Chapter 1 Tanner #2
The numbers scrolled past. Force measurements, energy absorption rates, material stress points. My brain cataloged it all, flagged the outliers, and started building the framework for the next round of modifications.
I was three spreadsheets deep when I heard footsteps in the hallway outside.
The key turned in the lock. The door swung open. Seth came through, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, wearing his Gray Wolves warm-up gear.
I looked up from my laptop. Kept my expression neutral.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He dropped the duffel by the door and headed for the kitchen. I heard the fridge open, the crack of a beer can. Then he was walking back through the living room, and I got my first real look at him.
He moved like everything hurt. The way he crossed toward the hallway was too slow, too deliberate.
It didn’t take a trained professional to realize his ribs were screaming at him, no matter how he tried to hide the pain.
He held his left arm slightly closer to his body than normal, and when he lifted the beer can to take a drink, I caught the slight hitch in his breath.
“Good game?” I asked, eyes back on my laptop. There was no point in acknowledging his injuries. The only thing that had done during the first two weeks of the season was lead to him retreating into his room.
“We won.”
Then why do you look miserable? Do you even like what you’re doing?
“I saw.” I had. Eventually. After I’d left the lab and couldn’t stop myself from checking.
Seth paused in the entryway to the hall, his weight shifting to favor his left side.
The beer can dangled loosely from his fingers.
I felt him looking at me—felt the weight of it pressing against the side of my face—but I kept my eyes fixed on the spreadsheet, cursor blinking in a cell I’d stopped reading as soon as he walked in.
The silence stretched between us. He rolled his shoulder, a small, unconscious movement that ended in a barely there grimace. His free hand came up to rub the back of his neck, and I tracked the motion in my peripheral vision without meaning to.
“You eat dinner?” His voice was softer than I expected. Careful, almost.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I could hear him breathing—slower than normal, like each inhale cost him something.
“Not yet.”
He nodded, and I caught the slight delay before the movement, like he’d had to think about it first. His thumb tapped twice against the beer can. A habit I’d noticed before, when he was working up to something.
“I was gonna make pasta.” Another pause. He shifted his weight again, and this time his jaw tightened for just a second before smoothing out. “Might as well make enough for both of us.”
The offer caught me off guard. We’d shared meals before, but usually by accident—leftover pizza, cereal at the same time, that kind of thing. This felt different. Deliberate.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“I know.” He shrugged, then winced at the movement. “Offer stands.”
He disappeared down the hallway before I could respond. A minute later, I heard the shower start.
I stared at my laptop screen without seeing the data. The bruise on his cheek kept flashing in my mind. The way he’d winced. The careful way he’d moved.
I closed my laptop and went to the kitchen.
By the time Seth came back out—flannel pants, old T-shirt, hair still damp—I had water boiling and a jar of sauce sitting on the counter. He stopped in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, and raised an eyebrow.
“I thought you said I didn’t have to,” he said.
“You don’t.” I kept my back to him, adjusting the heat of the burner. “I’m making it. You busted your ass all day. I just played video games and spent some time in the lab. Sit.”
A beat of silence. His weight shifted behind me, bare feet padding across the tile. I glanced over my shoulder. Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, or something else I couldn’t read—before his expression settled back into neutral.
“I’d rather stand, thanks.” He grabbed his beer from where he’d left it, condensation pooling on the counter beneath it. Instead of leaving, he leaned his hip against the cabinet, arms crossed loosely over his chest, watching me dump pasta into the pot.
The movement pulled his t-shirt tight across his shoulders, and I caught a glimpse of ink curving up from his collarbone—dark lines that disappeared beneath the fabric.
I'd seen the tattoos before, of course. Living together meant catching glimpses of him without a shirt on the way to or from the shower, seeing the elaborate designs that covered his chest and both arms. But I'd made a point of not looking, not cataloging the details, not wondering about the story behind each piece.
“How was the lab?”
“Productive.” I stirred the pasta, steam rising between us. “Got some good data on the new padding configuration.”
“Yeah?” He shifted his weight against the counter, settling in like he actually wanted to hear the answer. “What kind of data?”
I glanced at him, expecting the glazed look I usually got when I talked about my research. Instead, his eyes were focused, attentive despite the exhaustion pulling at the edges of his face.
“Force distribution measurements, mostly. I’ve been testing different layering configurations for the padding inserts.”
“The ones you were telling me about last week? With the different materials for different impact speeds?”
