did not.

"Tell me you want this," Luca said.

Rowan's expression closed.

"Not forever. Not in front of anyone. Here. Now. Tell me that what happened between us matters enough that you are not only managing the consequences."

"Luca."

"That is my name. It is not an answer."

"You know I want you."

The admission landed low and hot, exactly where it would have once undone him.

Luca held still. "Want is not the question."

"Then what do you need me to say?"

There it was: even now, Rowan wanted the approved language. The correct answer. A sentence he could deliver without surrendering the system that kept him safe.

"I need you to know without me writing it for you."

Rowan's eyes shut for one beat.

When they opened, the captain had returned.