“I don’t want to break him,” he said.
“You won’t,” Daniels replied. “He already knows you.”
“Sit,” I said. “We’ll make sure no one gets dropped.”
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.
“Hey, little man,” he whispered. “Round two, huh?”
Theo blinked up at him and reached out, his tiny fingers curling into a fistful of Jax’s black hoodie.
He didn’t let go.
I heard Daniels draw in a breath.
“He does that every time he sees you,” he said. “It’s like he remembers.”
My eyes burned.
“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.”
Jax groaned.
“Oh my God,” he said. “Please no.”
Daniels smiled faintly.
“Whether you let them or not,” he said, “you should know this: every time I look at my son, I’ll think of you. You gave me back my whole world.”
Then he turned to me.
“If you ever need anything,” he said, “for him or for you—call me. Job reference, college recommendation, whatever. You’ve got someone in your corner.”
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.
