“Sesame chicken. No carrots. Extra sauce. Steamed dumplings. Hot and sour.”
I blinked. “What?”
“You pick around the carrots,” he added, like it was nothing. “And you always say you’re not that hungry and then eat half of mine.”
Heat crept up my neck before I could stop it. “I—” I huffed out a breath. “That’s not?—”
“It is,” he said simply, already confirming the order.
I stared at him.
“You’ve been paying a lot of attention for someone who doesn’t care,” I sneered. The realization sat heavy in mychest, pressing against something I’d been keeping firmly contained.
His thumb paused on the screen. “Comes with the job,” he replied.
The order went through with a soft tap. He set his phone down on the counter, exhaling through his nose like that had taken more out of him than it should have.
His head turned slightly, eyes catching mine again, that same unreadable expression settling back into place. “What?”
I shook my head, pushing off the counter. “Nothing.”
Lie.He knew it.
Swallowing a report, Alois moved past me toward the living room, the space narrowing for a second as we passed each other. Close enough that I felt the heat of him, the faint scent of soap and something clean and distinctly him brushing against my senses.
I grabbed the blanket off the back of the couch, the soft fabric brushing against my fingers as I moved to sit, curling one leg under me as I tried to settle into something that felt normal.
Alois sat on the opposite end of the couch, leaving space between us.
Deliberate.
Respectful.
Wrong.
I pulled the blanket over my legs, the warmth welcome against skin that had gone cold somewhere between the arena and here.
I could feel his eyes on me—the weight of them, the quiet awareness that had been building all night now settling into something sharper. Something harder to ignore.
My fingers tightened in the fabric.
My instinct was to deflect. To joke. To move. To do anything but sit in the weight of what felt too close to real.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It settled around us, thick and warm, threading through the space in a way that felt… different.
Bento jumped up onto the couch a second later, landing lightly between us before turning in a slow circle and settling with his back pressed—lightly, deliberately—against Alois’s thigh.
I froze.
Alois didn’t react. Didn’t acknowledge it at all. He just… let it happen.
Like it wasn’t a big deal. Like it didn’t mean anything. But it did.God, it did.
Because Bento didn’t do that.
Didn’t trust anyone.
Now he was here. Between us. Bridging something neither of us had named.