I blinked. Otter was sitting in a chair at the table, close enough that our knees bumped underneath. He’d dished a plate for me, chunks of chicken resting on a bed of fettuccini Alfredo. He was holding the salad tongs and an empty bowl in his other hand, but his eyes were on me.

“What?”

“I asked if you were okay. You spaced out a little.”

“Yeah,” I said, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Just… a little tired. Got lost, I think.”

“Where’d you go?”

No judgment. Just a question. He knew what Ty and I did, how we could drift a little in our heads. It’d gotten better over the years, but sometimes it happened without me realizing it.

“Just… noodles, I guess.”

“Noodles.” He set the salad bowl next to my plate.

“When—after…. Damn, I don’t know why this is still so hard to talk about.”

He didn’t speak. Just waited for me to find my words. I adored everything about him.

I sighed. “Before I got my head out of my ass and did the right thing, we didn’t have much. We didn’t have anything. And your parents always offered, and Anna and Creed were there, but I didn’t always let myself have that, you know?” I shrugged awkwardly. “It was a… weird time. Noodles.”

“I’m—”

“Otter, I swear to god if you’re going to apologize, I’m dumping my plate in your lap.”

He scowled at me. “I wasn’t going to apolo—”

“You had that look on your face.”

“What look?”

“That one you get when you feel guilty about stuff that happened a long time ago that you had no control over. And now you’ve got the grumpy look on your face when you know I’m right but don’t want to admit it.”

He ignored that and instead said, “Wine?” as he uncorked the bottle.

“I’m onto you, Thompson. You’re up to something.”

He rolled his eyes. “You’re projecting.”

“Yeah, because that’s something I do—wait. Okay, it is, but I’m not right now! You seem to have forgotten that I know you better than anyone. You’re being shifty.”

“You do know me better than anyone,” he agreed, pouring me a glass and setting it next to my plate. I wasn’t going to fall for it. He was trying to get me drunk to ask me for some kinky sex thing involving a traffic cone or to tell me he’d actually been working with the mob all these years and that we had to go into witness protection. It would actually explain quite a lot, and now he was giving me that look, that soft look he got sometimes with me, like he knew I was being ridiculous. I never thought I’d ever have anyone look at me that way, and even now, even after all this time, it still knocked me for a loop whenever it happened.

“Sappy,” I muttered before I picked up the full wineglass and drank half of it in one go. I felt better after that.