you okay?” Her palm lay over his heart, fingers splayed, searing through his shirt.
He touched her lower back, just to steady her, but it felt like the one place on earth his hand was born to rest. All the edgy tension rippled right out of him, and he exhaled through the dizziness of the change. He’d been not-okay, but now he was just fine. Like magic.
He was starting to irritate himself.
“Don’t worry about me,” he murmured. “I’m sorry I’m being so…”
She arched her brows and waited, forcing him to finish the sentence.
He sighed. “Sorry I’m being so quiet. I think I ate too much.”
Her laughter was incredulous. “You could eat a truck-full of pizza, and it wouldn’t be too much.”
His lips twitched. She wasn’t wrong.
“It’s okay to be in a bad mood, you know. I don’t need you to entertain me all the time.” She gave him a considering look with those pretty doe eyes. Her hesitation tasted like icing sugar, like care. “I like being around you, Zach. Even when you’re not performing. Okay?”
Honestly? He felt like she’d just whacked him over the head with a two-by-four. This was the sweetest concussion of his life. “Okay,” he said, and meant it. His hand at the small of her back felt electric.
She smiled. Then she turned away, and her expression changed. Drooped. He followed her gaze and found the cause: at the centre of the dining hall, a group of adults cooed happily as a golden-haired toddler stumbled across the floor. Then a beaming, equally golden-haired woman came along to sweep the kid up in her arms. The toddler squealed and laughed and clapped its pudgy hands. Rae looked like she’d been teabagged by a ghost, her expression caught between shock and horror.
Zach didn’t want kids, so he’d always assumed Rae was childless for the same reason. Now he wondered if he’d been way off.
“Hey,” he said, grabbing her hand, clutching her limp fingers tight. “You good?”
She blinked a few times, like a robot rebooting. “I’m fine,” she breathed, and she did look better now. “I was just… surprised.”
He nodded dubiously. “It is pretty late for a kid to be up.”
“No,” she said. “That’s—that’s Kevin’s son.”
Now Zach probably looked like he’d been teabagged by a ghost. “What?”
“That’s Kevin’s son. It looks just like him. And the woman holding him is Billie.” She nodded again, as if talking it through had made her certain. “They must have brought him to the convention.”
“Why the fuck would they bring a toddler to a convention?”
“Maybe they couldn’t get a sitter.”
“I thought your husband was rolling in it?”
There was a flash of familiar fire in her rakish, one-sided smile. “Maybe he wanted to make this a family affair. He likes attention. Oh, God, everyone’s noticed me.” She stiffened. The fire flickered, went out.
“No, they haven’t,” Zach lied, sliding an arm over her shoulders, dragging her into his side. Despite his words, curious eyes crept toward them, two by two. The room seemed to be holding its breath, wondering how Rae would take this. He felt her crumbling against him with sheer embarrassment, and suddenly, he was desperate to fix it.
“They’re all staring at me,” she hissed.
“They’ve been staring all night. You’re beautiful.”
Laughter bubbled out of her, sharper than it should be. “I’m lurking in the shadows, spying on my ex-husband’s baby.”
“Actually,” Zach said, “we’re lurking in the shadows because you look like dessert.”
She tipped her head back to frown at him in confusion. He couldn’t help himself. He kissed her snub little nose.
She sucked in a breath, and he felt like she’d taken it directly from his lungs. That was how they worked: she acted, he reacted. Or maybe it was the other way around, a cycle that had started without him noticing. He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know; he just wanted to make things better. This was exactly the kind of disaster he’d come to help with, after all.
He wrapped his arms around her and spoke into the fall of her hair. “I’m about to fake-boyfriend you.”
After a moment, she relaxed against his chest, flashing him a familiar smirk. “Is that a verb?”
“It is now.” He grazed a kiss over her cheekbone. Lips, skin, pressure. He’d done this a thousand times—not with her, but then, it shouldn’t really matter that it was with her.
And yet, it did. The way the tension slid out of her body, the way her fingers tangled in the fabric of his shirt, the way she stared at