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Nobody asked what he'd meant.

Most importantly, nobody looked at me differently.

Max's hand brushed lightly across the small of my back, not pushing me forward or asking whether I needed to leave, but simply reminding me that he was here.

“You good?”

I nodded, and this time I meant it enough to walk into the room.

Phoenix looked up first and announced that Cinder had confirmed I was still alive, which I told him I deeply regretted. Keegan immediately informed me I needed to sit down before everyone else ate the food he'd ordered, while Baelor corrected him by pointing out that he'd ordered three things for himself and was now trying to claim generosity after the fact.

By the time Max pulled out the chair beside his for me, whatever tension I'd carried through the doorway had mostly disappeared.

I sat without thinking about what that looked like.

That realization came several minutes later when Max reached across my plate and stole one of my fries.

I stopped talking mid-sentence and stared at him. “Did you seriously just steal my food?”

“You weren't eating it,” he replied, as though this constituted a reasonable defense.

“I was talking. That's not the same as surrendering ownership.”

“They were becoming cold, and somebody had to save them.”

Keegan leaned across the table to inform me there was no point arguing because French-Canadians apparently became irrational around potatoes, which earned him a long, offended explanation from Max about the existence of Quebecois cuisine beyond poutine.

The conversation moved on before Max finished threatening to educate him.

Somewhere in the middle of it, I became aware that Max's knee was resting against mine beneath the table.

Neither of us moved.

It was such a small thing that nobody else could possibly have noticed, but I couldn't stop being aware of it because there was nothing secretive about the contact. We weren't hiding. Max had pulled out my chair, rested his hand briefly against my back when someone squeezed behind me, stolen food from my plate, and handed me his water when I finished mine without even asking whether I wanted it.

They were ordinary things.

Couple things.

I didn't know whether we were a couple, and perhaps I should've been more concerned about that than I was.

Instead, when Max reached for another fry, I found myself smiling.

He caught me immediately. “What?”

“Nothing. I was considering whether stealing food from injured teammates violates the captain's code of conduct.”

“There is no captain's code of conduct.”

“Convenient.”

“You're still smiling.”

“Maybe the head injury was worse than Cinder thought.”

Max immediately turned his head toward the other end of the table and called, “Cinder—”

I kicked him under the table before he could finish, twisted the wrong way, and felt my ribs object.