Page 91 of On His Team

I put both hands on the back of the chair across from him. Benson and Stanley are talking loudly now. Percy looks at me and Rowan for a second.

“You shouldn’t smile at me like that,” I whisper.

His face stays straight, but his eyes don’t. “I haven’t done anything.”

I pull the chair out and sit.

That makes him laugh. I hate how much I like making him laugh now that I know I like him.

That is new information. Bad information.

I lean forward to look at the screen. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing interesting.” He turns it slightly toward me without me asking.

I read two lines. “Yeah. Never mind.”

He stares at me. I stare back.

The room keeps moving around us. Stanley yells something. Benson laughs. Someone opens the fridge. And for the first time since I said it, I let the words exist between us without trying to shove them back into my mouth.

I like him.

He knows.

I have no idea what happens next.

And somehow that feels a lot less terrifying with him sitting across from me, smiling.

Chapter 10

ROWAN

I didn’t know Gianna liked me.

That is still true the next morning, but it’s also useless information now because I know now, and apparently that changes things. Every interaction we’ve had for the past month has been moved into a different folder in my head overnight, and my brain keeps opening it without permission.

Her taking half my steak. Sitting beside me at the kitchen table. Doing things just to annoy me. Her hand on my chest at Drew’s birthday. Her knee against mine Saturday night. Yesterday, standing behind the equipment counter with both hands over her face because she’d accidentally told me she liked me.

None of those things felt particularly complicated when they happened. They do now.

I come downstairs a little after seven and find Stanley in the kitchen wearing one of the slippers Gianna spent five straight minutes making fun of last night.

He’s wearing just the one.

I stop in the doorway. “Where’s the other one?”

He looks down at his foot like he hadn’t noticed. “I don’t know.”

If it were anyone else, I’d be worried.

“I haven’t lost it. It’s temporarily displaced.”

“That’s lost.”

Stanley opens the refrigerator and looks at me over the door. “Why are you hostile this morning?”

I reach around him for the eggs. “You sound irritating.”