Eustass Kid had known, from the very beginning, that she was a menace.

Not in the way most people were menaces — loud, aggressive, deliberately difficult. No. She was a menace in the quiet, devastating way. The kind that crept up on you. The kind that made a grown man with a reputation and a workshop full of dangerous equipment stand completely still, holding a socket wrench, while she pressed both hands to her cheeks and whispered "she's got blinking eyes" about a 1990 Mazda Miata.

She'd come in to get her car looked at two years ago. Standard job. Nothing remarkable about it. And somewhere between the third visit and the fourth, he'd stopped pretending he didn't look up when he heard her coming.

The Miata incident had been the real turning point. She'd wandered over while he was mid-restoration, handed him a cup of coffee, taken one look at the little car, and completely lost it.

"I wanna put big lashes on her. She'll look so pretty."

Kid had looked at the Miata. Then at her. Then back at the Miata.

He hadn't said a single word. But he'd thought about it for three days.

So when she'd grabbed his arm one Thursday evening, eyes bright, and said "zoo date this weekend?" — he'd known. He'd known exactly what he was signing up for. He'd said yes anyway, which was either love or a serious lapse in judgment, and he was no longer sure there was a difference.

He'd been proven right approximately four minutes after they arrived.

She'd made a beeline for the petting area before he'd even finished folding the zoo map, and he'd stood back and watched her crouch down in front of a baby goat like it was the most important meeting of her life. She'd scratched a llama under the chin with the focused tenderness of a professional. She'd held a duck — actually held it, cradled it in both hands — and made a sound so soft that the duck had looked mildly concerned.

And then they'd passed the tiger enclosure.

The tiger had been lying on its back, massive paws in the air, making slow, rhythmic biscuits at nothing in particular. Just a several-hundred-pound apex predator. Vibing.

She had clutched his arm and whispered "Baby."

Kid had decided not to comment.

Now they were sitting on the curved bleachers in front of the sea otter show, surrounded by families with small children and retirees with cameras, and she was — he glanced sideways — she was holding her own chest. Both hands. Like Cupid had struck her.

The otter was not doing anything extraordinary. It was holding a piece of fish in its little paws, blinking at the crowd with round, doe eyes, completely unbothered by the audience or the zookeeper or the small seashell that had just been balanced on top of its head. It swatted the shell away with one lazy flick. Blinked again.

She made a sound beside him.

His large hand found her shoulder on instinct — not quite a squeeze, just a steady weight, the same way he'd rest a hand on an engine he was trying to assess. Present. Grounding. He told himself it was practical.

The otter blinked.

She inhaled shakily.

Kid kept his eyes forward and said nothing, jaw set, expression unreadable to anyone who didn't know him.

His thumb moved, just slightly, against her shoulder.

"...You good?" he asked. He already knew the answer.