15. CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GIANNA
Rowan comes over Sunday with coffee, a bag of groceries, and absolutely no explanation for either.
I open the door in shorts and one of Camden’s old hockey shirts with my hair twisted on top of my head, look at the cardboard tray in one hand and the grocery bag in the other, and then look back at him.
“What is all this?”
“Coffee and food,” he says as he steps past me into the apartment like he’s been doing it for years instead of approximately twice.
I shut the door behind him. “I think what you mean is: Good morning, Gianna, I brought breakfast because I’m a thoughtful and handsome man.”
He looks over his shoulder. “It’s breakfast.”
I follow him into the kitchen.
He adds, “And you already know I’m handsome.”
My mouth falls open.
Rowan puts the coffee down and starts taking things out of the bag.
I stand behind him, staring at the back of his head. “Who the fuck are you?”
He laughs.
“That was God awful, Laurens.”
He smiles. “You liked it.”
“I did not, actually.”
“You smiled.”
“Because I was shocked.”
He turns around with a carton of eggs in his hand.
I take my coffee before he can say anything else and look at the label.
He got it right. Again. That shouldn’t keep doing something to me, but it does.
There are people I’ve known for years who still ask whether I want dairy milk in coffee.
Rowan has bought me food twice and apparently filed away every piece of information I’ve ever given him. I take a drink.
“So, what are you doing with those eggs?”
“Making breakfast.”
“You brought groceries to my apartment to make breakfast.”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
He looks at me. “Because we need breakfast.”
I lean against the counter as he turns the stove on. I watch him pull a pan out of the cabinet without asking where it is. That gets me more than it should.
“Also,” I say, “you do realize this is my apartment. You’re acting like you live here.”
“I’ve been here three times.”
“Exactly.”
He cracks an egg. “That’s enough to know where the pans are.”
I roll my eyes and climb onto the counter beside him. He makes eggs and toast while I drink coffee and talk about the clinic. That is basically what my life has become. Everything leads back to the clinic.
I have forty-eight kids. Seven volunteers. One main sheet. Two locker rooms. A youth-program coordinator who answers emails at five-thirty in the morning and has started every message to me this week with Just one more thing.
I have registration tables, waiver packets, name tags, extra tape, rental skates, helmets, water, snack bags, a thirty-minute buffer between check-in and ice time that Ives told me was too much until I explained that forty-eight children do not put hockey gear on in thirty minutes unless the United States military gets involved.
Rowan is listening while he flips eggs. “You need another person at check-in. You only have two there.”
I purse my lips to the side. “I know.”
“Put Gary there.”
I sigh. “Gary is on equipment.”
“He said he’s been around rinks eleven years,” he says.
I nod. “He has.”
“So he can move after check-in.”
I point at him. “That is actually useful.”
“Thanks.”
I tease, “Don’t get excited. You’re still not running my event.”
“I know.”
“Ives already told me I need to stop treating every suggestion like a hostile takeover.”
Rowan slides eggs onto a plate. “Sounds right.”
I kick his thigh lightly with my heel. He catches my ankle. It happens so quickly that I don’t have time to react before his hand is wrapped around me. We both stop. His thumb moves once against the inside of my ankle. I look down at his hand. Then up at him.
“Breakfast,” he says.
I smile. “Breakfast,” I confirm. “I don’t know what other thoughts were running through your head.”
I jump down.
We eat on the couch with my laptop open on the coffee table because I cannot currently consume food without also staring at some version of a staffing schedule.
Rowan lasts maybe ten minutes before he reaches over and closes it.
I look at him. “What are you doing?”
“We’re eating.”
“I have things to figure out.”
“You were rereading the same box.”
“I was thinking.”
“You were staring at Gary’s name.”
I narrow my eyes. “Do you know how much shit I have to do this week?”
“Yes.”
I pick up my fork. “Okay. List it.”
He doesn’t even hesitate. “Staffing plan by Wednesday. Facilities walkthrough Tuesday. Final volunteer confirmation. Donovan wants your equipment list by Thursday. You have finance homework. Law reading. And Friday you’re helping with the game before your event Saturday.”
I stare at him as he takes another bite of his food.
I roll my eyes. “That was deeply irritating.”
He smirks. “You told me all of it.”
“Stop remembering things.”
He smiles.
Sunday continues easily. Nothing crazy happens, which is why I like it so much.
We eat. I work for a while. Rowan does homework beside me.
At one point he falls asleep with his head against the back of the couch while I’m trying to rearrange volunteers, and I take a picture because he looks like a gigantic exhausted toddler.
He wakes up when I move my feet. “What time is it?”
“Two.”
He blinks.
I tell him, “You slept for twenty minutes.”
