It was very much not the quiet day Bennett had envisioned, but he couldn’t say he minded.
“What is this?” Prinnie asked when he arrived.
“My Christmas tree,” Sandro told him.
Prinnie made a face at it. “It’s two feet tall and sitting on your coffee table.”
“So? It’s still a Christmas tree. It has lights.”
“There aren’t any ornaments on it.”
“Still a Christmas tree.”
Nobody blinked twice at Bennett’s presence, which meant they thought Sandro had invited him out of pity or they all knew about their relationship but were too nice to say anything about it.
The former, definitely. Hockey players were rarely too nice about anything.
“Do they know about us?” Bennett asked Sandro during a rare moment the two of them were in the kitchen alone together. Eli had jogged home earlier, returning with his chess set, and he’d set himself up on a side table and challenged anyone who walked by. He was currently playing against Prinnie as some of the other guys played Super Smash Brothers on the Switch.
“No,” Sandro replied, forking mashed potato into his mouth. “But they might guess considering how close you’re standing to me.”
Bennett didn’t move.
“Eli knows, obviously,” Sandro said quietly. “Dabbs suspects. As for the rest of them, I wasn’t sure if I should say anything. Wasn’t sure if there’s a clause against it in your contract.”
“Nothing that expressly forbids me from dating anyone on the team. But I did have to sign your organization’s conflict-of-interest policy. I already disclosed our prior relationship. I’ll have to disclose this one too.”
Sandro set his plate down and leaned a hip against the counter, facing Bennett. “And risk getting fired.”
“Your policy states that conflicts of interest are evaluated on a case-by-case basis.”
“I know what it says.”
“But failure to disclose will result in immediate termination,” Bennett finished. “I’d rather tell them and risk them kiboshing this project than not tell them, have them find out, and they definitely kibosh it.”
“We could—” Sandro broke off, flattening his lips into a line. He took a deep breath and said, “We could hit pause on this.” He gestured between the two of them. “Until the project is over.”
“We could,” Bennett agreed, his heart threatening to nosedive to his feet. “But I don’t want to. I don’t want to give you up again, Ro.”
Lashes fluttering, Sandro took his hand, hidden by the giant cauldron of mashed potatoes. “I don’t like being the thing that stands in the way of you getting what you want.”
“Now you know how I felt fifteen years ago.”
Sandro’s eyes flared. He let Bennett’s hand go and punched him in the arm. “Oh, fuck you. That’s different.”
“How?”
“We’ll never know for sure if you would’ve actually gotten in the way of anything.”
“No,” Bennett said calmly. “We won’t. Just like we don’t know for sure if what’s between us now will get in the way of anything. Besides, you also signed your organization’s conflict-of-interest policy, right? Don’t you also have to disclose our relationship?”
“Do I? Ugh.” Crossing his arms over his chest, Sandro leaned his butt against the counter. “Fine. I’ll fill out the paperwork in the next few days. For the record, I hate that either of us has to. It makes our relationship feel so transactional.”
Eli bounced into the kitchen, opened a drawer, and scowled into it. Scowled into a second one.
“What’s wrong with you?” Sandro asked. “Did you lose to Prinnie and now you’re looking for something to bludgeon him with?”
“What?” Eli turned that scowl on Sandro. “No, I never lose at chess. I want to make gingerbread cookies. Do you have allspice and molasses?”