Something loosened in my chest. He remembered. “Yeah. Those.”
“And?”
“Six percent improvement in force distribution compared to the last configuration.”
Seth tilted his head. “Six percent. That doesn’t sound like much, but I’m guessing it is?”
“It’s not nothing.” I kept stirring, even though the pasta didn’t need it. “Still a long way from where I’d like it to be, but the overlapping layers are working better than I expected.”
“So what’s next? More layers? Different materials?”
The questions weren’t casual. Seth was leaning forward slightly, beer can forgotten in his hand, like the answer actually mattered to him.
“Both, maybe. I need to analyze today’s data first, figure out where the weak points are.” I paused. “Why do you care?”
Seth shrugged, then winced at the movement. “You’re trying to make helmets safer. Seems like something worth caring about.”
I reached past him for the colander, and he shifted sideways to give me room. The movement brought him close enough that I caught the smell of his soap, something clean and generic beneath the lingering hint of stadium grass.
“It’s progress.” I kept my eyes on the pot, watching bubbles climb the sides. “Still not good enough, but it’s something.”
Seth was quiet. I could feel him watching me—not the way most people watched, already forming their next sentence before you’d finished yours.
His gaze stayed steady, tracking my hands as I stirred, and when I paused to check the pasta, he didn’t jump in to fill the silence.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him uncross his arms, his fingers wrapping around the edge of the counter instead.
“Your dad would be proud of what you’re doing.”
My hand tightened on the spoon. The words landed somewhere beneath my ribs, in a space I hadn’t known was exposed. I stared at the pasta, at the rolling water, at anything that wasn’t Seth’s face.
“Maybe,” I said.
The silence held for three seconds. Four. Then Seth pushed off from the counter, and I heard him pull open the drawer where we kept the forks.
We didn’t talk much while I finished cooking.
I drained the pasta, the steam fogging my glasses for a moment until I pushed them up onto my head.
Mixed in the sauce. Divided it between two plates.
We ate standing at the counter because the table was covered in textbooks, my laptop, and Seth’s playbook, our elbows inches apart in the narrow kitchen.
He ate like he was starving, which he probably was. I pushed pasta around my plate and tried not to stare at the bruise on his cheek. Was that from the game? Was that even possible? It shouldn’t be, not if his helmet was doing its damned job.
“It looks worse than it feels,” Seth said.
I looked up. “What?”
He gestured at his face. “The bruise. I can tell you keep looking at it.”
Heat crept up my neck. “I wasn’t—”
“It’s fine. Defensive end caught me from the side, knocked the wind out of me. Nothing serious.”
Nothing serious. I’d heard that phrase before. From my dad. From coaches. From every player who’d ever walked off a hit that should have kept them down.
“Okay,” I said.
Seth set down his fork. “Look, I know you’ve got…history with this stuff. I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable, but I’m also not going to pretend like I don’t play.”
“I know what you do.”
“Yeah. I just…” He ran a hand through his damp hair. “I don’t want it to be weird between us. If me talking about games or coming home banged up is going to be a problem—”
“It’s not.” The words came out sharper than I intended. I made myself take a breath. “I mean, it’s your life. I’m not so emotionally fragile that I need you to tiptoe around me.”
Seth studied me for a long moment. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
“Okay,” he said finally. “But if it ever is a problem, you can tell me.”
“Sure.”
Thankfully, Seth dropped it after that. He picked up his fork and went back to eating, and I told myself I was grateful for the silence.
After dinner, I washed the dishes while Seth dried. Our shoulders brushed once, reaching for the same towel, and I stepped back faster than I needed to.
“I’m gonna crash early,” Seth said when the kitchen was clean. “Long day.”
“Yeah. Good idea.”
He headed for the hallway, then paused. “Thanks for dinner.”
“You offered first.”
“Still.” He gave me a small smile, tired around the edges. “Night, Tanner.”
“Night.”
I grabbed my laptop and settled on the couch, pulling up the test data again. The numbers blurred in front of me.
Six more Saturdays until the regular season ended. Longer if they made a bowl game.
I could do this. I could put on the headphones and disappear into games that had nothing to do with real life. I could spend game days in the lab, building padding that might save someone someday. I could share an apartment with a football player without letting it get under my skin.
Seth was my roommate. Hunter’s friend. Nothing more complicated than that.
I focused on the data and pretended I believed it.