I stared at him.
The whistle of the kettle cut sharp through the room, loud enough to break the moment whether I wanted it to or not. I grabbed it off the burner, the heat biting into my palm through the handle as I poured water into the mug already waiting on the counter.
“You’re overthinking it,” he snickered.
I let out a quiet laugh that didn’t feel like one. “That’s literally my job.”
“That’s your problem.”
I turned, mug in hand, the heat seeping into my fingers as I leaned back against the counter again. “And pretending things don’t mean anything is yours.”
His gaze dropped.
Not to my face.
Lower.
Just for a second.
My pulse kicked.
And then his eyes came back up like nothing had happened.
“Is it?” he asked.
I bit my lip. The answer sat, sharp and complicated in the back of my mind. It was not something I was willing to hand him.
“What do you want to eat?” Alois asked, as if the last three minutes had been magically erased from his mind.
The shift was so abrupt it took me a second to follow.
“What?”
“Food,” he sighed, already reaching for his phone. “You didn’t eat.”
“I—” I stopped, because he wasn’t wrong.
“I’ve got it.”
I watched him for a second, the way his shoulders had dropped just slightly, the way the sharp edges of him had dulled in the quiet of the apartment. The tension from the arena still sat in his body—I could see it in the set of his jaw, in the way his fingers flexed once around his phone—but it wasn’t driving him anymore.
He looked… tired.
Not physically.
Deeper than that.
“What are you ordering?” I asked, softer now.
He didn’t answer right away.
Just tapped something on the screen.
And then—“Same thing you always get,” he offered.
My brows pulled together. “Which is?”
His gaze flicked up, just long enough to catch mine.