Cal answered immediately.
Jace went quiet.
All the restless motion drained out of him.
“Yeah,” he whispered. “I know I’m still your kid.”
The silence that followed was full.
Jace nodded after a moment. “I’ll call Harper. Not tonight. I can only survive one Holloway emotional audit per evening.”
Cal said something.
“Yes, I’ll eat. I did eat. Declan cooked.” A beat. “Yes, vegetables. More than one. Everybody can relax.”
Tiny shoved his nose under Jace’s hand.
Jace scratched automatically between his ears. “I love you too, Dad.”
He ended the call and kept staring at the screen.
Neither of us moved.
Tiny, recognizing the emotional vulnerability of the room, rested his massive head in Jace’s lap and exhaled like he had personally resolved the crisis.
Jace looked down at him. “You are not subtle.”
Tiny’s tail thumped the cabinet once.
I crossed the kitchen.
Slowly. Giving him time to tell me no if he needed room.
He set the phone on the counter with careful fingers. “You heard.”
“Enough.”
“The bad parts or the terrifying parts?”
“The true parts.”
His laugh was thin. “That’s not a category I enjoy.”
I stepped between his knees. He was sitting on the edge of the counter, still half dressed, still flushed, but the softness from before had been replaced by something stripped down and sober.
His hand came up and pressed flat to my chest.
“I know I’ve told you,” he said. “But saying it to him felt different.”
“It was different.”
His fingers curled against my shirt. “I didn’t want you to think it meant less because it wasn’t some perfect moment.”
I covered his hand with mine. “Jace.”
“I know. I know you know. My brain is doing that thing where it opens seventeen tabs and every one of them is playing a video of me ruining my own life.”
“I don’t need perfect.”
