I nodded at him, not completely convinced calling him was something I wouldn’t get unfriended for. “Thanks again.”
Dallas shrugged one rounded, muscular shoulder. “Make sure your doors are locked, all right?”
The nod I gave him was slow. That prideful part of me wanted to say I could take care of myself. Because I could. I had. I took care of two boys and me. But I kept my trap shut. I knew when to accept help and when not. It wasn’t like I had anyone else.
“Hey!” I called out to him all of a sudden. “Josh is having a birthday party next weekend. If you have nothing better to do, feel free to drop by. We’ll have food, and I’m inviting some of the other neighbors, too.” I didn’t need him thinking I was trying to reel him in.
Dallas hesitated for a moment, already walking away. His back was to me. “All right.” He didn’t move for a moment. “Keep an eye out next time you get home.”
Indignation flared in my chest at being treated like a stupid kid. What was with this man and his bossiness?
Those golden-brown eyes glanced over his shoulder. That familiar line formed between his eyebrows. “Don’t get pissed off,” he said, turning forward again before tossing out, “I only want to help. See you later.”
Chapter Eleven
“Louie Chewy,” I said his name calmly.
He didn’t look up at me. He knew what I was about to ask. I had eyes. So did he, and he was using his to look at the not-so-interesting sky.
I scratched the tip of my nose. “Where is your shoe, boo?”
Even after I asked him about the missing sneaker, which I knew for a fact he’d had on when we’d left the house—because why would he leave the house with only one sneaker on?—he still didn’t look down at his sock-covered foot. The same sock-covered foot that suddenly had curled toes inside of the blue and black material as if he was trying to hide. Jesus Christ.
He tilted his head to the side and shrugged those small shoulders. “I don’t know,” he whispered.
Not again. With his attention focused on something other than me, I didn’t feel bad about pinching the bridge of my nose. He knew I only did that when it was deserved, and this would count as one of those times. If someone had told me four years ago that little boys randomly lost their shoes for no reason at all, I would have laughed and told them “that sucks.” If Josh had ever misplaced a sneaker at a young age without being in my presence, Rodrigo hadn’t told me about it. Who the hell loses a shoe and isn’t blackout drunk? How the hell does someone lose a shoe to begin with? I wouldn’t walk around bragging about it either.
But now, two years into this guardian slash parenting gig, I understood how possible it was. Three-times-in-a-year possible. How my little biscuit of love, who was usually more prepared than me, had something go missing was beyond my brain’s capacity to comprehend. The fact was he did. Like him sneaking into my room and scaring me half to death, I should have been used to it. At least, I shouldn’t have been surprised he managed to do it.
As we stood near the bleachers at the field where Josh practiced, I glanced around, hoping to magically see a shoe that my gut expected was gone forever.
Fuck.
Crouching down, I set my bag on the ground next to us and placed a hand on his shoulder. “I told you to tell me when this stuff happens, Lou.” He still hadn’t made eye contact.
“I know.” I could barely hear him.
“Then why didn’t you?”
“Because.”
“Because what?”
“I lost my shoe last week.” He had? “Grandma bought me the same ones, and she made me promise not to lose ‘em again.”
Motherfucker. And here I went feeling bad when I kept stuff from the Larsens.
Pressing the tips of my fingers to his jaw, I gently made him look at me. His features were so remorseful I was tempted to tell him it was okay and not to worry about it, but all I had to do was imagine him growing up into a liar and know that was the worst thing I could do. “I’m not going to get really mad at you if you tell me the truth, and I don’t like it when you lie to me. You can lie to me by not telling me anything too, Louie. You really have to be more careful with your stuff.”
“I know.”
“I know you know. But now I’m not going to buy you another pair that you like until I know you can take care of them—”
He gasped. “But—”
“Nope.”
“But—”
“Nuh-uh.”
“But—”
“I’m not, Lou. I warned you already. Now show me where the last place you saw it was. Maybe we can find it.”
He sighed but kept his argument to himself, finally.
On the other side of the fence, the players were huddled around their coaches as practice came to an end. Keeping an eye on them, I turned around to let Louie jump on my back and stood up. “Where to?”
He pointed straight forward to the area where he’d been playing for the last hour with other brothers and sisters of the team’s lineup. There were still plenty of kids running around, and as I watched them, I wouldn’t hold it past one of them to have grabbed his sneaker and taken off with it. Kids were little shits sometimes.
With only the flashlight app that came on my phone, I moved the beam around the ground, CSI style, trying to find a trace of a shoelace or something.
“You lost your shoe again, dummy?”
I didn’t bother turning around to talk to Josh. “Don’t call your brother that… even if he did lose it.”
“I said I was sorry,” Louie muttered.
I smirked as I kicked a broken branch over to make sure it hadn’t mysteriously found its way beneath it. It hadn’t. “Lies. You never said you were sorry.”
He made a humming noise on my back. His breath was warm on the little hairs on my neck. “I did in my head.”
Despite everything, that made me laugh.
“I’ll go look over there.” Josh sighed, already moving away from us, his attention focused on the ground.
“What are you doing?” a voice asked from somewhere nearby a moment later.
Straightening, I glanced over my shoulder to find my neighbor there, his expression a confused one. I couldn’t blame him. I could only imagine what I looked like stumbling around in the dark with a five-year-old on my back.
“Hi.” This was the first time we’d seen each other since the day Anita had dropped by unexpectedly. Way unexpectedly. “We’re looking for a shoe about this size.” I used the fingers of one hand to give him an approximate length.
Dallas hummed and immediately glanced at the ground. I’d noticed during practice he’d trimmed his facial hair. The worn, red ball cap that he usually wore during baseball practice was pulled low on his forehead. “My mom used to say my shoes would just pick up and walk out of the house on their own.”
I eyed Louie over my shoulder and he turned his face away. Uh-huh.
“Where did you leave it, bud?” our neighbor asked as he walked around us to search the ground further ahead.