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“I’m okay. So are my hightops.”

I bite back a smile. “That’s the important thing.”

He tilts his head, studying me with an openness most adults have long since trained out of themselves.

And that’s when it hits me.

I’ve seen while scrolling on my phone.

The little brother from the pictures.

“Wait…I know you.”

His eyebrows knit together.

“Well,” I say, “I actually know your brother.”

His forehead wrinkles.

“I don’t have a brother.”

I blink.

“You don’t?”

“Nope.”

I point down the hall, where Luke has just come into view, scanning the crowd with the particular alertness of a parent who has misplaced a child for approximately ninety seconds.

“Then who’s that?”

The boy follows my finger.

“Oh.” He looks back at me like I’ve misunderstood something deeply obvious. “That’s my dad.”

I stare at him.

He stares at me.

“Your dad?”

“Yep.”

“Luke?”

He nods once. “That’s what I said.”

And there it is. The floor suddenly feels like it is about to cave in.

Not brother. Dad. The man I spent two hours not-falling-for over coffee has a son, and I sat across from him the entire time thinking it was his sibling.

My brain stalls, feelings and facts refusing to line up in any order that makes sense.

Because here’s the math I can’t make work. I don’t do kids. I settled that a long time ago. Wonderful in small doses, then you hand them back. Not up for debate.

So there’s no good reason the loudest thing in me right now isn’t panic. It’s that I already like this kid. Somewhere in the countless photos I’ve apparently memorized his face. I like this kid, and I honestly don’t even know why. I just met him.

Luke reaches us just in time to catch whatever is happening on my face.