The key turned in the lock. The door swung open. Seth came through, duffel bag slung over one shoulder, wearing his Gray Wolves warm-up gear.
I looked up from my laptop. Kept my expression neutral.
“Hey,” I said.
“Hey.” He dropped the duffel by the door and headed for the kitchen. I heard the fridge open, the crack of a beer can. Then he was walking back through the living room, and I got my first real look at him.
He moved like everything hurt. The way he crossed toward the hallway was too slow, too deliberate. It didn’t take a trained professional to realize his ribs were screaming at him, no matter how he tried to hide the pain. He held his left arm slightly closer to his body than normal, and when he lifted the beer can to take a drink, I caught the slight hitch in his breath.
“Good game?” I asked, eyes back on my laptop. There was no point in acknowledging his injuries. The only thing that had done during the first two weeks of the season was lead to him retreating into his room.
“We won.”
Then why do you look miserable? Do you evenlikewhat you’re doing?
“I saw.” I had. Eventually. After I’d left the lab and couldn’t stop myself from checking.
Seth paused in the entryway to the hall, his weight shifting to favor his left side. The beer can dangled loosely from his fingers. I felt him looking at me—felt the weight of it pressing against the side of my face—but I kept my eyes fixed on the spreadsheet, cursor blinking in a cell I’d stopped reading as soon as he walked in.
The silence stretched between us. He rolled his shoulder, a small, unconscious movement that ended in a barely there grimace. His free hand came up to rub the back of his neck, and I tracked the motion in my peripheral vision without meaning to.
“You eat dinner?” His voice was softer than I expected. Careful, almost.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard. I could hear him breathing—slower than normal, like each inhale cost him something.
“Not yet.”
He nodded, and I caught the slight delay before the movement, like he’d had to think about it first. His thumb tapped twice against the beer can. A habit I’d noticed before, when he was working up to something.
“I was gonna make pasta.” Another pause. He shifted his weight again, and this time his jaw tightened for just a second before smoothing out. “Might as well make enough for both of us.”
The offer caught me off guard. We’d shared meals before, but usually by accident—leftover pizza, cereal at the same time, that kind of thing. This felt different. Deliberate.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said.
“I know.” He shrugged, then winced at the movement. “Offer stands.”
He disappeared down the hallway before I could respond. A minute later, I heard the shower start.
I stared at my laptop screen without seeing the data. The bruise on his cheek kept flashing in my mind. The way he’d winced. The careful way he’d moved.
I closed my laptop and went to the kitchen.
By the time Seth came back out—flannel pants, old T-shirt, hair still damp—I had water boiling and a jar of sauce sitting on the counter. He stopped in the doorway, one hand braced against the frame, and raised an eyebrow.
“I thought you said I didn’t have to,” he said.
“You don’t.” I kept my back to him, adjusting the heat of the burner. “I’m making it. You busted your ass all day. I just played video games and spent some time in the lab. Sit.”
A beat of silence. His weight shifted behind me, bare feet padding across the tile. I glanced over my shoulder. Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, or something else I couldn’t read—before his expression settled back into neutral.
“I’d rather stand, thanks.” He grabbed his beer from where he’d left it, condensation pooling on the counter beneath it. Instead of leaving, he leaned his hip against the cabinet, arms crossed loosely over his chest, watching me dump pasta into the pot.
The movement pulled his t-shirt tight across his shoulders, and I caught a glimpse of ink curving up from his collarbone—dark lines that disappeared beneath the fabric. I'd seen the tattoos before, of course. Living together meant catching glimpses ofhim without a shirt on the way to or from the shower, seeing the elaborate designs that covered his chest and both arms. But I'd made a point of not looking, not cataloging the details, not wondering about the story behind each piece.
“How was the lab?”
“Productive.” I stirred the pasta, steam rising between us. “Got some good data on the new padding configuration.”
