Page 72 of Unforgettable

“It’s not like I could’ve told him no. Did you see the faces he was making? And you can’t deny his thinking was hard to argue with.”

Josh made an unamused sound in the back of his throat and scrubbed a hand through his unruly dirty-blond hair.

“If you can’t hold your ground with a six-year-old, we have bigger problems,” he whispered.

“He’s not a normal six-year-old. He’syoursix-year-old, Sunshine.” I flashed a smile at him, trying to dismantle his frustration piece by piece.

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that he knows exactly how to get under my skin in the same way you do.”

Josh stopped suddenly as we made it to the top of the stairs, Amanda’s apartment a few doors down to our right. I looked back at him and he was looking at me through narrowed eyes. Under his intense stare, I didn’t know what to do, so I shoved my hands into the front pockets of my jeans and straightened my posture.

“I get under your skin?” he asked in a voice so quiet I could barely hear him.

My throat felt tight, and my skin prickled with awareness. Josh studied me with an intensity in his eyes I hadn’t witnessed before, darting his attention from my feet, up my legs and over my midsection before landing again on my face.

His jaw, covered in scruff from the past few days, clenched several times, and his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

I was paying so much attention to him watching me that I’d forgotten he’d asked a question and was waiting for my answer.

“Yeah,” I croaked out and cleared my throat of whatever was blocking it. “Yeah, you do.”

He nodded and acted like he was going to say something else but was distracted by Zach pounding on Amanda’s door.

It was going to be a long day.

“Auntie Manda, what does an octopus eat? Do they eat fish?”

It was Zach’s millionth question of the day for Amanda—when he’d remembered she taught science, he began posing all of his questions to her. And as I knew she would, she took them in stride, answering what she could and covertly googling the rest.

“They eat crabs, snails, fish, and even other octopuses.”

“Octopuses? Is that right?”

“Yes,” she said, but it still sounded wrong to me.

“Octopi sounds more correct.”

“Both work. Now, shush. Zach is learning.” She held her finger to her lips and shushed me as Zach asked ten follow-up questions.

In two hours, we’d made it most of the way through the exhibits. Zach had found his “Nemo” fish and also discovered what an eel was. The eel had prompted several questions—more than I’d ever thought to ask about an eel. But to watch his face light up every time he saw a new animal was priceless and worth the hours of questions.

We turned another corner and were met with tiny shrieks and echoing laughter. Zach’s jaw dropped and Amanda and I suppressed a chuckle at his stunned silence.

He excitedly tugged Amanda’s hand, which he hadn’t let go of for most of the day and turned back to us. “We… we get to feed the stingrays?” he stuttered.

“Yes, you want to?”

“That’s a dumb question, Auntie Manda,” he quipped and took off for the small stingray enclosure. It was a low glass pool that was completely open at the top and surrounded by children and their parents.

Amanda was being tugged to the enclosure but took a moment to look back. “Where’s Josh?”

We both quickly looked around, but there wasn’t any sign of him.

“I’ll go look, you deal with the hellion.”

She didn’t have time to respond as Zach lurched forward and yanked her in the opposite direction.

---