Page 92 of Rookie Rules

Luca's expression opened by a fraction. "Then say that when it isn't attached to a goal."

Rowan could not.

The inability was not absence of feeling. It was the opposite. The words would change the structure because they were true beyond the season, beyond the line, beyond every category Rowan had prepared to survive.

Luca looked away first.

"What you do when no one sees is the part I'm asking about," he said. "Not the cameras. Not the room. This."

He gestured between them.

"You let me hold you when it hurts. You cook for me. You remember what I eat and where my knee moves when I'm tired. Then you use not a relationship like none of that has a consequence."

"I am trying not to make promises I cannot keep."

"Then don't promise. Just don't erase what already happened."

Rowan's throat tightened around every answer he did not know how to give.

He thought of the season ending. Luca's container no longer on the counter. One bowl at dinner. Recovery alone, not because he preferred it but because a date on a schedule had declared wanting temporary.

The image did not feel safe.

It felt like loss.

"I don't know how to do this differently," Rowan said.

It was the most honest answer available and still not enough.

Luca nodded once. "I believe you."

No absolution entered the words.

He returned to the hall and took his jacket from the hook.

Rowan followed. "Are you leaving?"

"Tonight."

The word returned from Luca's apartment, changed by everything since. Rowan had once used it to limit desire. Now Luca used it to preserve himself without ending them.

"This isn't me demanding you come out," Luca said. "I need you to understand that before you turn this into fear for my career or yours. I can live with private. I can't keep being real only in the moments you need something from me."

Rowan had needed Luca's touch. His care. His trust on the ice. His body. His presence for thirty-two minutes after the heat cycle ended.

He had accepted each need and named none of the person meeting it.

"Luca."

Luca waited with one hand on the door.

Rowan had a chance to say it. Not a declaration. Not a promise. Only the truth that had escaped once in the living room.

You matter to me.

The words remained where control could still contain them.

Luca opened the door.