24
MARK
With a shake of my head, I punch the code into the new keypad on the front door of Leo’s building. It’s the first of two I’ll have to enter before I actually get to her place and while I’m definitely glad people can’t stroll in off the street anymore, I have to wonder if we went a little overboard.
It’s not some huge inconvenience to enter three different security codes just to get home, but it is kind of annoying. More the remembering part than anything else. Give me words—lyrics—or notes, directions, plans and a schedule, I’ll recite that shit back to you word for word twenty years down the line. Hell, I can remember my childhood phone number and street address from when I still lived with my mom but you give me three sequences of numbers that have to be entered within thirty seconds of the first being pressed, and I’m fucked. I’ve gotten locked out of the building twice already and the system has only been up and running for five days.
Thank god this shit isn’t connected to some kind of nuclear weapon.
“Hi, Mr. Mark.”
I smile as I close the lobby door behind me then immediately crouch to Carson’s level. “Hey, bud. What’s shakin’?”
“Playing cars.” He shrugs one shoulder and sighs long and loud. “While I wait for my dad to call.”
“He supposed to call today?”
“Mom said he is but I’ve been waiting like, a million hours.”
My brows lift as I fight a laugh. “That’s a pretty long time.”
Carson nods and goes into the bucket at his side, slowly pulling out little matchbox cars and lining them up on the tile floor.
My heart hurts for this kid.
Him and his mom, and it always has.
Adam is a good dude and he’s serving our country which probably makes him better than good but it’s hard seeing Jesse and Carson miss him the way they do.
Especially as it gets closer to the holidays, and they aren’t sure if Adam will be home or not.
“He’s probably just running behind, I’m sure he’ll call soon.”
When all I get is another halfhearted shrug, I open my mouth to say something stupid to make this kid laugh but my jaw snaps shut when he pulls out what is definitely Pete’s GTO.
I’d know it anywhere, I’ve seen it thousands of times.
“Hey, that’s pretty cool.” But weird as fuck because we couldn’t find that when we were packing up Pete and Lucky’s condo. And believe me when I say, we looked everywhere for it. Luck’s OCD wasn’t going to leave it behind, and honestly, neither was Pete but we gave up when the place was cleaned out.
Seeing Carson play with it in the lobby doesn’t make any sense.
He looks up at me with a big smile now, holding the blue sports car out for me to take. “Mr. Pete gave it to me.”
“He did…”
“Yep. Well, not Mr. Pete,really.”
I frown at Carson and turn the model over in my hand. “Really?”
“Yeah, it was someone else.”
“Someone else?” My heart drops right down to my balls but I have to keep my shit together for this kid. “Was it Mr. Norman?”
Carson shakes his head.
“Mr. Lucky?”
Another shake.
