(Max’s POV)
The lecture finally ended, chairs scraping back in a wave, and I caught up to Lucian at the door before he could disappear into the hallway crowd without me.
"Where are you headed?"
"I’m hungry."
"Good, me too." I fell into step beside him, and it took maybe thirty seconds to realize we weren’t going the direction the cafeteria was in. "Wait — we’re passing the cafeteria."
"I know."
"I thought we were eating."
"Not here."
"Why?"
"Because I don’t want to."
"That’s not a reason, that’s just a sentence with the word want in it. Why?"
He stopped walking, just for a second, and turned to face me with something close to exasperation. "Because I don’t like the cafeteria. Too much attention. Too many people watching what I do and who I do it with."
"Oh." I hadn’t expected an actual answer. "Okay."
He started walking again, and I followed, mildly stunned by my own success.
The restaurant he led us to sat two blocks off campus, quiet, half-empty at this hour, the kind of place that clearly wasn’t built for students on a budget.
We got a booth in the back, ordered he barely glanced at the menu before rattling off his order like he’d memorized it, and by the time the food came, I’d run out of small talk and landed, predictably, on the thing I actually wanted to ask.
"You didn’t seem to hate me anymore." I said it around a mouthful of fries, testing the water.
"Did I ever say I hated you?"
"You made it pretty clear. That first day. ’We’re not going to be anything.’" I did my best impression of his flat, dismissive tone, and it earned me the faintest narrowing of his eyes. "Or at least you don’t dislike me anymore."
"That doesn’t mean I like you."
"Okay." I picked at my food, quieter now. "I know. I just hope we could be brothers. The way our parents want."
"I don’t have to do anything they want." He was already reaching for his wallet, sliding out of the booth like the conversation had reached its natural end point for him, whether or not I’d finished mine.
I hadn’t even finished my food. I got up anyway, because staying behind alone felt worse than leaving half a plate of fries uneaten, and caught up to him at the door.
We walked the rest of the way to the rink in silence, the good kind and the bad kind tangled together in a way I couldn’t fully separate.
The locker room was already loud when we got there, gear bags dropping, someone’s music playing tinny from a phone speaker, half the team mid-argument about a game from last season. I stood near the door a beat too long, jersey still in my bag, unmoving.
Lucian glanced over, already pulling his own shirt off. "Why aren’t you changing?"
"I am." I wasn’t. I made myself start, pulling my shirt over my head, aware too aware, that he hadn’t looked away yet.
He was watching me change. Not subtly. Not pretending not to. Just watching, arms crossed loosely, expression doing that thing where it gave away almost nothing except the fact that his eyes hadn’t moved.
Heat crawled up my neck. "Can you not."
"Not what."
"Stare at me like that while I’m getting dressed."
"I’m not staring." He was absolutely staring. "I’m standing here. You happen to be in front of me."
"That’s the same thing as staring."
"It’s really not." But something flickered at the corner of his mouth, close enough to amusement that I almost missed it. "Relax. Nobody’s impressed."
"I wasn’t worried about being impressive."
"Could’ve fooled me." He turned back to his own locker, finally, pulling his jersey over his head. "You get very flustered for someone who wasn’t worried."
"I’m not flustered."
"Sure."
"I’m not."
"Whatever you say." He was already walking toward the rink door, and I yanked my own jersey on fast, cheeks still warm, and hurried to catch up before he disappeared onto the ice without me.
The rink was cold in the way it always was, that particular bite that hit the second the door opened, and the team spread out across the ice for warmup laps, sticks tapping, skates carving long easy loops around the boards.
I stayed near the edge, still more careful than confident, working through the basic strides Knox had drilled into me over the past week.
"Looking better," Knox said, gliding past, grinning. "Less like a baby deer, more like a slightly confused baby deer."
"High praise."
"I give what I can."
The door at the far end banged open, and Coach Reyes strode in, clipboard under one arm, scanning the ice with the particular focus he brought to everything. His eyes landed on me first, then found Knox nearby.
"Max. Ashford. Center ice, now."
The whole rink seemed to still for a second, sticks slowing, a few heads turning to watch. I skated over on legs that suddenly felt a lot less steady than they had a minute ago.
"Coach?"
"I want to see what you’ve got." He clicked his pen, clipboard ready, eyes sharp and assessing in a way that made my stomach drop straight through the ice. "Ashford’s been running you through basics for a week. Let’s see if it stuck. Full speed. No holding back."
"Full speed?" My voice cracked slightly on the second word.
"Full speed." Coach Reyes didn’t blink. "I don’t run charity cases on this team, Max. If you’re staying on the roster, I need to know exactly what I’m working with. Ashford — drive him. Don’t go easy."
Knox’s easy grin faded into something more focused, more serious than I’d seen from him yet. "You sure, Coach? He’s only had a week."
"I’m sure. Line up."
I skated to the faceoff dot with my heart hammering, painfully aware of the whole team watching now, painfully aware of Lucian somewhere near the boards, stick resting against his skates, arms crossed, gaze fixed directly on me with an intensity that made the cold air feel thinner.
Coach Reyes raised the puck between us.
"On my whistle," he said, and the rink went dead silent except for the sound of my own pulse pounding in my ears.
The whistle blew.