Page 45 of Sin Bin Daddies
I crack open the can, watching her for a beat. It’s easy with her. Too easy. “You ready?”
She nods. “Cool.”
We start down the beach path, the warm Miami night wrapping around us like a blanket. The salty breeze carries the sound of the waves, and for once, my brain’s not running a mile a minute.
Sunny bolts ahead, sand flying everywhere as he chases the tide before racing back.
Madeline sighs beside me. “It’s beautiful here.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
She tilts her head back, eyes scanning the sky. “It’s so different from Boston.”
“Yeah?”
She nods again. “Boston’s colder. Busier. Feels heavier, you know?”
I don’t—not really—but I nod anyway.
She talks like someone who’s been holding her breath for too long and is only just now letting it out.
“I like the energy,” she says. “But this? This feels like something else entirely.”
I glance at her, letting myself look a little longer than I should. The way the moonlight softens her features, the way she looks so calm. Like she fits here in a way I haven’t seen before.
“Where’d you grow up?” she asks.
“Minnesota.”
She blinks. “Hockey capital?”
“Basically.”
She grins, and it does something to me. Not sure what. Just… something.
Sunny loops back, leash tugging, kicking up sand like a lunatic. Madeline laughs and bends down to pet him, fingers sinking into his fur.
I watch her—really watch her. And suddenly, I want to ask things I shouldn’t.
What was Boston really like for her? Why did she leave? What’s she running from?
But I swallow the questions and say instead, “Tell me a fun fact.”
She glances up. “About what?”
“Anything.”
She tilts her head, considering. “Okay. Did you know the ocean is deeper than Mount Everest is tall?”
I blink. “Shit. Really?”
“Yep. If you dropped Everest into the Mariana Trench, it still wouldn’t reach the bottom.”
“That’s actually wild.”
She laughs again, and I don’t say it, but I’m thinking it—you’re the wild part. The way she shifts from guarded to open, the way she looks at the world.
We keep walking. The conversation flows, easy and unforced, like we’ve done this a hundred times.
