Max looked at Ruby, really looked, for just a second, in the way he looked at her when he was reading something beneath the surface and not entirely happy with what he found.
Because he knew this ground, he had walked it in the early days of this new version of them the careful formality of sir and Mr. Byron that she had used when he was still a stranger to her, and the slow, quiet work of moving her away from it, name by name, day by day, until she was calling him Max with the ease of someone for whom the name had always been obvious.
And now they were back here. He didn't say anything about it. He pressed his lips together briefly and looked at his sons instead.
Nathan, patient in his arms. Ethan, looking between his parents with the bright, reading expression of a child who understands the atmosphere of a conversation even when he doesn't understand its content.
Max leaned forward and kissed Nathan's forehead. Then he set him down carefully and crouched to his level.
