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I gesture to the space behind him. “Excuse me.”
For one second, I think he won’t move. Then he steps aside.
I walk fast toward the exit, pulse thrumming in my throat.
Diane is already waiting in the cab. I slide in beside her and pull the door shut with a solid thunk.
“All good?” she asks, studying my face.
“Yeah,” I say, buckling my seatbelt. “Let’s go home.”
3
LEVI
“Can we go now?” Theo asks.
He plants his sneakers on my dashboard again. I snap my hand out, grab his ankle, and shove his foot down.
“Feet off the dash.”
“You said it would only be ten minutes. That was twenty minutes ago.”
He slumps lower in the passenger seat with the kind of dramatic suffering only ten-year-olds can pull off, then lunges for the glovebox and yanks it open.
A couple of months ago it was locked tight—knives and a compact inside. Now it’s crammed with snacks, juice boxes, and the endless random crap he leaves everywhere.
My whole car looks like this now. The apartment too. Kid stuff creeping into every corner of my life—toys on the floor, school papers on the counter, socks in places socks have no business being. Yesterday I pulled one out of my own pocket.
I slap his hand away and shove the glovebox shut. “No snacks. It’s almost bedtime.”
He pouts.
Mom babied him. Let him get away with too much. Then she died.
Now he’s mine.
I scrub a hand down my face, exhaustion sitting heavy behind my eyes. I’m all he’s got now. I’m not letting him get swallowed by the system. That doesn’t sit right with me.
“What are we even doing?” he groans, like sitting here for twenty minutes is costing him.
“Working.”
“You’re just staring at a house.”
“That’s the job.”
“That’s boring.”
He reaches for the glovebox again, and I catch his wrist before he gets there.
Usually I get a sitter. Theo thinks I do security work—close enough if you ignore the blood. I want him as far from the real thing as possible.
Not that I’m doing much of the real thing these days.
My left arm is fucked from the two bullets Drew put in my shoulder. Two surgeries later, and I still can’t close my hand properly because of the nerve damage.
All because that idiot fell for the billionaire’s daughter he was supposed to be guarding. When our boss, Ray, sent me in to make an example of him, the prick shot me and ran.
