"More?" Bane asks. Pitcher already lifted.
"Sure."
He refills my glass. His hand brushes the small of my back as he leans across, his thumb finding the dip of my spine through my shirt for one slow second before he sits back down. Atlas, behind his sunglasses, sees it and does not say anything.
My cheeks flush but not from the sun. I am not going to make it through lunch.
"How's your throat?" Atlas. Quiet. The first thing he's said in a few minutes.
I cough on iced tea.
"It's—fine."
"Mm."
"I'm fine."
"Eat the sandwich, Max."
"I'm eating it."
"Slower than that. Please."
The please lands in my chest like a hand on the back of my neck and I obey before I can decide to obey. He nods once, satisfied, and goes back to looking at the water. Bane is hiding a smile behind his glass. Zero is openly laughing at me with his eyes.
"I love watching this," Zero says. To no one. To the air.
"Watching what?" I bite.
"Atlas tell you to chew slower and you doing it like he just told you to walk across hot coals for him. It's adorable. It's deeply, deeply compromising. Bane, are you seeing this?"
"I'm seeing it."
"Be useful," Atlas says. Mild. Not even looking at his wild middle brother. "Pick a movie for tonight. Margot's going to want one after dinner."
"Margot's going to bed early," Zero says. "She and Father have been up since five."
"How do you know?"
"I know." His foot presses harder against mine. "Couldn't sleep last night anyway, so I had time to do my research."
"You couldn't sleep," I say.
"Mm." He bites a grape in half. "You were upstairs. Knotted. Probably still slick when the sun came up. I lay on the couch downstairs and thought about it for about six hours."
I swallow the lump forming in my throat.
"Zero—"
"Got up at five. Margot was already up because Margot's always up. Made coffee with her. Richard came down and read me half the Times. I ate eggs with them like a normal son and then I went for the longest fucking run of my life."
"How long."
"Far enough that I almost didn't make it back. Specifically so I'd be too tired to do anything stupid before noon."
"Did it work?"
"Demonstrably no." He grins. Bites the other half of the grape and winks at me.The shower."But here's the gift, Carter. Margot's been up since five. Richard's been up since five-thirty. They will be on a boat in the sun for the majority of the day. Margot's gonna eat dinner and pour herself one glass of wine and be asleep on Richard's shoulder by eight-thirty. I'd put money on it."
