Crash Lights and Sirens, Book 1 (9 page)

Nick shrugs. He told himself he was going to go slow the next time they did this. He’s gotten her clothes off twice now; he wants to see how she looks in a bed. “Celtics are playing.”

Falvey’s eyebrows flick up for just a second in recognition, the rest of her face staying still as a lake. “You asking me to hang out, Kanelos?” She closes her thighs around his palm and traps it against her inseam, warm and secret.

Nick reaches up for her braid. “Yep,” he answers, tugging lightly. “Gonna give me a hard time about it?”

“Please. You love it when I give you a hard time.” Taryn rubs her knuckles across the front of his uniform pants, firm enough that his cock jumps up to meet her. “You okay to drive there, sailor?”

Nick tugs on her braid harder. This time Taryn lets her head get dragged back with the pull and all of a sudden he’s imagining tugging her hair in a different context, her on her knees and— “Yeah,” he tells her, disengaging altogether as his stupid dick jumps again. Taryn grins when he wiggles his hand free of her thighs. “I’m good.”

“Fine.” She wrinkles her nose,
your loss
coming through loud and clear as she picks the stack of paperwork back up. “I’m just telling you,” she says airily, licking the end of her pen. “You could have been a whole lot better than good.”

Jesus Christ, she’s a brat. Nick rubs his jaw to cover his grin, thinking halfway between Audra’s age and—and for once not minding at all. She’s right. He does like it when she gives him a hard time. “Noted.”

They head back to the Barn in the end, finishing up their paperwork in the rec room with Lynette and a couple of the other part-timers, everyone waiting out the end of shift. Nick can feel Lyn watching holes in him and Falvey, that knowing look back on her face. Taryn hasn’t noticed yet, knocking her boot against his playfully, this soft thunk that’s not quite subtle enough. Some crappy Will Ferrell movie is up on the ancient big screen, lights way down low. After a second, Nick knocks back.

He drives her home as soon as they clock out, idling at the end of her driveway instead of turning in. The house looks just like the one they pulled that girl out of, rickety porch and all. Not for the first time, Nick wonders what the heck is going on in there that makes Falvey so private.

To his surprise, she pecks him goodbye again, stamping the kiss across his mouth like an old habit. “It’s a yes, by the way,” she tells him. “Hanging out. It’s a yes.”

Chapter Six

Taryn wakes up Sunday morning a full hour before her alarm, all this stupid energy she can’t shake. She rolls over, running her hands across her stomach inside her pajamas—she’s not going to do anything, Caitlin’s right there across the room, but she’s been keyed up ever since Friday’s shift. She thumbs at her nipple until it hardens, then rolls her eyes at herself and gets out of bed.

Game’s at two
, Nick texted last night—just that, totally businesslike, no cell phone flirting for Kanelos. Her stomach swooped sort of ridiculously anyhow.

In the shower she washes her hair and shaves her legs, contemplates shaving some other places for good measure. Decides that’s trying way too hard.

Reconsiders.

She’s just finishing up with the razor when Mikey bangs on the door with the thunder of God behind him, “Taryn, it’s a ’mergency,” so she rinses off and leaves him to it. Six people and one bathroom, it’s a miracle she made it this long uninterrupted.

Downstairs, Rosemary is sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe, looking alert for nine o’clock on a Sunday. “Hey, baby,” she says, smiling over the rim of her mug like she’s been waiting. Her eyes are the same green-gray as Taryn’s, and clear. “There’s coffee.”

“Really?” Taryn tries to keep the surprise out of her voice. “Thanks.” Rosemary’s kept up the clean living for the last few days, as far as she can tell. Last night when Taryn got home from work she was spread out on the living room floor with the boys, making complicated-looking newspaper hats. It reminded Taryn of when she was little, kind of—they never did a ton of normal mother-daughter stuff, but Rosemary used to like to help make clothes for Taryn’s paper dolls. She won a bunch of art contests before Taryn was born. Some of her paintings are hanging in the upstairs hallway, watercolors of the mountains mixed up with all their baby pictures.

The late notice wound up in the trash underneath some leftover spaghetti, Taryn saw yesterday morning, a slick roll of dread cutting through her cautious optimism. She knows she needs to push Rosemary on it, but she’s afraid.

