He’d loved more than a few people over the course of his life. Addison. Kelly, Jennifer, some other women over the years. In a way, he loved his team and the Wards. He was fond of some of the people from the charity, and he loved that they’d been receptive to his wavelength and what he wanted to do. Kel’s way wasn’t the right way, but it had been a way forward. With the money and resources he’d put in, the charity helped ensure more teenagers with mental health problems or other crises had a way forward.

But when it came to receiving and feeling love, though he had a growing number of fans and supporters in the community, and he’d married a beautiful woman who had beamed on their wedding day, it rarely registered. It only felt like ‘real’ love with Addison, and back in the days with Kelly.

He and Gallant sped forward, a mostly invisible bridge between them and the roiling water. The wind whipped by, and the engine of the bike vibrated beneath them, powerful, special issue.

With his thumb, he flipped through settings on the bike. Cheating a little.

He reached the end of the glowing forcefield, and entered the city proper, still going faster than he should. The bike’s onboard computers were hooked into the traffic network. People at red lights were treated to flashing signs in the corners, to warn them that the light wasn’t about to turn green.

The coast was clear to sail through the first few intersections. The city worked with him, the flow of traffic was his flow.

To better stabilize with his nascent flight, he put more power into his boots. The power crackled and danced around his feet before solidifying, pressing further in until there was something almost crystalline about the configuration. He could see the facets, the power, and he could see the shape of what it was doing. He couldn’t decide the end results, but the results made sense, given what the object was and what he was doing with it.

It meant a little something, this headway.

⊙

“Done digesting?” Shawn asked. He was as nervous talking to his son as he was on any first date or first day of the job. As nervous as he’d been when stepping up to participate in his first costumed fight, against Blackball.

A thirteen-year-old Addison sat at the kitchen counter, his laptop beside him. The boxes from their recent move were still unpacked.

“I’ll start with the obvious… it’s not a desk job?” Addison asked.

“No,” Shawn said. “Sometimes, a lot of the time, but no.”

Addison was thoughtful, prone to his own ruminations. He was almost a carbon copy of Kelly, dark in style but always well meaning, with a lot going on beneath that mop of black hair that hung too far into his eyes. The girls in his class were ‘bananas’ crazy about him, to use phrasing he’d heard from one of Addison’s female friends. A fact which seemed to fluster his son twice as much as it pleased him.