Chapter 18 Heartthrob Package #2
The words landed. Rowan's hands went still on the campaign deck.
"We can talk about that separately."
"When?"
"Not while you are deciding something this important."
Safety through sequence. Solve the career decision first. Move emotional truth to a cleaner time that would never arrive on its own.
Luca tapped the photograph. "This is part of the same decision."
"Then negotiate the creative and take the offer."
The answer arrived with the confidence of a veteran recognizing a career opportunity.
Luca had known it might. Knowing did not soften it.
"That simple?"
"No endorsement is simple. Have your manager tighten approvals. Make sure extension options increase compensation. Claire can limit the interview scope."
"And the part where they're selling me as straight?"
Rowan's mouth tightened. "They are selling a fantasy."
"A straight one."
"Yes."
"Still take it."
Rowan closed the folder. "You have no obligation to disclose anything personal for an advertisement."
"I'm not talking about disclosure."
The words echoed Luca's question at Rowan's house.
Rowan heard it. Luca saw the recognition.
"Then what are you asking me?" Rowan said.
"If you like it."
"My opinion of the creative?"
"Your opinion of me inside it."
The plain question removed every place to hide except the one Rowan always chose.
He stepped back from the island. "What I like does not matter to the contract."
There it was.
Luca looked at the campaign cover. His own face smiled back, polished and untroubled.
"It matters to me."
Rowan's expression shifted.
Too late.
"Luca, this is your career."
"I know."
"A national campaign gives you leverage independent of the team. Players need that. Careers change. Rosters change."
"Seasons end."
Rowan went still.
"That is not what I meant."
"It's always what you mean. Build the exit before anyone can decide to stay."
"I am trying to protect your options."
"By telling me the version they can sell is harmless because no one technically makes me lie."
"I know how acting works," Luca said. "I've smiled next to products I forgot existed before I reached the parking lot."
"Then you know the image is not a declaration."
"To them, no. To me, maybe not. But you're asking me to ignore why this version earns the biggest offer."
"I am asking you not to let other people's assumptions control your future."
The argument was so close to support that Luca wanted to accept it.
"Would you say the same thing if the campaign put me beside a man?"
Rowan's eyes moved toward the closed blinds.
There. Not disgust. Risk calculation. Who would see. What questions would follow. How quickly work could become disclosure.
"That would be a different decision," Rowan said.
"Because?"
"Because the consequences would be different."
"For me or for you?"
Rowan did not answer.
Luca felt the silence choose.
"You would be acting."
"So is that what we call it?"
Rowan's face closed. "Do not turn this into us."
Luca laughed once. "It is already us. That's why I came here instead of asking Claire to choose for me."
"Claire understands endorsements better than I do."
"Claire told me the truth. She said the market might not pay the same for every version of me. She offered to help me say no."
"I am not stopping you from saying no."
"No. You're telling me I would be foolish to care."
"I did not say that."
"You don't have to say things. That's the whole problem."
Silence struck the kitchen.
Rowan placed both hands on the counter, the posture he used when trying to hold a conversation still.
"If you decline because you dislike the work, decline. If you decline because you believe accepting makes you dishonest, read the actual terms first. Do not sacrifice a career opportunity to prove something no one has asked you to prove."
The advice was good.
That was what made it hurt.
Rowan saw contracts, leverage, future security, and a rookie's narrow window to convert attention into power. He wanted Luca protected against the same machinery that could discard players without warning.
But Luca had not asked whether the deal was smart.
He had asked whether Rowan could look at the false version and miss him.
"Would you want me if I were him?" Luca asked.
Rowan's gaze snapped to his.
"The man in the campaign," Luca said. "Simple. Straight. Never asks you for anything you can't put in a schedule. Would that be easier?"
"He is not real."
"Neither am I, half the time. Not in this house."
"That is not fair."
"No. It isn't."
The cover bent slightly beneath Luca's hand. He flattened it again. Nadia Bell's image remained inside, a professional stranger being paid to stand in the space Rowan was afraid even to imagine occupied differently.
"Claire said we can counter," Luca said. "Remove dating questions. Separate some frames. Approval over every line attributed to me."
"Good."
"I may do that."
Rowan's shoulders eased, reading negotiation as agreement.
"I may still say no."
The ease disappeared.
"That is your decision."
The correct words. Luca listened for any sign Rowan would stand beside him inside either outcome.
None came.
Luca picked up the folder.
Rowan moved around the island. "Do not leave because I gave you an answer you dislike."
"I'm leaving because you still think I came for an answer about money."
"You came with a contract."
"I came with a picture of the person everyone finds easiest to want."
The hurt reached his voice. Luca hated that. He let it remain.
"I wanted you to say you knew he wasn't me."
Rowan stopped within reach.
"I know," he said.
The words might have repaired something if they had not become the phrase both men used when knowledge failed to change behavior.
Luca nodded. "Exactly."
He went to the door and put on his shoes.
Rowan followed. "What are you going to tell Claire?"
"I don't know."
"Counter before you reject it. You can remove the questions. Change the pairing. Keep approval."
Even now, Rowan offered strategy because strategy was how he loved without admitting love.
Luca understood the gift.
He could no longer pretend it was the gift he needed.
"Good night, Rowan."
The first name stopped both of them.
Luca had used Hale, Captain, and every joke available. Rowan belonged to the private man he kept asking to meet.
For one second Rowan looked stripped of title.
Then control returned.
"Good night, Luca."
Outside, the air carried late-October cold. Luca sat in his car with the campaign folder on the passenger seat and did not start the engine.
Boreal House wanted an answer in forty-eight hours. Claire would protect what she could. The offer might become work Luca could live with, or it might not.
That decision belonged to him.
Rowan's answer belonged to a different question.
Luca had asked whether his whole self mattered more than the safety of the version that sold.
Rowan had given him approval clauses.
For the first time since the corridor kiss, Luca did not search the refusal for proof of desire.
Wanting had never been the problem.
Being chosen was.