“Was thinking I might go out for a bit this afternoon,” she says now, getting herself a mug and topping off her mother’s. “I’ll get groceries on my way home.”

“Whatever you want,” Rosemary declares, waving one magnanimous hand. She’s skinny for the number of kids she’s had, sharp wrists and collarbones. She was really pretty when Taryn was small. “You do too much around here anyway. You seeing Pete?”

Taryn blinks, surprised and knowing she shouldn’t be. Rosemary has forgotten stuff way more important than the scene in the house the day Pete showed up—Caitlin at preschool, for example, or that she’d locked Connor in the coat closet to punish him. “No, Ma,” she says, as the back door opens and Jesse ambles in. “That’s over.” To Jesse, “You just getting in?”

“What are you, my warden?” Jesse rolls his eyes and brushes past her, and Taryn can’t really bring herself to snap back. It tweaked her out, seeing his buddy Landon at the scene of that OD the other day. She wants to smack some sense into him and she doesn’t know how.

Rosemary looks at them. She’s used to seeing a united front, Taryn guesses, all the bars they’ve dragged her out of and all the AA meetings they’ve coerced her into. For a horrible second Taryn actually wishes she would backslide again, just to force Jesse’s hand. “Be polite,” she tells them both mildly.

“Sorry, Ma.” Jesse fishes a grimy envelope out of his pocket, slapping it down on the counter in front of Taryn. “There, okay? You can put that toward the mortgage or the gas.”

Taryn sets her mug aside. “Jess,” she gasps, reaching inside and pulling out a stack of twenties. “How much is in here?”

Jesse smiles at them, this crooked little-boy grin that’s been the same his whole life. Out of all the Falveys he’s got the most freckles, dotting his face and arms and everywhere, right down to his lips. “Five hundred,” he says proudly. “And I can get more.”

It isn’t payday at any of the places he works, Taryn knows, the hardware store or the garage or the dive where he buses tables Thursdays and Fridays. Jesse reads the look on her face before she speaks. “It’s fine,” he says. “Darryl and me are doing some deliveries and stuff now.”

Taryn raises her eyebrows, flipping through the cash again with Rosemary craning over her shoulder. “Deliveries of what?” she asks cautiously. It is a lot, five hundred dollars.

Jesse shrugs. “Dunno. I just drive.” Taryn is gearing up to grill him some more when he speaks again, “I am sorry, you know. ’Bout Pete.”

Taryn’s breath whooshes out of her in a rush. He wasn’t there, of course, the day it happened—he’d been AWOL for weeks by then, this angry cloud of boy that only descended on the house to sleep. Taryn had had to pick Rosemary up off the floor by herself, ushering a stunned Pete and his expensive bakery quiche out the door. Mikey, who’d tracked through the vomit to answer the doorbell, was screaming and screaming.

The quiche was a housewarming gift, Pete had explained later, when she went over to his place to end things for good. He’d only wanted to surprise her. “Tare, you should have told me,” he said over and over. “God, just give me a chance to adjust.” But Taryn kept seeing the way he’d looked at Rosemary, like she was a thing and not a person. It was the same way he looked at the DOAs they brought into Fairview.

“S’okay, Jess,” she says, wrapping her arms around herself. “He was a dud.”

The boys and Caitlin thump downstairs later, plonking themselves in front of the TV and turning the Cartoon Network on loud. Jesse hauls ass up to bed. Around noon Rosemary lines the ingredients for soda bread out on the counter, which is how Taryn knows she probably won’t be heading to Sully’s today either. When Taryn dashes upstairs to brush her teeth one last time before hopping in the car, Rosemary is pulling out their old board games, setting up Monopoly for the boys, Risk for her and Caitlin.

“Bye!” Connor calls after her, shaking the dice vigorously between two cupped palms. Taryn climbs into the ancient Tercel, still smiling.

Nick’s house is way too big for one person, this Craftsman with a wide porch and evergreens flanking either side of the yard. The front door is painted a deep, velvety maroon. It’s quiet back here, private, somewhere you could come to hide. Taryn thinks again of Nick buying this place even though he knew it was hopeless, of wanting something so bad you delude yourself into thinking it’s possible. She feels nervous for the first time all day.

