Page 69 of Hold Back
Red strode over and took Kit’s hands, enveloping them with his larger ones. “I’m okay. More than okay.”
Kit peered up at him, under his dark lashes. “Are you sure?”
He squeezed Kit’s hands. “I’m sure. I didn’t mean to worry you. I was just thinking.”
“About what?”
“About how much fun this afternoon was.”
Kit smirked just a little. “Even being caught by Ronan and Mo?”
Red groaned and rested his forehead on the top of Kit’s head. “Don’t remind me. Mo’s never going to let me forget it. And the cake. But yeah, that was embarrassing but fun too.”
“We’ll have to do it again.”
“We will. Give me a minute and I’ll be out of here.”
Kit hesitated, then nodded slowly. “I’ll go choose the movie.”
Red watched him go. That was something he needed to factor in. Kit needed reassurance. The boy could be bratty and tease him, but only if he knew Red was there to back him up. Kit was a chaos demon but only if he knew he had a support network. Before it had been his brother and the club. But they’d ripped that away from him and now he was left with nothing.
Except Red.
Kit had him and Red would make sure he knew it. He was a Biker Daddy Bodyguard and maybe now he knew what that meant.
Red cleaned his teeth before he got distracted again and splashed water on his face. Then he headed out to see what horror of a movie Kit had picked for him.
It could have been worse.
Not much worse.
But on a scale of one to the plunging plumber, it was hovering somewhere around catastrophic-with-popcorn.
“You want to watchTrolls?”
Red blinked at the question. Kit stood by the couch like he’d just offered up the solution to world peace instead of a neon-colored children’s movie.
Kit’s smile broke open, bright and unguarded. “I loveTrolls. Don’t you love it, Daddy?”
There it was. That word. Dropped in soft and sweet and entirely too deliberate.
Red pressed his lips together to keep the grin from escaping. Wicked, wicked boy. He knew exactly which nerve to tap, exactly how to make Red remember things he’d filed away undercomplicationsanddon’t even start.
BecauseTrollswasn’t just a movie. It was that afternoon at the clubhouse he’d gotten himself into his first babysitting gig. His boy had been working a job across town, leaving Red with nothing but time and a restless engine under him, so he’d ridden out there looking for noise and found…Kit.
Sulking. Suspicious. Arms folded like he’d been personally wronged by the universe.
“Babysitting,” Tony had said, already halfway out the door, which should have been Red’s first clue to run.
Neither of them had wanted it. Kit had glared at him like he was the last person on earth he’d pick for company. Red had sprawled in a chair, boots on the table, trying to look like he wasn’t counting the minutes before he could bolt.
“You’re not putting on anything loud,” Kit had informed him, grabbing the remote like a weapon. “We’re watchingTrolls.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Then I scream every time you blink.”
Ten minutes later they were both leaning forward, elbows on their knees, arguing over whether Branch needed a hug or a personality transplant. Red had made some running commentary about survival rates in a world that bright, and Kit had laughed—really laughed, head tipped back, all the prickles gone out of him.
