Page 140 of Redline Baby

“Yes.”

“Even if I don’t need saving anymore.”

“Especially then.”

He goes completely still beneath my hand.

“The saving was never the point, baby.”

His breath stops for half a second.

“You were always the point.”

The room is quiet. The curtains shift faintly against the window, afternoon light pressing softly through the glass. Under my palm, Kit’s skin is warm. His breathing is still uneven, but each exhale grows longer than the one before it.

I don’t move my hand. It takes time. That’s fine. I have all the time this takes. As far as I’m concerned, I have every day left in both our lives for this. I intend to spend all of them proving the same true thing until he no longer needs it proven. And probably for a long time after that. Some truths are worth repeating even once they’re believed.

***

The smell is the way it always is. Motor oil and whiskey. We push through the door, and the warmth of Redline closes around us. Kit pauses in the entryway for a second and simply lets the room arrive.

He has been coming here for a long time now. He knows every part of the building. Exposed brick. Pendant lights hanging from the open ceiling. The bar stretching along the near wall. Stools. Spanking benches. X-crosses.

Dex is at the far end with a drink in his hand, deep in an argument with Sol that has apparently been going on for some time.

Ni is at the bar. Allie is beside him.

Both of them are watching Dex and Sol with the expression of people who have heard this exact argument before and already know how it ends.

“—and I’m telling you, the compound doesn’t matter if the pressure’s wrong, that’s the whole—”

“Some things never change,” Kit says.

Loud enough that Dex turns.

“Kit! Back me up. Tell Sol pressure without compound talk is meaningless—”

“I’m staying out of it.”

Kit lifts both hands and glances back at me with that private, delighted look he still gets whenever he believes he has successfully avoided one of their arguments.

“Coward,” Dex calls after him.

“Strategic,” Kit fires back.

I catch his eye. There’s the small, satisfied flash of I stole that from you and I’m never giving it back. I shake my head. He’s right. He never will.

My hand finds the back of his neck as I follow him farther into the room.

The low couch in the Daddy/Little corner is open.

Kit goes there first. Before saying hello properly to his friends. Before getting a drink. No hesitation. He sits down in full view of the room without a flicker of the old flinch. Different from before. Different from the boy who once looked at this corner like it was a wound instead of somewhere he belonged. I sit beside him.

Kit digs through the basket of supplies near the couch and comes up with a coloring book. He flips through until he finds a squirrel, selects his pencils, and gets to work with the same tongue-between-teeth concentration he brings to anything he decides deserves his complete attention.

Allie wanders over eventually and sits on the arm of the couch. She watches him color without comment. She has watched him for years. But the old bracing quality is gone from her expression now. She simply looks pleased. Settled.

“Look, Daddy.”