Page 119 of Redline Baby

Everything stops.

The waitress is still moving between tables. Somebody behind me laughs. Cups click softly against saucers. A milk steamer hisses near the counter. But inside me— Still.

I look at him. Soren doesn’t look nervous. Of course he doesn’t. He looks like Soren. Certain. Warm. My Daddy. My face goes completely red. And the answer has been living inside me for so long that I don’t have to think about it at all.

“I love you too, Daddy.”

His smile is beautiful. His fingers tighten around mine.

I shift in my chair again, this time deliberately, because apparently I’m incapable of experiencing a life-changing emotional revelation without also being a menace.

Soren’s eyebrow lifts. I grin. My body is overwhelmed. My chest feels too full. My eyes sting a little, and I’m so happy I almost don’t know what to do with it.

Maybe that’s the strangest part. I used to think happiness had to feel like speed. Like an engine screaming beneath me. Like wind trying to tear me off the bike. Like being so alive I could barely survive it. But this is just eggs. Coffee. A wooden chair. Daddy’s hand around mine.

And for some reason, I think it might be the happiest I’ve ever been.

Chapter 27. Soren

The engine on the workbench has been waiting for me since Monday, a Norton Commando with a cracked primary case and a previous owner who apparently believed duct tape was a load-bearing structural element. I’ve been taking it apart slowly, each component assessed and set aside in order, and when the shop door opens and Kit’s boots hit the concrete, I don’t look up right away. I give it another three seconds, my hands still on the primary cover.

Kit’s footsteps cross the shop toward me.

He works here properly now. Not helping out, not hovering around the lifts until I invent something for him to do. He has a schedule, his own jobs on the board, his name in the payroll system, and a paycheck that lands in his account every other Friday. He argued with me about his starting rate for twenty minutes because he thought I was paying him too much. I showed him what I would pay another mechanic with his skill level and told him to stop trying to discount himself.

He did, eventually. Mostly.

He’s smiling when he reaches the bench, and that always makes my heart melt a little.

I set down the primary cover and pull off my right glove.

“Let me see it.”

Kit looks confused for a second. Then understanding flashes across his face, and he digs into his jacket pocket and drops his phone into my palm.

Seventy-three percent.

“Good boy.”

I pinch his cheek lightly.

He giggles, and it might be the most adorable sound he makes. I can see how proud he is of himself. My cute little boy.

I hand the phone back and strip off my other glove, setting both beside the dismantled Norton.

“Get ready. We’re leaving soon. Therapy’s at two.”

Kit looks at me in surprise, almost as though he expected me to have forgotten. Which is ridiculous. He knows better than that. These days, he knows quite a lot of things about what I will and will not forget.

His therapy appointments. His medication. Which roll he’ll complain about if I leave it off a sushi order. The fact that he likes his cocoa almost offensively rich. The drawer in my dresser that started as his and, eventually, became insufficient.

He fully moved out of his apartment last week.

There was no dramatic conversation about it. No declaration. We both knew he was already living with me in every meaningful sense, and at some point paying rent on an apartment where he barely slept became objectively ridiculous. So we packed his remaining things into boxes, drove them across town, and stopped pretending. His clothes take up far more than one drawer now.

On top of the dresser, directly above the drawer that used to contain nearly everything he kept at my place, sit three teddy bears. Milkshake. Duffy. And Pretty.

Pretty came out of a box wrapped carefully in one of Kit’s old shirts. Kit went very quiet when he unwrapped him. I didn’t ask questions. I watched him smooth the bear’s fur with his thumb, carry him to the dresser, and set him between the other two. Then he stepped back and looked at all three of them. That was it. I noticed. Of course I noticed.