His smile was forced. “Yeah. Sounds good, Papa Bear.”

I nodded slowly, bouncing the pill in my closed fist. “You know you can talk to me about anything, right?”

“Yeah. I know. I just… I’m tired, is all. It’s been a rough day.”

“Yeah, I get that. Getting grounded is always tough.”

He rolled his eyes. “Not gonna happen.”

“Says you. No TV. Go to bed.”

“Jerk.”

“Little shit.”

He grinned, and it was real. “Love you too.”

“Got your pill.”

He held out his hand.

I hesitated. “Hey, weird thing, but. Did you….”

“What?”

“Seemed to be a few less Xanax in the bottle than there should be.”

He looked me straight in the eye and said, “Yeah. That was my bad. I was getting my dose yesterday while brushing my teeth. They fell in the sink. Faucet was running. They melted fast. Forgot to say anything.”

And yeah. That happened. Hell, I’d done something like that before. “All right,” I said, handing him the pill. “Just… if you need—”

“I’ll come to you,” he said. “I promise.”

“Yeah. Okay. Good night, Kid.”

“Night.”

And he closed the door.

I stood there, just a little longer.

THE BINDER was gone when I went back to the kitchen.

I didn’t know whether to be relieved or not.

There was a strange little ache in my chest, but I ignored it.

Otter closed the dishwasher and leaned against the counter, drying his hands. “He doing okay?”

“Think so. Not the first time it’s happened. Won’t be the last.”

“Maybe. I just can’t tell if it’s getting better or worse.”

I frowned. “What?”

“Between his decision to want to come here and everything he was leaving behind, I don’t know what to make of it sometimes.”

“Because of him.” We both knew who I meant.

“Yeah.”

I sighed. “Yeah. Did we do the right thing? You think?”

“Keeping Dom’s kid from him?”

I winced at that. “Yeah.”

“Some days I think so,” he said, holding out his hand for me. I took it and he pulled me close. “Other days, I don’t know.”

“He’s going to find out. Eventually.” Which was a day I wasn’t looking forward to.

“I think we did what we thought was right. At the time. Maybe it was a crush, or maybe it was hero worship—”

“I think we both know it was more than that.”

“Yeah.” Otter frowned. “Probably. But we told him we’d follow him whatever his choice was, and he chose to come here. Maybe it had to do with Dom and Stacey, and maybe it didn’t. But he was hurt either way, and we did the best we could. He made his choice, and we went with it.”

“Doesn’t mean it’s not going to blow up in our faces,” I muttered against his chest.

“We’ll deal with it when the time is right.”