Page 50 of Bad Pucking Roommate

“I’m exhausted even though I think I might’ve slept for a few hours, and I’m freaking out because I can’t find any record of my plane ticket, so I don’t know how I’m getting home, and—”

“Hey.” Luca pats my leg again, which I’d probably find endearing if I wasn’t so out-of-sorts. “I’ve got the tickets. We leave at eleven tomorrow morning.”

“We?” I don’t know what that one word makes me hold my breath, but I can’t seem to exhale as I wait for him to elaborate.

“You’re barely ten days out from a concussion. You probably shouldn’t be flying at all, but you damn sure shouldn’t be flying alone, so I’m going with you.”

“But, you’re supposed to be at the All-Star game. What will you tell Coach?”

“I already cleared it with him.” Luca reaches into the takeout bag and starts pulling out soups and sandwiches. “I told him you’re still recovering from your concussion and shouldn’t travel alone. I might’ve also implied I knew your grandpa was a big fan of the Bulldogs and someone from the organization should go to represent the team.”

“He didn’t suggest that it should be someone from management, or who wasn’t already committed to the All-Star game?” I take the cup of chili he offers me.

“He did.” Luca lifts his shoulder nonchalantly. “But when I told him I’d given your grandpa some signed gear since I was his favorite Bulldog, Coach agreed I was the best choice to escort you.”

I pause with the spoon halfway to my mouth as I replay his words. “You bought the tickets first thing this morning. Before you cleared things with Coach.”

Luca doesn’t say anything, just unwraps the sandwich he brought me and opens his own soup, stirring it—I think—to avoid looking at me.

In my current mental state, I should probably find that distressing. But I don’t. Instead, I find myself feeling this strange sense of giddiness on top of the sorrow that’s been weighing on me.

There’s only one reason for Luca to avoid looking at me after everything we’ve shared during the past several weeks, and it speaks just as loudly as his gestures. Only, I don’t have to see his face to know that he’s caught feelings for me, same as I have for him.

I respect the fact he’s trying to hide that from me. He knows how seriously I take the rules. He’s protecting me, my career, even the team, by holding back the truth. It’s the same reason I haven’t admitted anything myself, but even though I can’t say what I want, I can’t just say nothing at all.

“Luca.”

He brings his brown eyes to my teary ones.

“Thank you.”

He gives me a curt nod before pointing to my soup. “Eat up and get some rest. Tomorrow will be a long day.”

I do as he says, and when we’re finished, he crawls into bed next to me, letting me use his shoulder as a pillow. I fall asleep almost instantly.

***

“Tell me about him,” Luca says as we hop in the car for the forty-minute drive to my family’s dairy farm on the outskirts of Minneapolis.

“Grandpa?”

“Yeah.” Luca turns the music down so it’s just barely audible before pulling out of the rental lot. “You said he got you into hockey, how?”

My head falls against the headrest to watch the city drift by as I repeat the story Grandpa told me as a kid. “The family only had one TV when he was growing up, and my great grandparents hardly let him watch it since there were so many chores on the farm. But during the winter, when it got dark early, he’d get to pick one show. I think his parents expected him to pick something like Dragnet or I Love Lucy, which he said were popular at the time, but one night he stumbled on a hockey game.”

Luca glances at me with a slight nod to indicate he’s following, so I continue.

“It was a playoff game, televised nationally, otherwise he probably wouldn’t have seen it, but he was fascinated right from the start. Every time he was allowed to pick a show, he’d search for a hockey game,partly because they were a few hours long and he figured he’d get more out of it, and partly because it was unlike anything he’d ever seen.”

“I know the feeling,” Luca says, and I smile, because I know exactly what that’s like.

“Anyhow, he’d caught the hockey bug, and begged his parents to let him play, but there weren’t any rinks in the area. The closest was over an hour away, and no one could give up three or four hours of the workday to get him there and back. But there was a pond behind the house, so he was able to talk his parents into a pair of skates. He taught himself how to skate by mimicking what he saw on TV, and he got pretty good at it. When I was old enough, he taught me.”

“He didn’t teach your dad?” Luca cocks a curious brow, assuming, as most people do, that the family farm we live on has been passed down to a string of sons.

“Grandpa is my mom’s dad, not my dad’s dad. And he did teach Mom how to skate, she’s just awful at it. When I came along, he got another chance to pass on what he’d learned, so he had me out there every day, skating until my parents yelled at us to come inside.”

“Your parents didn’t approve of him teaching you to skate?”

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