Page 100 of Anything But Lonely

She shrugs.

"I'm just saying there are a lot of ways to help people."

The comment should roll right off me.

Instead, something catches.

A memory.

You can be the singing firefighter.

Crew’s words echo in my mind for a moment, making me wonder if this is the answer I’ve been looking for.

All I want is to be a man my son can be proud of.

And that’s starting not to feel so impossible anymore.

CHAPTER 34

EMERSON

The next two months pass in a blur.

After New York City, we met back up with Crew in New Jersey just in time for a special Valentine's Day show. The Cross My Heart guys dressed in red, and Theo and Silas even let me draw little hearts on their cheeks.

Meanwhile, my Valentine’s Day included a four-year-old, entirely too much candy, and matching pajama pants covered in crooked little witch hats. By the end of the night, Crew had fallen asleep halfway across the bed with chocolate smudged on his cheek and one arm thrown over my stomach.

It had been one of my favorite Valentine's Days.

Then March arrived and disappeared just as quickly.

Show after show.

City after city.

Hotel rooms blurring together.

Our routine stayed the same—morning breakfasts before soundcheck. Crew's endless questions whenever we traveled between cities. Way too many games of Go Fish squeezed into travel days on the tour bus, as well as some Kindergarten prep sprinkled in. Mateo pressing a kiss to Crew’s sleeping head when he comes home.

Mateo.

Somewhere along the way, the line between us got harder to define.

We spent the days trading jabs and the nights finding excuses to linger a few minutes longer before going our separate ways.

Him stealing bites from my dinner just to annoy me; me taking sips of his coffee—even though an iced americano is ten times better than a hot one—just to make him roll his eyes.

And somehow every argument ended with both of us smiling, and Crew left laughing at our interaction.

I started looking forward to the moments that felt too intimate to be accidental but too innocent to call anything else—the way he would brush past me in the narrow hallway of the bus, his hand settling at my waist to steady me, or the way I would fix his hair before a show and wish him good luck, my fingers lingering a little longer than they needed to.

We never acknowledged it.

Never called attention to the way his eyes would linger or the way my breath would catch.

But we both noticed.

It was never enough to call it anything.