Crash Lights and Sirens, Book 1 (12 page)

In the end, he opts for honesty. “Before the next Celtics game.”

Taryn’s searching expression tips open into a grin, easy. She’s a lot quicker with her smiles after an orgasm, Nick’s noticed. “Shut up.” She laughs, flopping back down across his chest, all this warm, boneless weight. “They play again in three days.”

Nick holds the eye contact. “Yeah. So?”

“So.” She likes that, this warm, half-shy flush Nick’s pretty sure has nothing to do with the sex. The blush against her freckles makes her look very, very young. “On Tuesday I’m not on until three,” she tells him, skimming her fingertips down across his collarbone. She’s got her other palm flattened against his chest, her sharp chin resting on on the back of her hand. She’s close enough to kiss, so Nick does.

“Tuesday, then,” he tells her, pulling back and tucking her messy hair behind one ear. He is actually going to want to take her out if they’re gonna keep doing this—he’s not completely old-fashioned, but there are steps—but he thinks it’s probably the kind of thing he’s gonna need to ease her into. In the meantime, he wants her around.

“I’ll bring coffee.” Taryn shivers again as he touches up the ladder of her backbone, snuggling closer. “You get a lot of light in here,” she observes, tilting her head to face the picture window. The sun’s got that runny quality to it like it’s thinking about setting, no matter that it’s barely four o’clock. “Even with all the trees.”

She’s right, although Nick doesn’t think he’s ever noticed before. He doesn’t spend a hell of a lot of time up on the second floor, especially during the day. There’s a couple of bedrooms he mostly uses for storage, a bathroom down the hall that’s in pretty decent shape. The master’s got an old-fashioned soaking tub that only Maddie ever used, and only when Nick was home to help her in and out of it. “S’nice,” he agrees.

Taryn presses her lips against the flat plane of his chest, just idly. “When I was a kid there was like, this one patch of sunlight on my bedroom carpet, and I’d fight over it with my grandma’s dog all day long,” she tells him. “I was a weirdo, I don’t know, but I really liked to lie in it.” She grins. “And so did Snowball, may he rest in peace.”

Nick’s surprised and charmed in equal measure. It’s the first personal anecdote she’s volunteered about herself maybe ever, and she must notice it too, because she fidgets. “Speaking of dogs,” she says, nudging at him with one bare knee. “Isn’t Atlas probably freezing his furry balls off right about now?”

Nick groans. “He’ll be fine.” It’s not even a remotely convincing argument, but he wants like hell to keep lying here with her—to go again or just to nap maybe, see what else he can get her to tell him. Still, though, “You hungry?” he asks.

Taryn nods. “I could eat,” she says, sitting up on the mattress and stretching. She’s not self-conscious about being naked, which he likes. “You want me to call and order something?”

Nick shakes his head. “There’s stuff in the fridge.”

Taryn rolls her eyes, digging her tank top out from between the sheets and pulling it over her head without the benefit of a bra. “You cook?”

“A little.” Nick shrugs, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “I live alone.”

“True.” Falvey keeps hunting for her discarded clothing items, bending toward the floor with her hair in her face. Her cotton underwear gets dragged on too, plus those garish, kids’ department ankle socks, but that seems to be the sum total of her dining-in outfit. Nick tries not to grin at the complete picture, and fails.

“So, okay,” Taryn says, planting both hands on her hips. “Wow me.”

Chapter Seven

Jesse isn’t picking up his phone, so Taryn calls the landline from Kanelos’s downstairs bathroom, finger-combing her hair in the cloudy mirror while she waits. Connor answers with his best big-boy voice, humming through the phrase Taryn taught all the kids when they were five;
FalveyresidenceConnorspeakinghowmayIhelpyou
. He sounds immensely relieved when Taryn identifies herself. Still, “He’s busy,” is the report when she sends him off to fetch Jess. “You want Mom instead?”

“No, that’s okay, dude,” Taryn says after a long beat, fussing with the taps. “Can you actually just grab Cait for me?” And Christ, isn’t that a horrible realization—the whole household, and her eleven-year-old sister is the most reliable bet. Taryn makes eye contact with herself in the mirror and winces.