“I didn’t sleep.”
I joke, “You snored.”
He chuckles. “I don’t snore.”
“I have video evidence.”
His eyes narrow.
I grin.
“Delete it.”
“Absolutely not.”
“G.”
“I’m sending it to Stanley.”
That gets him moving. He reaches for my phone.
I pull it against my chest. “Don’t.”
“Delete it.”
“Make me.”
He stops.
The energy changes. The room suddenly feels smaller. Rowan is half over me with one hand braced beside my hip. His eyes drop to my mouth. Mine go to his. I swallow.
“Make me,” I say again, quieter.
He kisses me.
I knew he would.
I still make a sound into his mouth when he does it.
His hand slides around the side of my neck, and mine go underneath his shirt. The kiss deepens fast.
Rowan pulls back just enough to breathe. “You’re trouble.”
He kisses me again.
I end up underneath him on the couch, which is objectively a terrible couch for anything like this. It’s too small. Rowan is too large. My knee is trapped against the back cushion, and one of his elbows keeps hitting a throw pillow Lucy bought because she thought the room needed color.
I start laughing. “What?”
“This couch.”
He looks around like he’s only just noticed where we are. “Your couch sucks.”
“Yeah.”
“Why’d you buy it?”
I touch his stomach with crawling fingers. “It was cheap.”
“It’s twelve inches wide.”
“That is not true.”
He shifts his knee and almost falls off.
I laugh harder. “Okay.”
“Exactly.”
He sits back. I look toward the hallway. Then back at him.
Lucy is at Hawthorne.
We both know it. Neither of us says anything for a second.
Rowan’s expression changes first.
I sit up. “Bedroom?”
He nods.
That simple. My stomach flips anyway. I stand. Rowan follows. I take three steps down the hall before he catches my hand. I look back. He isn’t smiling.
“You okay?”
That settles me more than anything else could. “Yeah.”
“You sure?”
I nod. “Yes.”
He squeezes my hand once. Then I pull him into my bedroom.
The door shuts behind us. I kiss him first. It gets me out of my head and back into my body.
His hands settle at my waist, then move slowly beneath my shirt, and I can feel the difference in him too.
There’s no rush. No joking about somebody coming home.
No adrenaline from being in the wrong room at the wrong time.
Just Rowan.
His mouth.
His hands.
The way he keeps checking my face without making a thing out of it.
I pull my shirt over my head. His eyes drop. That still makes me nervous.
“You’ve seen me naked.”
“Not enough.”
I laugh. “That was smooth.”
“I wasn’t trying.”
“Of course you weren’t.”
His mouth curves.
I reach for his shirt. “Your turn.”
He takes it off.
Rowan is built exactly like somebody who has spent most of his life skating into other men at full speed. Broad shoulders. Heavy chest. Thick arms. A body that feels almost unfair because he walks around acting like none of it exists.
I touch him. His stomach tightens.
I smile. “Are you okay?”
He nods and kisses me before I can keep talking.
We make it to the bed. There’s a moment when I’m underneath him, and his hand slides down my stomach, and everything in me goes very quiet.
“G.”
“Don’t stop,” I whisper. I grab his hand, pushing it lower. “Touch me.”
He follows my lead, touching me where I shiver.
“That okay?” he murmurs against my neck.
I nod.
His hand moves lower, and I let myself stop thinking. I try. I think constantly about what something means, about whether I’m doing too much, about what happens next, about whether this is a smart idea.
Rowan has somehow become one of the only people who makes that easier. He doesn’t ask me to stop talking. He doesn’t act like I’m overwhelming. He just waits until I’m ready and then keeps going.
By the time we’re both completely undressed, I’m not thinking much at all. I’m just in my body, and apparently, he knows exactly what to do with it. He reaches toward the nightstand. I grab his wrist.
He stops immediately.
I say, “The condoms are in the drawer.”
He looks at me. “You’re prepared.”
“I knew you were coming over.”
That gets a blush. Then he stands and goes to the drawer. There is an awkward fifteen seconds involving a box that refuses to open correctly.
I start laughing. “You’re fighting cardboard. Do you need help?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
He finally gets it open.
I clap softly. “Proud of you.”
His eyes drop to me, and then I watch as he slides the condom on.
I’m still smiling when he moves over me again. Then I’m not. The humor leaves naturally. His hand brushes my hair away from my face.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.”
I grab his face. “I won’t want you to.”
He kisses me. He positions himself and looks at me one more time.
I nod.
Then he pushes inside me. The first stretch makes my breath catch.
Rowan stops. “Okay?”
“Yeah.”
He waits anyway.
I wrap my arms around his shoulders and pull him closer. I breathe, “Keep going.”
He does. Slowly.