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“Go, Dada!”

And exactly these kinds of words bursting from his lips.

“Bad guys, no. Dada, yes!”

And those.

“Lux…”

“Dada go save horsies. Go, Dada. Go, go, gooooo!”

“Lux!”

And this kind of reprimand ripping out of me, entirely too late, as our son’s energy turns into his energy. Before I can warn him into restraining the fire, the blue-white comets that form in his palms turn into the double fireballs that shoot up to—and then through—the ceiling. This would be a great coincidence, if anyone was suddenly in the mood to smell like “Honeysuckle Heaven.” Since the master bathroom is directly overhead, my son’s found a shortcut into the caddy next to my bathtub. Everyone in the room is suddenly doused in my favorite bath salts, body talc, and skin lotion.

For a long second, I’m too stunned to react. During the next one, all my protective instincts surge, and I visually check my son from head to toe. Like the rest of us, Lux is covered in a sweet-smelling but totally gooey mush. Unlike the rest of us, his bottom lip is vibrating as if he’s about to lose every speck of his composure.

A situation not helped when my sister totally does.

But while Lux looks ready to fill Malibu Creek with his tears, his Auntie ’Dia gives up the fight against a spurt of nonstop laughter. Crazily, even Dad joins her—and Sawyer looks ready to, until I quell him with a withering glance. With Sawyer down, I pivot back to fully face my irreverent sibling, with her hair full of talc and her face streaked with lotion.

“Oh, come on, baby girl,” she chides at my glare. “You have to admit, this is way more epic than that.” She nods toward the wide screen, which has come through the craziness with nothing more than a light talc dusting. Through that fragrant fuzz, we look on as the horse wranglers, suddenly realizing they’re up against the superhero of LA as well as the SWAT team, actually come out with their hands high and their heads low. A full surrender. “Okay, maybe that is better.” She pumps a fist. “Way to get that trash, Bolt Man!”

Lux sprints to join his auntie, a trail of talc and salts scattered in his wake. “Dada Bolt,” he shrieks in joy. “Get ’em, Dada! Trash all gone. Trash all gone!”

“Oh, dear hell.” I drop my head into a hand—as my sister breaks out into louder laughs.

“That’s right, Lux-alicious,” she praises, scooping him up and then spinning in a circle. “Dada’s a regular badass. Yaaaayyy!”

“Badass Dada!” My son copies ’Dia by pumping his fist. “Bad guys gone!”

I turn away, giving my conflicted groan to the wall instead of unleashing my furious frustration on my sister. Thank God for Sawyer and the training of his drop-back-and-watch mode—from which he emerges to give me a brief shoulder squeeze before calmly walking over and taking Lux from Lydia.

“Hey, dude,” he murmurs, setting Lux back down. He gently tweaks my son’s rosy cheek. “Time for us to talk man-to-man, okay?”

Lux’s shiny blond waves shimmer in the light from his vigorous nod. “’Kay, Unca Saw Saw.”

At once, my sister changes from saucy to mushy, her face almost emulsifying as she watches her man’s tender but firm expression. She lifts her head, finding my gaze quickly, before unleashing an “are you seeing this?” stare on me. As I wink out my affirmation, Sawyer starts his little pep talk.

“So, you see your dad up there, taking care of the bad guys?” He waits for Lux’s new nod. “You want to know how he does that? Yeah, I know you do. Well, it’s ’cause he ate everything your mama told him to eat, like even broccoli and beans.” A smirk twists beneath his stubble in proportion to the scowl crunched by my son. “Dude, that stuff makes you mighty, okay? And you want to have big, strong muscles like your dad, right?” He flashes a you’re-welcome wink at me before going on. “So, there’s other stuff your dad did to get ready for kicking a—errrr, I mean beating the bad guys. Want to know what it was?”

“Yeah, Unca!”

The scene has me joining Lydia in the melt-me-now department, as Lux presses his tiny hands into Sawyer’s stubble. I’m positive my sister and I are sharing more than outward swoons, as well. Her thoughts have to be chugging on the same track as mine. Our secret-agent-man-gone-chill-surfer-dude needs to have a new hyphenation on his descriptor. Epic-awesome-baby-daddy.

“Okay, so your dad has all those slick moves because he did something called practice. Do you know what that means, bud?” He endures the soft smacks of gold hair as Lux shakes his head in the negative. “Well, it means that he tried out all those things, over and over again, until he got it right.” He leans his face in, ensuring he has Lux’s full and locked attention. “If you want to practice too, then I’ll help you. But”—his exhortation bites into Lux’s squee of joy—“in order to be super good at practice, you really have to eat every bite Mom puts on your plate. And yeah, that means everything green, leafy, or smelly. Can you promise me you’ll do that?”

I barely contain my jaw from dropping as my son nods in agreement—and with gusto. As soon as he’s finished, he turns and runs for the kitchen, yelling at Anya that he’d like some grapes for a snack.

Before Sawyer’s done rising back up, I state, “Unbelievably, I think I just fell in love with you a little more, dude.”

“Heeeyyy.” Lydia crowds into his side, smacking a possessive hand across his torso. “That’s my job, missy.”

“One that you accomplish very well, missy.” Sawyer’s rewarded for his declaration with a nibbling kiss along his jaw. “Hmmm. Very well.”

As the pair move together, finding each other with their mouths and then delving into an affectionate tongue tangle, I let a long groan tumble out. “All right, all right; we get it. And by ‘we,’ I mean the crowd including your father, Princess Purple Pants.”

Lydia tilts her head and tightens her gaze to slits. “Well, just for that…” And then treats Dad and me with front-row seating as she yanks a fistful of Sawyer’s hair and drags him into a kiss straight from a banned Tumblr feed.