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Before I could decide whether that was supposed to be a threat, Max pulled me fractionally closer and kissed me.

It started soft, probably because I was injured and we had Game Six tomorrow, but I put my hand behind his neck and kissed him back until whatever responsible thought he'd been entertaining began to disappear. His mouth opened over mine, warm and unhurried, and the fingers at my waist tightened just enough for me to feel the moment his control slipped.

I liked that more than I probably should have.

Max had spent weeks making me feel like the one who couldn't control himself around him. Discovering the effect worked both ways was rapidly becoming one of my favorite things about us, whatever us currently meant.

I shifted closer without thinking and immediately sucked in a breath when pain stabbed through my side.

Max pulled back so quickly it would've been funny if he hadn't immediately started glaring at me.

“Don't,” I warned, because I knew exactly what was coming.

His eyebrows rose. “I haven't said anything.”

“You don't need to. Your face is giving me a lecture.”

“My face is concerned.”

“Your face is smug because you told me to be careful.”

“I think you may have a fundamental misunderstanding of the word smug.”

“I understand that I was winning before my ribs interfered.”

That startled a laugh out of him, and I loved the sound enough that I forgot what we'd been arguing about until the amusement slowly faded from his face and his thumb moved gently along my jaw.

When he asked how I was, I knew immediately he wasn't talking about the injury.

The honest answer was too complicated for eight in the morning, but Max had earned more than the automatic fine I'd given everyone else for most of my life. I looked down between us, where his hand had found mine beneath the covers, and tried to explain something I barely understood myself.

“I keep expecting the guilt to come back. When I woke up, I remembered the video, and for a few seconds I was waiting for my brain to tell me Doryu was wrong or that I hadn't really seen what I thought I saw.”

Max didn't rush to reassure me. That was something I'd started to appreciate about him, because for all his irritatingly overprotective instincts, when something actually mattered, he didn't fill every silence simply because he couldn't tolerate it.

Instead, his fingers threaded through mine, and he waited until I looked at him before quietly asking, “Did it?”

“No, and that's almost the strangest part.” I stared at our joined hands for a moment before admitting the thing that had bothered me most. “I keep seeing myself on those stairs, except now I'm seeing what everyone else sees. I looked so fucking small.”

Something softened in Max's face, and his fingers tightened around mine.

“I knew I was seven,” I continued. “Obviously I knew that, but all my memories were from inside my own head. I never looked at that kid and actually thought of him as a kid.”

“You looked at him as the person responsible.”

“Yeah, I did.” The admission still hurt, although differently now. “I hated him for most of my life.”

Max lifted our joined hands and pressed his mouth against my knuckles, and the tenderness of the gesture made my throat ache.

“You know more about him now.”

I swallowed before nodding. “I'm trying to.”

“And that's enough for this morning,” Max said, his thumb moving over my fingers. “You don't have to undo twenty years before breakfast.”

Something about that nearly broke through the fragile control I'd managed to rebuild, so I leaned forward and kissed him before he could see how much it affected me.

Max apparently decided that was permission to distract me from thinking altogether, and it worked remarkably well until my ribs reminded both of us that I was still held together by bruising, stubbornness, and Cinder's increasingly explicit threats.