Page 22 of Offensive Edge
He could hear Theo in the kitchen, but by now they were used to ignoring each other in common spaces, and Rowan wanted a snack.
The kitchen smelled incredible. There wasn’t a lot of actual cooking that happened in their house. They were more “chicken breast into the air fryer and a bag of frozen veggies” guys, but today Theo was standing at the stove, hovering over a pot.
“What are you making?” Rowan asked, passing behind him to reach the fridge.
Theo jumped. “Shit,” he said, pulling his hand back from the pan he was tending. “Fuck, fuck.”
Goddamnit. Rowan had scared him and he burned himself.
Theo was holding his hand still, staring at it, frozen.
“Alright, you okay?” Rowan asked, jumping into action. He turned the burner off and shoved the pan to a cool part of the cooktop. Then he guided Theo over to the sink to run his fingers under cool water. Rowan had never been able to manhandle Theo the way Theo could with him, but he went easy, letting Rowan hold his hand under the water.
“Was that the only burn?” The skin on Theo’s pointer finger was completely devoid of color. He knew the next day it would be an angry red.
“Yeah,” Theo said, his voice far away.
“Hey, you’re okay. Burns suck in hockey gloves, but you’ll be okay. You have some time to heal up.”
“Hockey gloves,” he repeated. “Shit.”
“What were you cooking?”
“Stir-fry.”
“Smells good.”
“That’s just my burned flesh.”
“Oh yeah, I’m sure,” Rowan played along. “Feel okay? You should ice this too.”
Theo pulled his hand out of the water.
“I just want to finish cooking.”
“Oh, yeah,” Rowan said. He backed off, but he didn’t want to leave the kitchen yet. He grabbed a loaf of bread and tossed two slices into the toaster for a sandwich, then raided the fridge for fixings.
Theo turned the burner back on under his pan and poked at it for a bit longer before he pulled a packet of rice out of the microwave and dumped it into a bowl. He scraped the stir-fry onto the pile of rice and pulled a fork from the utensil drawer.
“I’ll clean up the pan when it’s cool,” he told Rowan, and took his bowl upstairs to his room.
Well.
In the back of his mind, he thought Theo might stay downstairs. Maybe he would eat his meal in front of the TV, and he would let Rowan exist in his space.
That obviously wasn’t going to happen.
The hostility had thawed since October, but Theo was jumpy around him now, like he was volatile. Like he could catch on fire at any moment. To be fair, maybe he would. There was a part of his heart that had never stopped loving Theo Lane, and since that night in the hallway, he was reminded of why. He was clear on how good it felt to be on the ice with Theo, but now he had a recent, concrete memory of how good Theo’s body felt against his.
And he thought—hoped?—that might be the reason Theo was being so fucking weird around him, too.
CHAPTER15
THEO
Coming backto San Jose after being with his mom for a week was jarring. He’d just had a chunk of time hanging out and hiking with his mom, eating a bunch of comfort food, and doing the Portland things she’d fallen in love with since the last time he had visited.
Theo’s plane had gotten in the night before, but he’d flopped face-first into his bed. Then he’d gotten up, gone to practice, and now he had to pack a bag to go on a roadie, and he couldn’t find enough dress shirts.