Two minutes later, Caitlin arrives on the line. “Sorry,” she pants. “Was in the shower.” The Falveys only have one phone, this ancient corded monstrosity that’s attached to the kitchen wall by a wing and a prayer. Taryn would just cancel the service altogether and have the whole family run off of her and Jesse’s cell phones, but the kids always need to be able to reach 911.

“No problem,” she says now, picturing her sister, wet blonde hair and Rosemary’s old chenille bathrobe that she likes to borrow. “Everything okay over there? Jess wasn’t picking up.”

“Oh, he’s got a buddy over,” Caitlin says, with an eye roll Taryn can hear. The kids are starting to pick sides in the escalating Jesse-Taryn battles, mostly along gender lines. It’s a development Taryn knows she needs to curtail and doesn’t want to ever address in about equal amounts. “Some weird guy. They went up to his room. Mikey’s been trying to get in for hours.”

Oh great. Taryn sits down on the closed toilet lid with a thump. This room isn’t finished either, neatly grouted backsplash and what looks like a whole new sink, ancient linoleum underfoot. “Jesse’s friend Darryl?” she asks, toeing at a loose strip near the wall. “I swear to God, if I find out that kid’s eaten all of our food—”

“No, not Darryl,” Caitlin interrupts. “Some guy named Landon, I think? Says he knows you.”

Taryn freezes, a wave of truly disproportionate dread rolling through her stomach. Christ, just because Landon was at the scene of that girl’s OD doesn’t mean he had anything to do with it. Taryn’s been at some effed-up parties herself, back in high school—it doesn’t exactly make a person a serial killer. Besides, she remembers Landon from when they were kids, this harmless, skinny little boy tagging around after Jesse everywhere, too shy to even talk to her.

But there’s the money. Where is Jesse getting all that money?

“Okay,” she tells Caitlin now, pitching her voice up false and chipper. She’ll deal with Jesse later. “And Mom’s good?”

“Mom’s good,” Caitlin confirms. They chat for a few minutes more about the grocery list—Caitlin wants creamer, Mikey wants Frosted Flakes—before hanging up. Taryn heads back out into the kitchen to find Nick working on an omelet. Atlas is sprawled by the heating vent, looking put-out. Taryn lets herself gaze at the two of them for a minute, man and dog, and grins to herself. Scratches one leg with her opposite foot.

She likes him, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. It’s a really bad idea, how much she does.

Nick must sense her standing there, glances over his shoulder at where she’s lurking in the doorway. He’s wearing jeans but no shirt on top, that broad, tapered back. “Hey,” he says, smiling this small, private smile. Then, looking more closely, “You okay?”

Taryn nods. She gets the strangest, strongest urge to touch him just then, wanting to wrap her arms around him tight from behind and press her face against his warm, naked skin. She settles for crossing the kitchen and bumping him in the arm instead, like they’re buddies. “That smells good,” she says.

Nick turns his head, swipes a kiss across her cheekbone. “You like peppers?” he asks.

“Sure.” Taryn hops up on the ancient counter to watch him—how quick and capable his hands are as he grates up a hunk of cheddar, as steady as she’s seen him insert a breathing tube out in the field. She tucks her own hands under her bare thighs and glances around the kitchen, his scarred-up table and a blue enamel bowl of bananas, Atlas’s leash hooked on a peg by the door. She gets to the stainless fridge, feels her stomach drop out. Fixed to the side with a magnet from a Chinese restaurant is a picture of an achingly lovely, dark-haired woman who’s got to be Nick’s dead wife.

Taryn stares. She’s been looking for one since she got here, honestly, a wedding photo or a shot of them on vacation with some palm trees in the background. She braced herself on the way up to the bedroom, half-expecting some giant eight by ten of her on the nightstand, but this is the only one in the whole house as far as Taryn can tell, crinkled at the edges and missing one corner altogether, like maybe it’s spent time in a pocket or tucked up underneath the sun visor of a car. Her head is thrown back, midlaugh.

“She was pretty,” Taryn blurts, before she can stop herself. Feels her face flush fire-engine red. Did she honestly just start a conversation about his dead wife while she’s sitting on his counter in her underwear and he makes her a postsex omelet? Seriously? God, that’s a new one, even for her.

