Page 52 of State of Mind

They kissed again, long and slow, as they sat down on a stone bench, and Luca did little more than accept how absolutely perfect the moment was.

CHAPTER 16

Wilder had been waiting on apartment renovations for months, but it felt almost like a curse now that it was interfering with what little time he had to spare. It had been something on his to-do list after buying the place. A way to make it feel like his.

Adam had taken it poorly. It came across as anger, but Talia had taken him aside one afternoon to explain that Adam didn’t deal with change very well. Things eventually settled though, and Wilder showed Adam his plans to update things, and Adam no longer bit his head off every time they crossed paths.

Now, halfway through his day, Wilder found himself annoyed that his time for prep was being taken up by having to move shit around for the contractors. But he was glad it was finally happening. Adam, Talia, and Jayden showed up to help him get all of his stuff moved into the second bedroom, and he could feel the tension radiating off Adam in waves as that bedroom had been his for most of his life.

But he did it with a smile—a look of sad nostalgia in his eyes, but he didn’t complain once—even at the state of the wall. Wilder knew if he wanted to totally gut the place, Adam would have been devastated. But that wasn’t the point of it all. He just wanted it to feel like it was his home.

“Do we need to do anything else?” Talia asked, startling Wilder out of his thoughts.

He sighed. “Just remove the plywood and indicate any spaces that are weak and crumbling.”

Talia nodded, and they got to work, the place looking worse than before, but it was nice to see progress being made. She took the left corner of the room, and gently began to prod the crumbling drywall. What was left started to cave inward, a dull thump—but after a second, he swore the sound was different.

He adjusted his hearing aids, then pushed more material in—and it happened again. “Do you hear that?” he asked.

Adam was walking over, frowning. “Sounds like…something falling on a cookie tin?”

It was a weird image, but Wilder dropped to his knees and pushed on the wall until the bottom gave way, and when the hole was wide enough, he found it. It was a cookie tin, just like Adam said. It was a rich blue, faded and a little rusted in the corners, but it was sealed tight with nothing to indicate what was inside.

“Uh, do you know what this is?” he said to Adam, pushing it along the floor.

Adam stood a foot away, his face set in a look of panic almost like he wanted to bolt. “No. It doesn’t look familiar.”

Wilder shrugged, then pried the lid off the top and stared down into the bottom. There were two folded up pieces of paper, an old matchbox car, a very small, very faded dalmatian figurine, and a couple of playing cards.

“Does this,” he started to say, but then he looked up at Adam’s face and saw that his eyes were glassy and red. “It’s yours, isn’t it?”

Adam dragged his bottom lip between his teeth, and his breath was ragged as he shook his head. “It’s not mine. It’s Noah’s. I…hashem yishmor. I vaguely remember this. There was a hole in the wall panel, and he shoved it inside and said we would dig it out when we were old.”

Wilder caressed the edge—this moment of memory that clearly had teeth as it bit deep into Adam. Then he covered the box and lifted it toward him. “He’s coming back for the holidays, right?”

Adam closed his hand around the box like he was too afraid to take it, but his grip tightened when Talia put her arm around his waist and leaned in to whisper something in his ear. Adam nodded, his jaw tight, but he didn’t seem angry—he was almost resigned to whatever pain was inside those letters.

“The dalmatian was mine,” he said when he stepped back, and he offered Wilder a grin that seemed like more concession than anything genuine. “I was obsessed with them until I was, like, nine.”

Wilder pushed to his feet and swiped his hands on the front of his jeans. “I had a really, really intense Bug’s Life phase. The chubby caterpillar—God, my parents hated it.”

Adam’s chuckle was soft, but it was genuine. “Cute.”

“They didn’t think so.” He moved around Adam to the kitchen and got everyone water, and he could tell the mood in the apartment had irrevocably shifted. “Thank you for your help.”

“Is that it?” Jayden asked with a frown.

Wilder darted his gaze over toward Adam, who was still staring at the box in his hands. “That’s all they need from me.”

“Cool,” Talia said, snapping her fingers and pointing them like guns. “Catch you later?”

Adam briefly met Wilder’s gaze before he followed his fiancée out, and the door shut hard enough Wilder could feel it in the soles of his feet. He looked up at Jayden, who was wearing a soft frown, then he set his water on the counter.

“You still want to stay with me, right?”

Wilder shrugged. “That’s the plan.” Only, he was half considering changing his mind—if Luca wanted. He hadn’t brought it up, hadn’t wanted to rush things, for himself or for Luca, but it had a little more appeal than staying with Jayden and Tim, even if his place was bigger than his last shoe-box apartment. “Text you?”

“Shit, I’m being kicked out?” Jayden asked with a grin. “Is your hot Italian sausage coming over?”

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