Fred drove the way he always drove at night, smooth, unhurried, taking the long route without being asked, the kind of driver who understood that sometimes the car was not about the destination.
The city slid past the windows in streaks of amber and white.
Max sat with his elbow on the door, two fingers pressed to his mouth, looking out at nothing in particular. Anyone who didn't know him would have read it as calm.
Ruby, who was learning him in the way you learn a language you once already spoke, read it for what it was a man sorting through a very full room in the dark, deciding what to pick up first.
She watched him.
She had been watching him since they got in the car, in the way she did when she thought he wasn't paying attention, which, she was increasingly aware, was almost never. Max noticed everything. He simply had the discipline not to react to all of it.
