Page 169 of Rookie Rules

Owen approached with the wheelchair Rowan had apparently been resisting.

"Captain," he said, in a tone that made the title a threat.

Rowan sat.

Luca stepped aside so Owen could guide him toward the exit. He did not touch Rowan. He did not offer to follow.

Rowan looked back once.

Luca held his gaze.

The pass had not repaired them, and Luca had not made it for that purpose.

He left the corridor with the game puck in his bag and Rowan's acknowledgment still warm beneath the restraint of it. The boundary remained where Luca had placed it.

So did the proof on the scoreboard: when the best play asked him to trust someone else, he had seen it in time and chosen it for himself.

Chapter 27: Chosen

The MRI took twenty-six minutes.

Rowan spent all of them inside a machine that punished movement and offered no useful task in return. The magnets hammered around him. His right thigh burned where the leg rested in its support. He counted sequences, then breaths, then the number of ways a man could delay a truth while calling the delay caution.

By the time the table moved out, Rowan had stopped pretending the answer depended on the scan.

He had started correcting the damage before the injury. Not early enough. Not cleanly. But before.

Four hours before the third-period collision, Rowan had found Vale outside the coaches' room with a tablet under one arm and half a banana in his hand.

"I need Bennett's development assignment changed," Rowan had said.

Vale finished chewing. "Because?"

"I cannot be the only person evaluating him."

"That was true in August. Why is it urgent now?"

Rowan had prepared hockey language: objectivity, line stability, rookie workload. Vale would have recognized the cover before the second noun.

"There is personal history," Rowan said. "It ended badly. I handled it badly."

Vale's face remained neutral. "Does Bennett want the change?"

"You need to ask him. Without me there."

"And until I do?"

"You attend any correction that is not routine bench communication. Formal reviews go through you. If I object to one of his reads, the clip decides. Not my mood."

Vale set the banana peel on the tablet. "You understand that this reduces your authority over your own line."

"Yes."

"Good. I will speak to him after the game. You will not brief him first."

Rowan nodded and left before relief could make the action feel generous.

He sent Vale a written confirmation from the corridor, removing any chance to recast the conversation after the game.