Page 59 of Love at First Sighting
Carter stares back at me with an intense gaze, but my brain is still in the dressing room, where his hands wandered up my body, his lips were on my neck, and I was ten secondsaway from reaching into the fishbowl full of Terra-branded condoms in Ian’s dressing room.
I’m testing the waters to see if he was as into it as I was.
The muscles in his throat tighten and he runs his tongue along the inside of his bottom lip. Now that the cat’s out of the bag, do we have free rein to touch each other in all the ways we want to and start checking off items on the dirty list I’ve been writing in my head for weeks?
Instead, he clears his throat and breaks away from me.
“I don’t know where to start,” Carter finally says.
“Well,” I say, rounding Marcus’s desk. I kneel beside the drawers and tug at each one. Carter looks afraid to start breaking the rules, but after a moment, he approaches the desk and starts sifting through it. He flips through pages and pages of case files in a file holder on the desk, thumbs through a folder of receipts.
“Ugh, I have to do his expenses this week,” he grumbles. “Any luck?”
I shake my head but reach into my bag and whip out another bobby pin. I work on the lower drawer on Marcus’s desk until it slides open.
Carter’s busy looking through the books on the shelf behind Marcus’s desk, but inside the drawer I find a box of Parliament cigarettes, two lighters, and a single plastic desk organizer full of pens and paper clips. And a small spiral-bound book.
The front cover is dinged and frayed, but as I flip it open, I realize it’s a planner. This is exactly what we need. I stand and catch Carter’s attention. He turns and joins me at the desk. One of his hands rests on the small of my back and I shiver, but try to hide it.
We begin to move through the pages. Meetings. Doctor’s appointments. Calls to make. When we’re up to the present, the meetings and appointments are sparse, but as we move into the future, one sticks out.
Ian. Brazel Airfield.
I glance up at Carter, who looks like he’s had the wind knocked out of him. His teeth sink into his bottom lip. It was possible Ian knows more than one Marcus, despite Carter’s confirmation that it was his Marcus’s handwriting on the note with the cigar box. But a Marcus who plans to see Ian in a few weeks? It’s connective tissue—one that ties the only family Carter has to the family he lost. I’m quiet, waiting for him to say something first.
The last trace ofanythinghis father worked on had to do with Howard Forte, and there are files missing. Something happened in the time between the photo of the three of them and his death.
There’s a feeling of dread in my gut, and I hope Carter’s not about to learn something he’s not ready for. I don’tknowMarcus, but I have heard of Occam’s razor. In my mind, Marcus is holding the knife.
Carter doesn’t speak.
“Brazel Airfield,” I say. “I know that place. That’s the place Sam’s—sorry,Buster’s—”
Carter laughs and it’s a nice reprieve from the fear that was weighing him down moments ago.
“It’s the airfield his family has a hangar at. We flew to it for Coachella.”
“So it’s near Palm Springs?” he asks.
“Yeah. Driving distance from LA. I’m…familiar with it.”
Granted, I was halfway drunk and covered in body glitter by the time we got to the hangar and I don’t remember much of the trip, but I’d know it if I saw it, and that’s more of an advantage than we had a few minutes ago.
“Okay, so do you think we couldgothere for that meeting in a few weeks?”
“Absolutely,” I agree. “We’ll have to be stealthy again, but we can do it. If Marcus and Ian are up to something, they might discuss it when they’re alone, right?”
Carter shifts uncomfortably.
“Don’t you want to know?” I ask.
“Maybe.” I wait for him to say something else, but he sighs and rubs his hand over his face first. He was gung-ho suggesting it a moment ago, but the suggestion means he might find answers he doesn’t want. “El, Marcus is the closest thing to family I have.”
If he loses Marcus, he has no one. I can fill in the rest from there. I tilt his chin up and lock eyes with him. In my heels, we’re close to the same height. He finds my hand and holds on tight, brushing the back of it.
“I know. Trust me, I know. For all we know, we might just find two guys talking about whiskey or the stock market.”
He sucks in a deep breath and lets me slide my arms around his shoulders. I bury my head in his chest and squeeze him tightly, and it feels so good to offer him something—anything, really—and not want anything in return. Except for him to be happy.
