Chapter 28 Home Ice #2
"I understand nothing can be done," Rowan said.
Cal nodded gravely. "Acceptance is important in recovery."
In the room, Finn occupied his stall with the calm of a man who had been waiting to become unbearable.
"Carpool," he said.
"Efficiency," Rowan answered.
"Domestic efficiency?"
Rowan set down his rehabilitation bag. "Do you have a hockey question?"
"Several. None as urgent."
Jace glanced between them. "Wait. Is this why Bennett now knows Hale owns a blue bathrobe?"
Luca had mentioned the robe during a team group chat after Rowan refused to approve a postgame restaurant because of weather. It had seemed harmless at the time.
The room became interested.
Rowan turned slowly toward him.
"It might have come up," Luca said.
Eli, taping a stick two stalls away, frowned in concentration. "Who is in charge at home?"
Luca smiled.
"Don't answer that," Rowan said immediately.
The room broke into laughter.
No one asked what home meant. Finn caught Luca's eye and lifted his chin once. Nolan hid a smile while adjusting his knee brace. Mateo demanded five dollars from Jace for reasons neither would explain.
Rowan sat at his stall, shaking his head, but he did not correct the premise. He did not say Luca had his own apartment. He did not turn the joke into a misunderstanding everyone was required to accept.
Luca felt the behavioral proof more deeply than any announcement could have reached.
Privacy meant the room did not receive details.
Denial would have required Rowan to erase the truth.
He had chosen the first.
Vale called the team to video. Rowan joined the coaches at the back, still a player but temporarily unable to lead from the ice. He offered two observations and allowed the second-line center to explain the adjustment that had worked without him.
Luca watched that act of restraint cost Rowan something and give the team more.
On the ice, practice moved with the energy of a group playing above .
500 since the night Rowan went down without confusing stabilization for arrival.
Rowan returned to center on managed repetitions, and Finn directed traffic whenever Owen pulled Rowan early from a drill.
Luca attacked the weak-side seam one exchange later than he had in the previous game and scored before the goalie could cross.
From the bench after his shortened repetition, Rowan tapped two fingers against the boards.
Better timing.
Luca raised one glove in acknowledgment and returned to the drill.
Near the end, Vale switched to defensive-zone work. Gabriel allowed a screened shot, then struck the post with his stick after the whistle. The sound was small beneath the scrape of skates, but Luca saw the goalie's shoulders draw tight.
On the next repetition, Gabriel made the save cleanly. He still stared at the crease where the first puck had crossed.
After practice, Luca found him alone at his stall replaying the goal on a tablet.
"Practice ended," Luca said.
Gabriel did not look up. "I know."
Gabriel's thumb remained pressed to the paused image.
Luca considered offering one of Rowan's lessons, then understood that not every silence wanted the same key.
"Finn is ordering lunch," he said instead. "Come before he decides salad is a personality."
Gabriel paused the clip. "In a minute."
Luca left the invitation where it was and returned to the room.
Rowan waited in the corridor after finishing the return-to-play strength block that followed practice. Sweat darkened his shirt. His hair curled slightly at the temples, and fatigue had shortened his stride.
"Two?" Luca asked.
"Three."
Honest on the first attempt.
"I am driving."
"You always drive."
"Because you are medically forbidden. It is one of my favorite symptoms."
They walked toward the garage. Behind them, the locker room remained loud with Finn's lunch argument, Jace's disputed bet, and twenty men learning how to become a team that could hold both history and change.
At the car, Rowan stopped before opening the passenger door.
"Your name is on the access list now," he said.
"For the house?"
"For everything. Security, deliveries, medical pickup if I cannot drive. Emergency contact is still Finn until we discuss whether changing it creates a team record issue."
There it was again: information offered before control, a decision paused until both of them could make it.
"We will discuss it," Luca said.
"Tonight?"
"After video."
"Before video."
"You said we would review the penalty kill."
"We will."
"You schedule romance like a board meeting."
"I scheduled a conversation. The romance is less cooperative."
Luca laughed and opened the driver's door.
Home waited twelve minutes away: red jacket, lemon bowl, rehabilitation band, two coffees arranged for morning. Nothing dramatic enough to prove itself to strangers. Nothing hidden from the people living it.
Rowan lowered himself into the passenger seat and caught Luca's attention across the roof of the car.
"Luca."
"Yes?"
"I love you."
He said it in daylight, in the team garage, with no one near enough to hear and no shame left in the quiet.
Luca smiled. "I know."
Then they went home.