Page 79 of Rookie Rules

"Stay," Rowan said.

Luca looked back.

The word was too large. Rowan corrected it because correction was still easier than uncertainty.

"Until the heat cycle would have ended," he added.

Luca glanced toward the clock. "Very medical."

"Twenty minutes."

"Strict protocol."

He left the shirt on the floor and lay down again.

Rowan expected him to fill the time with jokes. Instead Luca settled on his side, one hand resting on the sheet between them. Rowan placed his own hand over it.

They stayed like that while the house made its evening sounds. Ventilation. A car passing outside. The refrigerator starting in the kitchen.

At some point twenty minutes became thirty-two.

Neither mentioned it.

Luca left before midnight. At the door, he put on his shoes and looked back toward the kitchen.

"Food's in the refrigerator," he said. "Enough for tomorrow."

"I know how refrigerators work."

"Growth every day."

Rowan opened the door for him.

Luca touched two fingers to Rowan's wrist. The hotel gesture returned in reverse, brief and private.

"Night, Hale."

"Good night."

After Luca left, Rowan locked the door and returned to the kitchen. A glass container sat on the middle shelf, visible the moment he opened the refrigerator.

Chicken, rice, vegetables. Practical evidence.

He could move it to the back.

He left it where it was.

Chapter 13: Dangerous Duo

By the eighth game of the season, strangers had begun explaining Luca's own line to him.

The explanations arrived through broadcast clips, social posts, and one diagram on a local hockey show that drew a glowing circle around Rowan as if the captain generated gravity. Luca watched the clip over breakfast in the players' lounge while the analyst moved animated arrows toward the right circle.

"Hale slows the game down," the analyst said. "Bennett speeds the finish up. That contrast is becoming dangerous."

Finn entered carrying coffee, looked at the screen, and waited for his own name.

It did not come.