Chapter 18
ROWAN
Rowan made it to the arena in Anaheim for morning skate before the rest of the guys.
Of course, the equipment managers were already there setting up the locker room, and Rowan talked one of the guys into letting him put his own pads up.
Not because he was particular about it, but just because he needed something to do.
He was stretching and warming up by the time the bus with the rest of the team arrived. A few of the guys checked in with him to make sure he was feeling okay, which surprised him. Outside of hockey, he felt like he flew under the radar with his teammates.
“Are you alive?” Theo asked, plopping down next to Rowan in Aaron’s stall. Aaron was working with an equipment guy to fix one of his skates, and Theo stayed put, telling him about Vegas and asking about what he’d eaten in the past couple of days until Aaron came back to kick him out.
It was a welcome evacuation. The longer Theo was nice to him like this, the harder it would be when they reached equilibrium again, and Theo remembered he hated him.
Rowan hopped onto the ice a few minutes before the other guys to skate a couple laps in the Honda Center alone. He breathed in refrigerated air. He wasn’t back to full strength yet, but he was about eighty percent there, and he was always ready to get back on the ice.
* * *
For a back-to-back, with travel, the Anaheim Tigers were a good team to play on the second night.
They were bottom in the league, and had won so few games that season that it was clear they had lost their belief in themselves.
It was a little hard to watch, and coming from a team much like the Tigers himself, Rowan had sympathy for them.
Being consistently terrible can mean a few things, but for the Tigers, it meant they ramped up their physical game.
They had a third liner who had been accused of hurting players on purpose, and that night before they stepped out onto the ice, their coach reminded them to keep an eye out for Erik Jones, a big, blond linebacker of a hockey player who didn’t have any reservations when it came to the PIM he racked up.
By the third period, the Tigers were clearly frustrated. The Serpents were up 6–1, and Rowan naively thought they had outrun the risk of things getting scrappy. He was back on Theo’s line, and playing next to him gave Rowan the energy he needed to get his recovering body through the game.
Rowan caught the puck on the toe of his stick off a slick pass from Vic in their D-zone, and sent it across the ice to Theo, who was in the slot.
The second Theo got the puck on his stick, though, Jones slammed into him in open ice.
Theo’s body left the ice, suspended in the air for what felt like forever, before landing so hard Rowan thought he heard his helmet crack.
The refs hadn’t called the play down, but Rowan was already seeing red. He tossed his gloves off as he went after Jones, shoving him in the chest. “What the fuck was that about?” he screamed. Jones just laughed.
“I’m not hitting Rowan Foley,” he said with an eye roll.
“Well, Rowan Foley is fucking hitting you,” he said, grabbing Jones’ jersey at the neck and swinging.
Rowan had never been in a fight before. Not even in junior hockey. Sometimes he got in scuffles, but he had never thrown hands.
His fist connected with Jones’ jaw, but he wasn’t cocky enough to believe it was anything other than luck.
“Oh, kid,” Jones said, pity in his voice before he hit Rowan hard enough in the side of his head that his helmet popped off.
Distantly, he knew the officials were circling them. Rowan got another couple of punches in as Jones let him know why Rowan had never been in a fight before (getting hit in the head hurt a lot), but Rowan’s punches mostly caught helmet, not flesh.
“That’s enough,” Jones said, getting his arms around Rowan to pin Rowan’s arms to his sides and end the fight.
It would have been embarrassing, but he didn’t give a shit.
He could only think about Theo. The linesmen pulled them apart, and as soon as Rowan’s head stopped spinning, he saw Theo’s body on the ice, two trainers tending to him.
Slowly, Theo picked himself up off the ice and Rowan was at his side as quickly as he could be.
“Hey,” a referee yelled after him, “head down the tunnel. You’re done for tonight.”
Rowan hadn’t had his penalties assessed yet, but his guess was a game misconduct for instigating, or something. He didn’t care. There were eight minutes left in the game, and Theo wasn’t playing them from the look of him. Rowan wouldn’t either.
Trainers led Theo straight to an exam room. He was unsteady on his feet, and Rowan pressed a hand to his lower back to keep him upright. His balance issues did not bode well for his concussion screening.
