Ben looked from Dean to where Dean's finger rested, reading the numbers with that funny sort of feeling light he'd had one time when he had a fever with the chicken pox, all funny headed like his head might float away.
99.99%.
Round up. Dean had said to round up.
100%.
Dean was 100% his Dad. Dean. His Dad. He finally had a Dad.
The sound that left Ben as he launched himself off the porch to the sidewalk was a war whoop worthy of the middle of a battlefield and thus infinitely more earshattering in the otherwise quiet of the neighborhood they lived in. Air guitars and air drums to no music, a victory dance worthy of the top NFL players and even just the squirmy, puppylike excitement of a small boy – all of it was Ben Braeden's celebration.
When he finally stopped and faced Dean, he grinned, no shame anywhere for the spectacle he'd just made of himself. This? This deserved that kind of spectacle, it deserved to be shouted from the tops of the tallest places in LA.
But first it needed to be said to Dean.
"Hi, Dad." There was no great shift, as he'd pinned his hopes and dreams on this being true, there was just the finality of knowing what he'd believed was true. The word – that most important word that he'd waited and waited to use – was spoken with the wonder only a child could manage, as though nothing could be more fantastic in the entire world than that very word, and then he threw himself at Dean.