"Mm."
"You did too."
He goes very still against my chest. I feel him decide not to argue with me about that one. Fair. Some compliments you swallow.
"By the way." Casually. I say it nto his hair. "Her rent's good for the next two years. Just so you know."
He pulls back to look at me.
"Bane."
"What?"
"Two years?"
"Mm."
"You paid two years of rent up front?"
"In her name. With a letter from the building manager. So she knows it's hers, not mine. She can take a job, leave a job, change her mind, do whatever she wants. The rent isn't the lever."
He stares at me. His mouth has gone a little open. "You just—did that. Without telling anyone."
“I just told you.”
He doesn't answer. He puts his face back into my collarbone and his hand finds the front of my shirt and fists in it, and I feel him breathing against my throat for a long moment.
"Thank you," he says. Muffled. "For all of it. For her."
"Don't thank me for being a person, Max."
"I'll thank you for whatever I want to thank you for, you stubborn ass."
I grin.
He's quiet a long beat. His fist stays curled in my shirt. I can feel the shift in him before he says anything—the small heaviness, the thing that has been sitting on him.
"I think about the others," he says. Eventually. Very quiet. “The ones we left.”
I close my eyes. "I know."
"All the time, Bane. Every time Wren texts me a picture of her apartment, every time she sends me a stupid meme, every time she tells me she got a tip at the coffee shop—there's this thing in my stomach. Like a knot. I keep thinking how arbitrary it was. That it was us who got out. Why us, why not them."
"Maxie."
"I don't know how you don't think about it."
"I think about it."
"...you do?"
"Yes, Max. Trust me, I do."
He pulls back again. Slower this time. Looks at me properly. His eyes are very wide and very dark. He must have read between the lies. He’s too observant for me to keep anything in secret.
"...you're going to get them out?"
"Yeah, baby."