A trainer directed the two of them toward stations next to each other. Rowan’s knuckles were cracked and bleeding and would be bruised by tomorrow. His head hurt. But he was grateful to be injured so he could be here next to Theo. He wasn’t getting kicked out of the room.
“You’re going to have a shiner, and a fat lip, too,” the trainer, Avery, said as Rowan jumped up to sit on the exam table.
He pulled his jersey off over his head, and ripped his shoulder pads off next, dropping them on the ground.
He let Avery tend to his hand and his face while he tried to listen in on the SCAT5 exam Theo was going through. Standard concussion protocol.
“You did not pass that test,” Daniel, the team physician, said.
“Fuuuuuck,” Theo said. His eyes were closed, body staying still. Thinking about his head made Rowan’s head ache in sympathy. Or maybe it was because of his own head injuries.
“You next,” Daniel said, and Rowan had to prove his brain hadn’t been bruised.
“Okay, well, good news for the Serpents. We aren’t out both golden boys at once.
You’re good to play, Foley. We’ll want to tape up your knuckles so you don’t bleed into your glove for the next game or two, but your head is fine. ”
Daniel entered the information into his iPad as Avery tended to a cut on Theo’s cheek. Rowan didn’t see where it came from, but he thought his visor could be the culprit.
“I don’t even know what happened,” Theo said, his voice quiet.
“Jones really laid you out,” Avery said. “We can check later to see if he got a penalty for it. But then your boy Foley dropped gloves to fight for your honor.”
“Rowan doesn’t fight.”
“Yeah, I learned why tonight,” Rowan said. His hand hurt and his head hurt and his face hurt, but it was worth it to see Theo laugh a little.
“You actually hit someone?”
“Not well.”
“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.
Theo let out a heavy sigh and covered his face with his hands. “It’s thirteen twenty-seven.”
Well, that was the last thing Rowan had expected him to say. The two of them had kept the same jersey numbers their entire careers. When they were kids, they had matching 1327 phone passcodes. And Theo had never updated his.
“I don’t want to hear it,” Theo said to Rowan’s silence.
“No, no judgement. What do you want me to say to your mom?”
“Tell her it’s you texting. Tell her I’m fine. You’re watching over me.”
Rowan fired off the text. Theo had a ton of texts on his phone. Rowan knew he had a bunch, too. He’d already replied to his family group text. He’d deal with the rest later.
“Ro?”
“Yeah?”
“Thank you. I can’t believe you fought their biggest guy for me. I can believe you lost.”
“I’d give you a noogie if you didn’t have a head injury.”
“How ’bout this instead?” Theo asked, stepping even closer to Rowan and pressing the softest kiss to his split lip.
Rowan shuddered. He never thought he would kiss Theo’s lips again. But Rowan had been concussed before. He knew how you could feel like you were practically in outer space. It didn’t lend a lot of trust to Theo’s current agency.
“We don’t actually need two beds, right?” Theo asked. He didn’t linger after the kiss. Instead headed to the bed closest to the door and pulled the sheets down. “I know it’s dumb, but I kind of want you close.”
It wasn’t dumb. It was making Rowan’s head spin, but it wasn’t dumb. He followed Theo and slipped into bed behind him. Big spooning Theo was a little silly. Rowan had always been the little spoon. But it was also nice to hold Theo. He didn’t want him any further away than he was now.
Theo’s phone buzzed with a response from Theo’s mom. I’m glad you’re there, Rowan. Text me updates.
He thumbs-uped the message, then set his alarm for the morning.
Theo let out a breath, and their breathing synced up for long moments, until Rowan thought Theo must have fallen asleep.
“Ro?”
“Mmm?”
“Are you thinking about Felix?”
The question came out of nowhere until he realized Theo might be jealous of Felix. So jealous that it was the thought that came out of the Jell-O his brain was currently encased in. He was too tired to comb through those feelings with the fine-toothed comb they deserved.
“Not in weeks,” he said truthfully. Not outside their texts. Not in a “hold me while I sleep” kind of way. Felix would always be his friend, but he’d wasted too many of those thoughts on him already.
“Wake me up if you need anything, alright?”
“Night, Ro.”