“You’ll have it before then,” I tell her.
“Good,” she says, smiling like I passed a test. “Go home, Sloane.”
I walk out into the cold with my bag over one shoulder and the proposal already half-outlined in my head. Class was good, but the aftermath was better, and it’s like my veins are spreading the fire of excitement through my body.
I fire off a text to Ivy — too many exclamation marks, grinning at the screen like an idiot — and then somewhere between the science building and the turn toward Sterling House, my pace changes and the excitement dims, because I’m thinking about Rowan.
Or, specifically, how he looked at me from the ice, and how he’s avoided me since.
My feet have already made the decision before my brain catches up, and tonight I’m not taking no for an answer. I walk to Ridgeview instead and knock on his door. It takes a second, but when he opens it, I know I was right to come.
He’s in sweats and a Halden Hockey T-shirt, and he looks tired in a way sleep won’t fix. His hair is pushed back, his jaw is set, and his eyes have that glazed-over quality I’ve been watching creep in over the past couple of weeks.
“Hey.” He pulls the door wider, stepping back to let me in.
His body doesn’t soften when he sees me — not like it usually does — but I go up on my tiptoes and kiss him anyway. He doesn’t respond immediately, and it’s like his brain has to switch tracks from whatever he’s been grinding on.
Then his hand finds the small of my back, his mouth warms against mine, and he lets out a breath he’s been holding. For one breath, he’s the boy who laughs at my texts, so I step inside and close the door behind me with my heel.
As usual, his apartment is neat enough to impress my mother. No dishes out, no clothes on the floor, textbookssquared at the edge of the kitchen counter. The only sign anyone lives here at all is a single mug of cold coffee on the table.
“You okay?” I say.
“Yeah.” He runs a hand over the back of his neck. “Just a lot on my plate.”
He’s been saying that for weeks, and I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I sat in the stands and watched him play a few nights ago, and when the final horn went and Rowan looked up at me from the ice, he smiled. But it was wrong, and I’ve been thinking about it since.
I cross my arms. “You’ve been saying that for weeks,” I say.
“Because it’s true.”
He looks at me, and I recognize the expression — patient, a little distant, the face he makes when he’s absorbing a problem. I’ve seen him do it with Theo, and with Ivy, and now he’s doing it with me.
“I appreciate you coming by,” he says. “But I don’t really want to do this right now.”
Something in me flinches — the old instinct firing, telling me I should soften, apologize and tell him I’ll come back tomorrow, not be the girl who makes a scene — and my shoulders start to round before I catch them and hold.
“I’m not letting you brush me aside,” I say. “I’m not a problem to be checked off.”
His head tips slightly. “Sloane, come on.”
“You can be busy and adjusting and tired. I’m still not leaving.”
“This isn’t helping.” His voice is firmer now. The captain’s voice. “I?—”
“And you can use the captain voice, but it doesn’t work on me.”
Something cracks across his face, so fast I almost miss it. Then a laugh gets away from him, just once. And it’s like the boyI kissed on the lawn in front of everyone is suddenly back in my life.
“That was rude,” he says.
I smile. “It was a little rude.”
His hands go into his pockets and then back out, and he reaches behind him and straightens the textbook stack on the counter without looking at it, a gesture so automatic I don’t think he knows he’s doing it.
He looks away, and I’m sure he’s going to try the wall one more time — the breath he takes is the front edge of anotherit’s fine.I wait for it, prepared to fight him on this some more, but then something gives.
“Franklin pulled me aside after practice today,” he says quietly. “He said the alumni are watching the transition in leadership, and not everyone is happy with how it’s going.”