Nick doesn’t seem startled, like he figured they’d get around to it sooner or later. He raises his eyebrows, follows her gaze. “Yeah,” he says after a moment, tossing the peppers into the frying pan. “She was.”

Taryn nods, tells herself to stop and doesn’t. “How long were you married?” she asks.

Nick holds up some mushrooms for her okay, then chucks them in too, whisking together the eggs in a separate bowl. “Nine years.” Salt and pepper are next, in with the eggs. Taryn watches his knuckles instead of his face. One thing’s for sure, he can definitely cook. He was not lying about that.

“Six, actually,” Nick corrects after what must be a full minute, shaking in some Tabasco sauce once the filling is fully sautéed. “That’s—sorry, we were actually married for six.”

Taryn gulps, realizing after a beat exactly what mistake he just made. According to Lynette, his wife’s been dead three years. “Long time,” is all she says, kicking her heels off the cabinets lightly. They were young then, when they got hitched.

Nick shrugs. “We met in high school. Felt longer, I can tell you.” He grabs the egg mixture and the grated cheddar, then slides her whole body down the counter a good six inches so he can open a drawer underneath her and fish out a spatula. Only then, once he has it, he pauses, hands lingering behind her knees. “You’re allowed to be curious, Falvey,” he says quietly. His face is open and steady, that rock-solid calm that reminds Taryn of tides and seasons.

Even with all that, she still doesn’t know how to phrase her next question. “Was she… In high school, I mean, was she—”

Nick follows the train of thought just fine. “She had no symptoms for a while,” he says, cupping Taryn’s knees. His palms turn a slow circle, like he’s polishing down the bone. “But we always knew she had it. She took a test.”

“Brave,” Taryn says, meaning Nick’s wife. Pete once told her that less than five percent of people whose parents have the disease actually end up taking the test. Too afraid of the result, maybe. And God, she knows she should leave it there, but, “Was she early-onset?” She has her answer already, how young Nick’s wife was when she died, and still it feels like she physically can’t stop herself from asking. Like picking at a scab, almost, except this one hundred percent isn’t her scab to pick.

But Nick only nods. “Yeah. We figured she would be, from the blood work.” He tips the egg mixture into the skillet, keeping one hand on Taryn’s leg. “Still. Went quick.”

Taryn does and does not want to know. “How long?”

Nick thinks about that for a second. “God, starting with the first hand tremors in college, maybe…ten years?” He turns the pan, letting the egg run into itself. “So not that quick, really. Just felt like it.”

He knew, Taryn realizes with a jolt. Not just when he bought this place in some last-ditch Hail Mary pass, but the whole time, before the wedding, before… The whole entire time, he knew. Taryn tries to imagine what it would be like to love somebody that much, and can’t. All of a sudden she’s hit with an urge to run just as strong as the instinct to touch him was earlier, to grab her coat and get in the car and peel away down the salt-stained road back in the direction of town. What’s she even doing here, honestly? She ought to be home with Cait and Connor and Mikey, keeping an eye on whatever the hell degenerates Jesse’s letting traipse through the living room, not fucked-out and half-naked in this empty, yawning house with this person who’s—who’s so—

“Here.” Nick reaches out and hands her a misshapen slice of cheddar off the counter, the butt end that was too small to grate. “Eat that,” he tells her mildly. He backs off, running the spatula underneath the edges of the eggs, then flipping them so fast and expertly she’d tease him if she had half the wherewithal to do it. “And relax.”

Taryn’s eyes narrow. “I’m relaxed,” she snaps, in a voice that isn’t. She’s got the same feeling as she had the other night at the thing for Ortiz, her chest weird and tight from all the awful shit that happens to people, no way to stop it or make it better at all. She wants to tell him she’s sorry, but she doesn’t know how to start. It feels disingenuous to say it after everything that just happened between them, even if it’s true. She looks at the olive expanse of his back one more time and eats the cheese. “I’m relaxed,” she says again once she’s swallowed.

“Okay.” Nick smirks at the frying pan. “F’you had a pair of pants on, you’d be clear across the fucking mountain range by now.”

Well. It’s the kind of comment that would really piss her off, normally—Taryn hates it when people do that, presume they can guess what’s in your head somehow just because of some face they think you’re making. Pete used to do it all the time, and it drove her crazy.