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I want rules—bedtime, screen time, eat your dinner before dessert—and I want to watch him test them inch by inch, and correct him when he pushes too far and praise him when he tries, actually tries, instead of just surviving another day on autopilot like his mother taught him to do for nineteen years straight without stopping once for breath.

Daddy/little.

Daddy/boy.

Whatever shape fits when he’s ready to name it. Would that really make this worse? Maybe. But it might make it better too.

For him.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

Kamden responds to care as a starving animal would. Every bit of attention disappears straight into him. Nothing is wasted.

One compliment and he glows for ten minutes.

One instruction and he settles.

One reward, and he spends half the day looking at me like I performed a miracle instead of buying a sketchbook.

He needs this.

And I—

Fuck.

I need him needing it.

There’s the truth.

Ugly enough that I can respect it.

I pick up the plate.

He is going to be mine anyway.

I made that decision somewhere between seeing his face in Mathias’s file and carrying him out of that alley.

I am not giving him back to Sherry, and I am not sending him alone into the world while the Grecos believe he should be dead.

Eventually, if he wants to go to school, he’ll go. If he wants a career, he’ll get one. If he wants friends, fine.

But he does it safe.

Protected.

With me.

So if the boy under all that fear needs a Daddy?

Why the hell would I pretend I’m not one?

I head back to the bedroom and push the door open.

Kamden is already half-asleep, his body a soft curve beneath the comforter. His head has lolled sideways against the pillow, blond hair fanned out like spilled golden threads, darkening the cream cashmere at his collar where it’s still a bit damp. The stuffed rabbit is tucked tight beneath his chin, one ear pressed to his throat.

His eyelashes flutter open at my approach, blue eyes hazy with sleep. “Hi.” His voice is thick, syrupy with exhaustion.

“Hi, sweetheart.” I sit on the edge of the bed, the mattress groaning softly under my weight. “Water first.”