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It wasn't bad, which would've been easier to explain. The building was decent, the neighborhood safe, and I’d moved so many times I was renting.

It was simply small.

Not normal-person small, either. Professional-athlete-who-earned-more-in-a-season-than-most-people-earned-in-a-decade small.

The living room contained a couch I'd bought secondhand when I first came to Denver, a scratched coffee table, and a television mounted on the wall. The dining area had become somewhere to leave mail because I'd never bothered buying a table, while the kitchen was barely large enough for two people to stand in without negotiating territory. There was nothing on the walls except a framed photograph of my mom I'd had since I was a kid, and almost everything else I'd bought before signing my second contract.

I'd told myself I was going to move after my father showed up at the arena.

For about forty-eight hours, I'd even looked at listings, as though changing my address would somehow solve the problem of having a father who could find my work schedule online. Then Vegas happened. Max happened. My father discovered there were considerably more effective ways to get to me than standing outside my apartment, and somewhere along the way, moving had slipped from urgent to pointless.

So I was still here.

I unlocked the door and stepped inside, already bracing myself and wishing we were at Max’s place.

Max followed and stopped, and I waited for the comment.

It didn't come.

He looked around, taking in the couch, the bare walls, and the kitchen before his gaze passed over the photograph of my mother and returned to me. Whatever he thought about any of it remained firmly behind his teeth.

That was weird enough that I found myself waiting for something he'd apparently decided not to say.

I kicked off my shoes, immediately regretted the movement, and caught the edge of the wall when pain wrapped around my ribs. Max moved instinctively before stopping himself after one step, and that tiny hesitation did something strange to my chest because I knew exactly what it meant. He wanted to help me, but he was also remembering I'd asked him for space.

“I'm okay. It just hurts when I bend.”

“I figured, which is why I've been carrying your bag despite your repeated attempts to prove that bruised ribs apparently have no effect whatsoever on stubbornness.”

He waited until I was moving again before following me into the living room, and I lowered myself carefully onto the couch while he put my bag beside the door. Instead of commenting on anything around him, he took off his coat, pulled out his phone, and asked what I wanted to eat as though we'd done this a hundred times before.

I stared at him long enough that he glanced up from the screen.

“That wasn't a complicated question, Ash. I'm reasonably confident you understand all the words.”

“Aren't you going to say anything?”

His brow furrowed. “About dinner?”

“About this.” I gestured around the apartment and immediately wished I hadn't when my shoulder objected. “You've seen where half the team lives. Keegan's apartment probably has a bathroom bigger than this place, and you've got enough square footage to lose people in yours. You walked through my door and didn't even blink.”

Max put his phone down, and for a moment, I expected some polite bullshit about not caring where I lived. Instead, he leaned against the kitchen counter and regarded me with an expression that suggested he was trying to work out exactly how honest I wanted him to be.

“Of course I noticed. You're an NHL player who drives a car you bought used five years ago, wears team-issued sweats more often than anything else, and apparently lives like you're still waiting for somebody to tell you your rookie contract has been canceled. What I don't understand is why you expected me to walk in and immediately interrogate you about it.”

My stomach tightened. “You noticed my car?”

The faintest smile touched his mouth. “I'm your captain, Ash. I notice considerably more than you apparently think I do.”

That was becoming increasingly obvious.

I looked around the apartment trying to imagine it through Max's eyes. “Then why aren't you asking?”

The amusement disappeared from his expression, although there was nothing guarded in what replaced it.

“Because you asked me for space yesterday, and tonight you let me come home with you anyway. I'm not going to repay that by walking through your front door and demanding explanations about how you spend your money or why you live the way you do. Am I curious? Absolutely, but I'm also capable of understanding that wanting to know something doesn't automatically give me the right to know it.”

He had no fucking idea how close he'd come to destroying me with one sentence.