Except my eyes kept going over to him.
The neighborly and captainly thing would be to go over and say hi, and there was an empty treadmill right next to him. My decision was made. I bounced over to the treadmill and climbed on, setting the speed and incline to what I considered a good warm up and more than one gym buddy had declared insanity.
We ran in silence for a few minutes. I kept stealing looks at Rowan, but he never acknowledged me. It looked like I was going to have to make the first move.
My eyes moved to the display of his machine. “Got a good speed going there,” I commented. It wasn’t the best icebreaker known to mankind, but it was something. And it got Rowan to look at me. His bushy brows furrowed, and I took that as an invitation to say more. “Most people don’t push themselves on the treadmill.” Rowan still didn’t say anything. “A lot of peoplealso listen to music while they work out. I’ve never really liked running with music. I end up getting distracted and trying to run in time to the music. You ever find yourself doing that?”
Rowan blinked at me, and I noticed his eyes. I’d always thought they were brown when I saw clips of him in interviews when he played for the Fayetteville Foxes. Up close, I saw that I was wrong. They were hazel, and I could see flecks of green and gold in the brown. I always wished I had interesting eyes like that. “My headphones are dead.”
“So, you usually listen to music?” See, we were getting somewhere. I was getting to know him. We were starting to have a conversation. Or so I thought, but he just nodded and turned his attention back to the wall in front of him. He hit the speed control on his treadmill and notched the speed up a few ticks. I did the same, driving mine up another mile an hour. “How many miles do you do on this thing?”
“Do you always talk so much?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He let out a surprised bark of laughter. “Wow. Most people would lie about that.”
“Why? It’s not like I don’t know I talk a lot.” I wasn’t ashamed of it, and the people who talked a lot and then claimed they didn’t usually only did that because they were ashamed of it. I’d always been a chatterbox. I’d always been a bit too energetic. More than one person had called me an acquired taste in my life, but they’d all acquired the taste, so there was that. “Did you end up doing anything last night? After you ate? Or did you end up just going to bed.”
“Just bed. It was three hours later for me, remember?”
Right. Because Fayetteville was on the other side of the country. He had to adjust to a different time zone. I wondered if he’d been up for hours. “Hm,” I hummed thoughtfully. “Youknow, people say that you should jump right into the schedule at the new time zone. It’s supposed to help you adjust to it better.”
“I’ve heard that.”
What was with this guy and his short answers? Did he not know how a conversation was meant to work? Maybe he wasn’t someone who liked to talk while he worked out. That thought hadn’t even occurred to me until just that very minute. I was probably making aterribleimpression on this guy, and that would negatively affect the team. I slowed down my treadmill to a stop and hopped off. “I’m going to go hit the weights for a bit,” I supplied, just in case he cared.
Except halfway there, I changed my mind, hopped on an exercise bike, and tried to keep myself from looking at Rowan Rangecroft.
A few hours later, I was sitting with my teammates in the training center’s auditorium. The room was a low din of noise, with fifty-some-odd men talking and cutting up. I was half paying attention to what my best friends, Johan “Jonesy” Jones and Liam Lowe, were talking about. The rest of my attention was trained on the door. Rowan had left the gym that morning before I had, and I hadn’t seen him when I left our building for practice.
I didn’t know if Coach Cal had given him any special instructions or if he was running late. What if he’d gotten lost on the way to the facility? What if he’d been jet lagged and decided to take a nap and overslept? I should have knocked on his door and offered him a ride. Except I didn’t remember which door he’d pointed out as his the day before. Had he even pointed outthe door? I should really be better at paying attention to little details like that.
Everyone always said so.
I should probably start by paying better attention to what Jonesy and Liam were talking about, but I was really worrying that Rowan wasn’t going to show up on time. It would make a terrible first impression on all the coaches and our teammates if he didn’t make it.
My eyes did not leave the door until Liam nudged me. “Is there something particularly interesting over there?”
“No,” I answered, forcing myself to look away for a moment before my eyes were drawn right back to the door. “I’m just—the new guy, Rowan, is supposed to be here, and he’s not.” I sighed. “What if he overslept?”
“It’s almost three in the afternoon. Isn’t he from the east coast?” Liam questioned. “Meaning for him, it’s six. He probably didn’t oversleep.”
“Unless he took a nap because he woke up early.” I didn’t need to look at Liam to know the incredulous look he was giving me. I could feel it, and I’d known him long enough to have seen it a thousand times over. “I should’ve knocked on his door and offered him a ride. Because even if he didn’t oversleep, he might have gotten lost.”
“First, why do you know where he lives? Second, he’s an adult. I’m sure he knows how to order a ride.”
I dragged my eyes away from the door and over to Liam. Jonesy was sitting beside him, looking for all the world like he was trying not to crack up. Knowing him, he probably was struggling to keep it together while his boyfriend pointed out the holes in my logic.
Well, I couldn’t very well have that. Or have either of them thinking that I was stalking the new guy. “He lives in my building. I saw him at the gym this morning—”
“So, you know he didn’t oversleep,” Jonesy pointed out with a shit-eating grin.
That look didn’t falter when I glared at him. Asshole. “Unlesshe took a nap,” I pointed out again.
“Okay, so he—”
“Oh, he’s here!” I interrupted with an excited whisper as Rowan walked in with Coach Cal.
