Page 30 of Offensive Edge
“Duh.”
“Hey, have a little faith.”
“Jones is huge.”
“I feel like I know that better than anyone right now.”
“Who would have thought Rowan Foley would have gotten into a fight tonight? I can’t wait to watch it. And for little old me?”
“I’d do it for any guy who got laid out like that.”
They both knew that was a lie. It was someone else’s responsibility to do that. Rowan knew that if he hadn’t charged Jones after that hit, one of his other teammates would have gotten to him a second or two after. But Rowan had needed to do it himself. He took it personally.
Theo took a shaky breath.
“Do you have someone you can stay with tonight to keep an eye on you?” Daniel asked Theo.
“Me,” Rowan said, faster than Theo could respond with a yes or no. “You just watched me puke seventy times. I owe you.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Theo’s voice was distant, like he wasn’t all there.
“I’ll tell Cindy you two need a room with two beds,” Daniel said. Rowan stopped himself from telling him that they wouldn’t need a second bed, and he didn’t need to bother the team services coordinator. That was presumptuous though. And probably weird.
Coach came in to talk to medical. Rowan, despite his split lip and pending black eye, got the clean bill of health. At least for a hockey player. Theo was out for at least two games, likely more.
Rowan hovered as he and Theo took their gear off, showered, and put their suits back on.
“I wish I could just put on sweats,” Theo complained.
“Soon,” Rowan said. Theo tipped his head onto Rowan’s shoulder, slouching against Rowan’s smaller body. They normally didn’t touch at all, but as far as Rowan was concerned, the ball was in Theo’s court. And right now, the ball was injured. Or something. He was good at hockey, not metaphors.
The boys were too tired to celebrate. Celebrating a win against a team like the Tigers was a sad way to spend your time, anyway.
Theo sat next to Rowan on the bus to the hotel, and Cindy, who wore many hats on road trips but mostly kept them all alive and happy, found them to give them keys to the room they were sharing. With two beds.
Rowan wished rearranging hotel rooms had been this easy when he was dealing with his room disaster in Winnipeg, but there were layers of circumstance that made that an awful night.
Theo took the bathroom first and came out looking soft and sad. Rowan skipped almost every step of his nighttime routine except the one that involved toothpaste, and found Theo standing at the desk in the corner, squinting at his phone.
“Oh, no,” Rowan said, taking Theo’s phone from him and locked it to make it stop glowing. “Do you have people you need to talk to?”
“My mom,” he said.
“I can text Michelle,” Rowan said. Then he realized he shouldn’t have been so quick to lock his screen. “What’s your passcode?”
“Just hold it up to my face.”
“No.”
“Just do it.”
Rowan tried, and it didn’t recognize Theo with his eyes clamped shut the way they were.
“C’mon, Laney.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“Is it that girl’s birthday?” He didn’t remember the name of the girl who dumped Theo a few weeks earlier. He’d never met her.
