Page 41 of Her Dragon Daddy Disaster
I padded down the hallway to Jakub’s room. He wasn’t there. But the bedwasmade. Very, very unusual for him. My suspicion grew, but my worry calmed. It had the signs of being a two-person operation. That worry skyrocketed right back up as I truly thought about the only option for the second person.
After the condo was searched, I made my way to the stairs to the roof.
As my hand reached for the door, I heard the muffled sounds of laughter, followed by clapping and unintelligible words. But I would recognize my son’s laughter anywhere.
Cautiously, moving very slowly, I opened the door and slipped outside, closing it as softly as I could behind me. The door itself stood in a depression on one corner of the flat roof, with the stairs then leading up to the top.
I stayed there for a moment, doing little more than listening. Whatever was going on up there, nobody sounded in danger. In fact, judging from the deep, rumbling laughter like that of a landslide, combined with the higher-pitched giggling, it seemed both parties were having a good time.
Creeping up one stair at a time, until I could just peer over the lip, I watched, hidden, as Levi crouched in front of Levi, one hand held up at my son’s chest height.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Jakub nodded exuberantly, his hands at his shoulders, ready.
“Okay ….Go!”
Levi snapped his fingers, and a flame appeared from his palm. Jakub’s hands rushed together, trying to grab it.
But he was too slow. I gasped as the flame darted up and then to the side, curling around Levi’s wrist and then back up into his palm. The entire time, Jakub was trying to grab it, to clap both hands overtop it and trap the flame.
“Too slow!” Levi teased, waving his index finger back and forth. As he did, the flame leaped up next to him and moved back and forth as well.
Jakub’s left hand darted out and wrapped itself around the flame. I stifled another gasp, worried he would be burned, but when he crowed victory and opened his hand, the flame was gone!
“Good job, you got it!” Levi said.
“I want to do it now.”
“Maybe one day,” Levi said with all the solemnity the demand required. “But for now, it’s time to fly!”
He snatched my son up andhurledhim into the air.
I had to bite back on my instinct to scream and ask him what the hell he was doing. With his strength, Jakub soared five, ten feet above Levi’s head, kicking and screaming in delight the entire time.
Levi caught him effortlessly, chortling loudly as he tickled under the arms of the squirming four-year-old before suddenly flicking him high into the air once more.
“Again, again!” Jakub shouted.
“Okay, but remember,you asked for it!” Levi chuckled and sent Jakub screaming upward at impossible velocity.
I reached out a hand to stop him, but something stayed the action. Instantly, I began to question that decision as I saw the heights to which my only son reached. My firstborn. The most important thing to me in the world. Watching him go up and upand up, I feared for his safety and well-being with every fiber of my body.
Then I saw it, the thing that made me refrain from stopping them. It wasn’t the absolute trust in Levi. That was a childish naivety, something all children did innately. No, it wasn’t Jakub that drew my eye. It was Levi.
His body language looked casual. Like he wasn’t aware of just how high Jakub was or how close to the ledge they were. Yet his eyes tracked my son with near feverish intensity.
No, not my son, in this case. His son.
Jakub was still in the dark for now, but Levi wasn’t. And the more I studied him as he tossed Jakub around, the more I saw the care he put into what he was actually doing.
I sat back into the stairs, watching their interaction closely, trying to decipher my internal feelings on the matter.
“Again!” Jakub clapped as he came down, giggling with his full belly.
And just like that, off he went, sailing way above anyone’s reach, screaming his delight.
My stomach churned. Why was I so uncomfortable watching that bonding moment? It was what I wanted between the two of them, what I’d always dreamed of in my deepest, most secretive of fantasies. Wasn’t it? So, now that it was coming true, why was I so uncomfortable?
