but that. Promise.
“Lenny, have you seen my yellow—where are you going?”
I paused for a second in the middle of tying my tennis shoes before finishing the knot and saying over my shoulder, “It’s Sensei Kenji’s birthday, and he asked me to come by tonight and help with the white belts.” I switched feet and started tying the other shoe. “And I washed your Hawaiian print shirt yesterday. I hung it on the rack in the laundry room so it wouldn’t wrinkle.”
Grandpa Gus didn’t let me down as he leaned against the doorway and watched me tie my other shoe. “What? I didn’t get an invitation.”
“Maybe because you called him a lazy knucklehead the last time you were in a room together?” I stood up and flashed him a grin. “Or because you gave him a bad review on Google just to be petty after I quit?”
He scrunched up his nose, but his mouth stretched into a flat line before becoming a smile. “He is a knucklehead, and he deserved that review.”
I shook my head. “Come with us if you want. It’s not like not being invited has ever stopped you before.”
“I’ve got better things to do.”
“I’m taking Jonah and Mo with me.”
That got me a blink. “Emmett is going with you?”
I knew I shouldn’t egg him on by groaning, but I did anyway. I hoped this never got old. “Would you quit calling him the wrong name?” I definitely shouldn’t have laughed either, but apparently, I was going to be that mom one day who laughed when her kids did bad things and then struggled to be serious. I really was.
And it didn’t help that he laughed too.
What I didn’t miss was that he didn’t agree he was going to stop, and I knew better than to assume he would. At least until he was ready, and knowing him—and I did fucking know him—it wasn’t going to be anytime soon. It was a good thing Jonah was patient.
“Yes, he’s coming with me. We’re going to eat dinner first and then head over.”
What wasn’t a good thing was how well my grandfather knew me, especially when the next question he asked was “Are you nervous?”
I totally knew snorting was the worst physical reaction I could have, but I did it anyway. Because we both knew I was… not necessarily nervous, but maybe something close to it. Very close to it.
He slid me a look that was way too knowing. “You know you don’t have anything to worry about, demon child. It’s past time you went, and you know it.”
I did know it, but that didn’t make it any easier to collect my things and kid, and head over to pick up Jonah.
Jonah had only been in the passenger seat for maybe five minutes when I asked, “Are you sure you don’t mind coming?”
“Yeh. I’m sure,” he agreed, fingertips bouncing on his thigh. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you in action.”
In action. With the little kids. At the club I had spent so much of my life at.
Before I’d told them bye and never gone back.
There were very few things I regretted, but how I’d handled leaving was one of them.
“About that—” I started to say before I forced my mouth closed. The smell came out of fucking nowhere, stealing the words out of my mouth.
Pungent. Rabid. Fucking disgusting.
What the fuck?
I coughed and looked to my right at the man who hadn’t moved an inch and was still looking out the window with a tight jaw. Even the veins along his forearms were popping more than usual, but I let that thought go in one ear and right back out the other. I had more pressing matters. “Jonah, please tell me you pooted.”
He was still looking out the windshield when he answered. “Are you asking if I passed gas?”
I took another tentative sniff and coughed, shooting his profile a horrified face at the fucking awful smell. What was wrong with him? What the hell had he eaten for dinner? “Yes,” I gasped. Good God, I rolled down the window and leaned over to the side like that would make the smell any better.
It didn’t.
“Is there something dying in you?” I wheezed, trying to hold my breath in as much as possible and failing. “I don’t care if you do, but roll down the window if there’s some Agent Orange type shit coming out of you. Whoa. God. I can taste it.”
That had him glancing over at me, a remote expression on his face that I might have sucked up in any other circumstances. His forehead furrowed, his mouth a line as his nostrils flared. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything,” he defended himself. “I can’t smell a thing.”
How could he not smell that?
I coughed and sucked in the exhaust smell from the surrounding cars instead of the goddamn bomb that had gone off in the car. “It wasn’t me.”
Jonah clearly tried to take a whiff, but all he did was shake his head. “No, Lenny, I don’t smell anything.”
I slid him another horrified glance, but that damn smell didn’t go anywhere.
And then it hit me.
Like a cold finger along my spine, the knowledge—and the heavy feeling of dread—ran down me.
Fuck.
I glanced in the rearview mirror as I got to a stoplight and looked at the car seat holding a quiet little body I couldn’t see.
“Oh no,” I whispered more to myself than Jonah, my mind already racing with what needed to be done.
“What’s happened?” he asked, finally sounding worried. “Was it you?”
“No.” I eyed the car seat warily. “Mo just shit herself.”
He took another sniff, and I could see him shake his head. “I don’t smell anything.”
I sucked in another little breath through the opened window and rushed out, “Your septum’s deviated then because she shit herself.” Which meant I needed to pull over because there was no way I was going to survive the thirty-minute drive, and neither was my kid if she had a loaded diaper.
Because her diapers were one thing when she pooped herself, but I knew that damn smell when it got that bad. I guess my brain had just blocked it out in a sense of self-preservation from the last time she’d done the same thing. How the hell could I ever forget retching as I cleaned her butt from how awful it had smelled?
Worse: I knew exactly what color was going to be in her diaper.
What the fuck had Grandpa fed her? Fucking fuck.
I accidentally sucked in a breath and gagged.
How the hell did something so small smell so goddamn awful?
I retched and heard Jonah laugh like an asshole. “I can’t smell a thing.”
I held my breath as I turned the wheel into the first parking lot on the right-hand side, pulling into a small strip mall with a pharmacy and gas station. I barely managed to throw the door open, leaving the car running when I sucked in another big breath through my mouth. Where the hell was a respirator when I needed one?
“Are you all right?” my girl’s dad asked a moment before a hand landed on my upper back and he slapped me lightly three times, sounding totally back to himself, thankfully, even though I wasn’t worried about that anymore.
“Mm-hmm,” I groaned, shaking my head and trying to clear my nostrils.
What had to be his hand stroked up and down the center of my back slowly. “All right, take a breath. I’ll see what’s going on, yeah?”