“Where’s my mommy?” he asked.
I pushed his hair away from his forehead, the gesture unthinking. He stiffened initially but relaxed into my touch when I kept it gentle.
“I don’t know, bud. I would very much like to know that too. I’m going to take care of you until your mommy can come pick you up, though. We can watch movies and have a snack until she gets there. Would you like that?”
He nodded and told me, “I like Spiderman. He’s super cool.”
I put an expression of delighted shock on my face. “Yeah? So do I. We seem to have all the right things in common then. We’re going to have a great time together.”
He nodded as if I spoke a proven fact.
I couldn’t stop a genuine smile. The little guy was adorable.
He kept his eyes on me then surprisingly said, “I have seen a picture of you in my mommy’s room. She told me I would meet you one day. You look like me.”
My heart beat in an erratic pattern, racing one second then slowing down the next.
“Yeah?” I said.
“Yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “We should be friends.”
I didn’t know when was the last time I cried but I felt the telltale prick of tears in the corner of my eyes.
“I would like that every much,” I said, voice choked.
Once I got to my apartment, I settled Noah on the couch.
He was impressed by the size of my television and we located a channel playing cartoons.
I asked if he was hungry, having spotted a few snacks into his bag. He declined respectfully.
I offered him a glass of water after and he accepted. When I returned fr
om the kitchen with the glass though, he had already curled up on the couch and fallen asleep.
I pulled his shoes off and settled him into a more comfortable position before settling across from him.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him. They moved over, my brain trying to catalogue everything about him.
I called Hailey’s phone a few more times, pissed as hell I had a kid and had no clue about it.
Hailey had a lot to answer for when we saw each other.
Chapter Seventeen: Hailey
Joe had been found.
And thank goodness, he wasn’t into drugs.
His life was filled with way too much drama for a high schooler though.
He had a crush on a girl that went the same school as he did. She was being abused by her boyfriend, a guy who went to the same school but was one year older than them. To add to this guy’s no good tendencies, he was also a small-time drug dealer.
Joe had stolen a stash of the teenager’s drugs in effort to take the guy’s focus off his girlfriend and direct at him.
His plan had worked and he now had a busted lip, blackened eyes and various other scrapes to prove it.
My family and the police hadn’t been the only ones searching for Joe. The small time crook had gotten to him first and given him a beating.