Page 33 of Redline Baby

Then I realize, all at once, standing there under the string lights with a slightly lopsided stuffed fox under one arm and his fingers still laced through mine, that I am in real trouble.

Not the fun kind.

Not the easy, low-stakes kind of trouble I've let myself feel about plenty of people over the years, the kind that fades the second the night ends.

This is something else.

Something that's been building quietly for weeks now, in sushi restaurants and bowling alleys and at a gravel pull-off on the side of a switchback, and I can't pretend anymore that it's just enjoying good company.

I like him.

I like him in a way that scares me a little, in a way that feels dangerously close to wanting something I don't know if I'm allowed to want again.

I don't say any of that out loud.

I just squeeze his hand once.

He squeezes back.

We keep walking, still holding hands.

We've started hanging out almost every day, one excuse or another—a coffee run, a spare hour after his shop closes, a text that starts as what are you doing and turns into three hours of nothing in particular.

I text him good morning most days before I'm even fully awake, and he answers within minutes, always, like he's been waiting.

We go back and forth all day about nothing important—a customer story from the shop, a joke Ni made, whatever ridiculous thing King said at the bar, an annoying customer during one of the few shifts I get at the grocery store—until one of us finally says goodnight far later than either of us means to.

On one of those slow, easy nights, we're sitting on his tailgate outside the shop after closing, sharing a bag of gas station chips because neither of us wanted to actually go anywhere.

The conversation drifts, easy, the way it always does with him now.

"Can I ask you something," I say, "and it's not a heavy question, I promise."

"Go ahead."

"What's your favorite part? Of the whole Daddy thing. If you had to pick."

He thinks about it properly, the way he thinks about everything.

"Bedtime routines," he says. "Not anything complicated. Just the repetition of it. Same steps every night, no matter what kind of day came before it. There's something steadying about that."

I laugh.

"What?" he asks, smiling, warm and patient.

"I wasn't expecting that! That's very you. Structure again."

"I like things with a shape."

He steals a chip out of the bag.

"What about you? What's your favorite thing to do when you're Little?"

"Coloring," I admit, easier to say now than it used to be. "Having somewhere to put my hands that isn't a throttle. Somebody letting me pick a stupid color and not asking me to explain why."

"That's not stupid."

"It feels a little stupid."