He stopped just inside the doorway, took one look at the single bed, and I watched something flicker across his face. Not panic. Coach didn't panic.
“They said they'd bring a roll-away,” he said, his voice carefully neutral.
“Yeah. Great.” I shoved my hands in my pockets because I didn't know what else to do with them. “I can take it when it gets here.”
“We'll figure it out.”
He moved further into the room, setting his bag down near the desk, and the space suddenly felt about ten times smaller. I could smell his deodorant, something clean and understated.
I needed to get out of this room.
“I'm gonna grab ice,” I said abruptly, grabbing the plastic bucket off the desk.
“Hartley—”
I was already out the door.
I stoodin front of the ice machine at the end of the hallway longer than any reasonable person would need to fill a bucket. The machine hummed and clunked, spitting out ice cubes one at a time, and I focused on that sound instead of the fact that I was about to spend the night six feet away from the man I'd watched come less than a week ago.
Get it together. You've handled worse than this.
Except I hadn't. I really, really hadn't.
I'd handled playoff pressure and hostile crowds and my own spiraling panic, but I had no fucking idea how to handle this. How to be in a room with him and act normal. How to sleep knowing he was right there. How to pretend I didn't want to close the distance between us and?—
“Fuck,” I muttered, slamming the ice bucket down harder than necessary.
When I got back to the room, Coach was on his phone, pacing near the window. He glanced up when I walked in, and I saw the tension in his shoulders, the tightness around his eyes.
“Roll-away's not coming until morning,” he said flatly. “They're short on staff and equipment.”
Of course it wasn't.
“So...” I set the ice bucket down on the desk. “What's the plan?”
He exhaled slowly, rubbing a hand over his face. “One of us takes the bed. One takes the floor.”
“I'll take the floor.”
“No.”
“Coach—”
“You played thirty minutes tonight. You need actual rest.” His voice had that edge to it, the one that said the discussion was over. “I'll take the floor.”
“That's bullshit. You're—” I stopped myself before I said anything else. “You need rest too.”
“Hartley.” He turned to face me fully, and the look he gave me was so tired, so fucking done, that I almost backed down. Almost. “I'm not arguing about this. Take the bed.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, neither of us willing to give ground.
“Fine,” I said finally, because I was too tired to fight about something this stupid. “But I'm giving you the extra pillow and blanket.”
“Deal.”
He moved toward the bathroom with his toiletry bag, and I exhaled slowly once the door clicked shut.
The sound of running water came through the door. I tried not to think about him on the other side, tried not to imagine what he looked like right now—shirt off, splashing water on his face, the same routine I'd watched him go through in the locker room a hundred times but never thisclose, never thisintimate.
