15. How To Name Your Shopping Carts

Three days later,Blade joined Joey in the backyard.

He hadn't expected to find Joey outside the mansion. Since moving in, Joey had been poking around the rooms, exploring the interior of the mansion with Katie. He'd gone into the staff quarters and lurked around the hoard's secure doors, and spent a long time looking through all the food in the pantry.

Today, he was sitting with Katie in the backyard, the baby bright-eyed and wide awake on his lap.

All three shopping carts circled around them.

Joey startled when Blade stopped next to him. "Oh! I didn't hear you. You scared me."

"Sorry." Blade knelt, cupping Joey's nape with his hand. He couldn't resist brushing a kiss against Joey's temple. "How was your day?"

"Good." Joey glanced at Katie. "Sorry. I would've put her to bed and gotten myself ready, but she's refusing to sleep."

Blade grinned. "Is she giving you trouble?"

Joey shook his head. "Just being excitable and chatty. She babbled at me a lot today. You should've seen her pop both wings."

Blade would give a lot to see Katie babbling at Joey. But watching her fascination with the shopping carts was good, too.

All of a sudden, Katie lurched forward like she wanted to go over to the shopping carts and touch them. Joey straightened her up. "Not so fast."

"Eh!" Katie cried, reaching for the carts.

"I don't want them to roll you over," Joey said softly. "They're not very good with babies."

But he held Katie up, grinning when one of the carts slowed down and approached Katie so she could curl her tiny fingers around the stainless steel rods of its cargo basket.

"She likes the carts, huh?" Blade rumbled, his chest filling with warmth.

"She loves them. In fact, I think we should have more. I have names for all of them."

Blade raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Two of them are Hong's. He's already named them."

"Yeah, but they're not child-friendly names!"

Blade had been carefully ignoring the existence of the carts' names. Moo Testicle and Giant's Ball Cage wasn't something you could shout in front of children. "What did you name them?"

"This is Sweetness Monster," Joey said, pointing to one of the carts. "This is Anna Wine-Cart, and this is Dances With Carts."

Blade frowned. "None of those names are like each other."

Joey beamed. "Precisely! So they're like found family instead of siblings."

"Sounds good to me." Blade sat on the grass next to Joey, watching as Joey lifted Katie into the air and swooped her down. Katie shrieked and giggled, her laugher infectious.

A cart bumped into Blade's shoulder from the side.

"Aww," Joey said. "It wants to be friends with you!"

Blade frowned. "Me?"

He hadn't spent much time around shopping carts or grocery stores. Marion had been doing the errands for centuries because she was the one who knew what ingredients went into the food. And because Blade had amassed his wealth long before grocery stores or shopping carts were invented, he'd never had a reason to get familiar with a shopping cart. "What do I do?"

Joey grinned and handed Katie over. She babbled and kicked happily, and for a moment, Blade couldn't look away.

She was so precious.

"You pet it and push the cart around and say nice things to it!" Joey got to his feet and held the cart by its handles, pushing it in a circle around Blade. "The more you talk to it, the more it likes you and wants to stay. Here, try it!"

All too soon, Joey took Katie back. Blade got to his feet, feeling awkward as he pushed the cart in a circle around Joey and Katie. "Like this?"

"More! Run around the backyard with it!"

Blade jogged in a larger circle, pushing the cart in front of himself. When they'd done ten laps, he released the cart.

It trembled and flipped its wheels from side to side, skidding so close around him that it almost ran over his toes. Then it nudged up against him and made squeaking sounds with its wheels.

"Just like that." Joey was beaming. "Now you know it likes you, too."

He was so proud of Blade. Over such a small thing.

Blade couldn't help smiling back.

Katie's wings popped out right then, twin sets of gold that fluttered and smacked Joey in the face. Joey giggled.

It made Blade's news weigh down his heart.

He saw each day how Joey tried to distance himself from Katie, how Joey tried not to call Katie his. Only for his walls to crumble the moment she smiled at him.

"I put out the word," Blade said after a while. "Looking for Katie's parents."

Joey sucked in a slow breath; his shoulders hunched.

"I'm sorry," Blade murmured.

"I know. It just hurts."

Blade wrapped his arm around Joey, tilting his face up to his. He pressed kisses wherever he could reach—Joey's forehead, his cheeks, his nose—before giving him a soft, chaste kiss on the mouth. "Take it out on me if you have to. If you have to yell at someone, or punch someone, I can bear it."

Joey grimaced. "I'm not doing that!"

"I want to help you hurt less."

Joey opened and closed his mouth several times. In the end, he said, "Maybe when I have to give her back."

Blade pulled Joey and Katie onto his lap, and hugged Joey tight. Eventually, the tension in Joey's shoulders seeped out.

"I'm okay," Joey mumbled.

Blade kissed his neck. "Tell me what I can do, and I will do it."

Joey hesitated. "Can I have another ten shopping carts?"

"Why do you need that many?" It baffled Blade.

"To be my friends!"

"You have friends!" More now that Joey had both his old friends and his new friends here with him in Cartfalls.

"I want all the shopping carts in the world," Joey admitted. "I love them. I want an army of carts."

"My backyard isn't large enough for all of them," Blade said dryly.

"Um... eight?"

"Three more," Blade said.

Joey lit up. "But we're not going to the store right now, so... can I have cheesy fluffy mashed potatoes in the meantime?"

That made Blade smile. "That'll make you feel better?"

Joey nodded.

"I'll get Marion to make you a big batch of it."

"Enough for leftovers?"

"Leftovers for a few days," Blade promised.

The smile on Joey's face made his chest feel several sizes too small.