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.

“I don’t know,” the boy on my back answered in a muffled tone I recognized as him being embarrassed.

I tried to keep my snicker as quiet as possible, but it was still loud enough for Dallas to hear it and turn around. The way his eyebrows were shaped said he was amused. I couldn’t say I didn’t like that about him. After he’d brought his Xbox over, I’d watched how patient he was with Louie. Maybe he was still acting a little weird with me, but he hadn’t been the same way with either of the boys that night. When Josh and the boys had come out of the bedroom, demanding to be fed, they had all been excited to see Dallas there. Kids were awesome at sniffing out assholes, and I guess this man couldn’t be so bad if none of them complained. God knows Josh wouldn’t keep his opinion to himself on someone.

It also helped that the thing Trip told me about Dallas’s ex helped me not take his coolness personally.

“We’ll find it. Don’t worry,” he assured the monkey on my back.