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“You won’t,” Daniels replied. “He already knows you.”
Jax looked at me.
He lowered himself onto the couch, and Daniels carefully placed Theo in his arms.
Jax held him like something fragile, his big hands impossibly gentle.
Theo blinked up at him and reached out, his tiny fingers curling into a fistful of Jax’s black hoodie.
I heard Daniels draw in a breath.
“He does that every time he sees you,” he said. “It’s like he remembers.”
Daniels pulled a card from his pocket and handed it to Jax.
“I talked to your principal for me, please,” he said. “I don’t want what you did to go unrecognized. Maybe a small assembly. Local paper.”
“Oh my God,” he said. “Please no.”
Daniels smiled faintly.
Then he turned to me.
After he left, the house felt quieter—softer.
Jax sat there, staring at the card.
“Mom,” he said after a moment, “am I messed up for feeling bad for that girl? The one who left him?”
I shook my head.
“No,” I said. “She did something awful. But she was scared and 14. You’re 16, which isn’t much older. That’s the scary part.”
He tugged at a loose thread on his sleeve.
“We’re basically the same age,” he said. “She made the worst choice. I made a good one. That’s it.”
“That’s not it,” I said. “You heard a tiny, broken sound and your first instinct was to help. That’s who you are.”
He didn’t reply.
Later that night, we sat on the front steps wrapped in hoodies and blankets, staring at the dark park across the street.
“Even if everyone laughs at me tomorrow,” he said, “I know I did the right thing.”
I nudged his shoulder.
“I don’t think they’re going to laugh,” I said.
I was right.
By Monday, the story was everywhere—Facebook, the school group chat, the local paper.
The boy with the bright pink spiky hair, the piercings, the leather jacket.
People had a new way of talking about him now.
“Hey, that’s the kid who saved that baby.”
He still keeps the hair. Still wears the jacket. Still rolls his eyes at me.
But I’ll never forget the sight of him on that frozen bench, jacket wrapped around a trembling newborn, saying, “I couldn’t walk away.”
Sometimes you think the world has no heroes.
Then your 16-year-old punk son proves you wrong.