His dog sets to barking as soon as she rings the bell. Taryn shoves her hands into the pockets of her parka and waits. It occurs to her too late that she should have brought something with her, beer or a pizza, maybe. A goddamn bakery quiche. She gets the feeling his wife was probably someone who remembered to do shit like that, just from the way Lynette described her.

Kanelos doesn’t seem to care, at least. He opens up the door and grins. He’s dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt pushed halfway to his elbows, this soft-looking gray cotton she wants to get her hands on as quickly as possible. “Hey,” he says.

Taryn smiles back like a reflex, catching the giant dog by the paws as he jumps up to investigate. “Oof,” she says, a warm gust of canine breath in her face. “Hey.”

“Easy, Atlas,” Nick chides, pulling the dog down by his collar. “S’just Falvey. She’s here to watch sports.”

“Exactly.” Taryn reaches down to rub behind his furry ears. He’s a mutt, she thinks, part boxer maybe. Their grandparents had a terrier when she and Jess were really small. “Hi, buddy.” She remembers the dog from the night of the fire, though they didn’t exactly waste time on introductions. “Atlas, huh?”

“World on his shoulders.” Nick shrugs as she steps into the front hallway, looking embarrassed. The floors are a dark, wide-planked wood. “I was feeling dramatic.”

He takes her parka and she follows him into the kitchen, wipes her suddenly clammy hands on the butt of her jeans. Atlas trots along behind them, sniffing at Taryn’s boots. She purposely didn’t spend a lot of time picking an outfit, just a tank top with a black cardigan over it. Her hair’s loose and already tangled down her back.

“You thirsty?” Nick asks her, leaning against the counter. The kitchen’s only half-renovated, stainless steel appliances and countertops that look older than Taryn. The windows above the sink overlook a big, mostly wooded backyard. “There’s Sam in the fridge.”

Taryn nods. “Sure,” she tells him, tucking her hands in her pockets and chancing getting closer. Atlas settles on the floor vent with a sigh. “You need beer to watch basketball, don’t you?”

Nick nods, that same ghost of a grin from when he first opened the storm door. “Sounds legit,” he says.

Taryn feels her face heat up, stupid and automatic. It doesn’t help that she has some very specific memories of this kitchen, memories that may or may not involve a good deal of wordless begging. She brushes past Nick and sticks her head in the giant fridge, grabbing two Sam Adams and handing one back to him blindly. “So,” she says, taking a long pull as soon as a bottle opener is produced. “Where’s the TV?”

The living room is finished from what Taryn can see, vaulted ceilings and big bay windows all along one wall. The fireplace looks like it’s been completely revamped, floor-to-ceiling river rocks with a flat screen mounted halfway up, sleek glass enclosing the hearth. Everything’s in the same dark wood as the hallway, pale winter sun bringing it to high shine.

Taryn drops onto the leather couch, grinning. “Figures you’d do this room first.” There’s dog hair on the patchwork throw, lived-in enough that she feels comfortable pulling her boots up underneath her. “That thing work?” she asks, waving at the fireplace.

Kanelos flips on the TV, scrolling through the guide to ESPN. “Actually, the mudroom was first,” he says. “But yeah, it works.” It gets turned on too, a couple of quick clicks of yet another remote, the natural gas insert flaming up bright right away. “Woulda left it wood burning,” Nick explains, one hand in his pocket. “But I figured, what with the dog…”

“Yeah.” Atlas has followed them again, collapsing on the hearth with a
whumph
. His tail thumps once when Nick reaches down to scratch at his ears. It’s not a bad look, Taryn decides, Kanelos with a dog. “Better sit,” she says, wiggling to get settled as the announcers start in. “S’almost tip-off.”

“Yeah, yeah, hold your horses.” There’s a split-second pause before he joins her, this extra beat of looking Taryn wouldn’t have noticed if she weren’t so keyed up herself. When he sits down, he’s a carefully orchestrated foot and a half away.

Taryn bites back a smile, never mind the fact that she would have done the same thing if she hadn’t been the lucky one to sit first. “Oh, just come here,” she huffs, angling her body his way. “We both know you didn’t invite me over to watch basketball.”

“Oh, we do, do we?” Nick slides one hand underneath her hair and uses the other to tilt her chin up for a hello kiss, soft and wet. The neck of his beer is cold against Taryn’s skin. “There,” he says when he pulls back. “That what you came for?”