Crash Lights and Sirens, Book 1 (13 page)

Of course, Pete was usually dead wrong, but that’s neither here nor there.

Taryn pulls her feet up onto the counter, wanting to make herself as small as possible. Out the window, it’s nearly full dark. “I just—I don’t know how you get past a thing like that,” she says finally, wrapping her arms around her knees. She thumbs at the scar there, an old habit from when she was little—it’s raised and kind of gross-feeling, but it calms her down. “I wouldn’t even know how to start.”

“Yeah, well.” Nick shrugs. “You figure it out, let me know.” He folds the omelet in half, reaches into a cupboard for two plates. “She was my wife, Falvey. And she died a bad, shitty death. It’s a thing that happened. But it’s not, like—” He digs a couple of forks out of the drawer. “It’s not the only thing that happened, you know? To her or to me. So I don’t want you to think—”

Nick breaks off then, like he’s just realized that this is a strange conversation for people who are only screwing around to be having. Which—yeah. Taryn knows. He’s close enough that she can smell him, and herself on him, just faintly. She nudges at his calf with one socked foot.

“Don’t want me to think what?” she prods. She is—God, she is way too invested in his answer.

Could be that Nick thinks so too. He looks at her for a minute like he’s deciding, and then he shakes his head. “I don’t know,” he says, handing her a plate with half a fluffy, steaming omelet in the middle. “Eat your eggs.”

So. Taryn eats them, forkful after hot forkful, not even bothering to blow on the bites so the cheese doesn’t burn her mouth. It’s been a long time since anyone besides Pizza Hut has cooked for her, is the sad truth, not to mention the food is really that good and she’s really that hungry. “S’great,” she tells Nick, her manners kicking in a beat too late like an automaton. He just smiles at her, leaning up against the fridge with his own plate. The photograph peeks out around his left arm.

“Thanks,” she says when she’s done, slipping off the counter to rinse her plate and stick it in the dishwasher. “I, uh. I should probably go.”

Nick rubs at the back of his neck, watching her. “You go now, you gonna come back?” he asks finally.

Taryn fidgets. She’s still damp between her legs, rubbed raw from his mouth. “Do you want me to come back?” she counters, picking at a nail.

Nick’s eyebrows jump once, fast and reflexive, before he gets right up into her space and crowds, a solid wall between her and the counter. “Do I want you to—” He shakes his head angrily, that proud, sulky mouth and his glass-sharp jaw. “Christ, Falvey, what in the hell do you think I’m after here?” Like he’s insulted, like he really and truly cannot believe she’s asking.

Taryn shrugs uneasily, feeling teenaged and out of her depth. For an entire decade, he loved someone better than she can imagine loving herself. “I don’t know,” she mutters, the words coming out fierce and defensive when she means them to be calm. “Look, just answer the question, Nick, okay? Yes or no.”

Nick opens his mouth. Closes it. “Yes,” he says at last, only then when Taryn starts to talk he holds up a hand. “No, just listen for one second,” he tells her, closing warm fingers around her wrist and sinking in so they’re nearer to the same height. His breath smells like omelet. Taryn thinks of that night outside Old Court, her back thudding off the stone and his gentle hands in her hair. How he knew right away she was spiraling out.

For a long moment Nick just stares, like he’s composing his thoughts. “Okay,” he finally starts, “I know you just got out of a thing, and I know you wanna pal around or whatever, and all that’s fine. But I like you, Falvey. You gotta know that. Else we wouldn’t even be doing this.” Taryn feels her cheeks flame, but Nick isn’t finished. “And actually, now that we’re mentioning it—I’m pretty sure you already knew.”

God, now Taryn just feels dumb, and weirdly guilty on top of it. She did know, it’s true, way back before Lynette ever spilled the beans about his beautiful, dead wife—before the night of the fire, even. He was just as wry and quiet a year ago, but still Taryn was almost criminally certain of him, this humming background knowledge that if she wanted she could probably smile her way into an extra coffee, an extra five minutes for break out on shift. She was with Pete, focused on Pete, but she definitely knew. After Lyn told her though, that was a different story.

“I’m sorry,” she says finally. “I wasn’t trying to, like—” Wasn’t trying to what, exactly? Screw with his feelings? Flirt with him, purposely or not, when she was dating somebody else? Taryn makes a face at herself, embarrassed. “Whatever.”

Nick smiles at that, like possibly there’s something about how bad she is at this that he finds oddly endearing. His dark eyes are flecked with amber this close up. “I’m not mad at you, Falvey,” he says, getting his arms around her for a second and holding. It’s not something they’ve done a whole lot of—not something they’ve done at all, actually, contact without any particular sexual intent—and Taryn hides her face against his bare chest, feeling scraped out and shy. “You didn’t do anything.”

Taryn shrugs hard inside his grip. The muscles in his arms are solid and safe, all the lifting they do at work maybe. He doesn’t strike her as much of a gym rat. “I like you too,” she mumbles, the words sounding ridiculous even as they’re leaving her mouth, check yes or no and pass it back. It’s true though. Even a year ago, in some dark secret corner of her rib cage, hidden back behind her heart and lungs—she liked him too.

Nick huffs a quiet laugh against her temple, plants a kiss there that’s so gentle she hardly even feels it land. Atlas sighs noisily down on the tile. Taryn closes her eyes.

Chapter Eight

Once she’s gone Nick laces his boots up and takes Atlas for a long walk in the woods behind the house, dark except for the moon reflecting off the snow on the bare, spindly trees. Atlas trots along delightedly, leaving a long trail of swerving paw prints in his wake. He sniffs curiously at the snow-covered roots of a birch tree, then lifts his leg and lets it rip. Nick glances around at the landscape to give him some privacy, man-to-man.

Maddie loved these woods when she was alive—she couldn’t get outside much by the time they moved in here, but she used to lie in bed and stare out the picture window for hours at a time. She had a thing for the outdoors like nobody else he ever met. She made jewelry, Maddie did—these complicated pendants all inspired by nature, delicate rings and bracelets made to look like dragonflies and cicadas and the branches of the evergreens in the mountains. She went to college for it, art school in Boston. Nick used to take the bus in on the weekends to see her, the two of them drinking coffee at the hippie bookstore she liked on Newbury Street and sleeping crowded in her skinny dorm bed. That’s where they were when she first noticed the tremors, holding her graceful hands up in the dark while her obnoxious roommate snored across the warm, heat-dry room. “There,” she said, just quiet, and she didn’t sound scared at all. “See that? Right there.”

She tried to make him promise he’d get married again, right near the end there. “Don’t be your sad-sack self for too long, all right?” she demanded, two or three days left and that same razor-sharp humor even though she could barely fucking breathe. “A little while is fine, maybe. But not for the rest of your life.”

In the end Nick wouldn’t answer, the home aide interrupting with more antibiotics. Nick’s still not sure how long
a little while
was supposed to take.

Atlas nudges at his ankle with a winter branch between his jaws, a couple of papery leaves still rattling at the end of it. Nick makes a face, knowing from experience that this mutt likes to play fetch exactly one time before he gets bored and growly. He reaches down and grabs the stick anyhow, tosses it into the trees. Atlas takes off after it with a bark so cheerful you’d think it was his birthday and Christmas combined.

Nick sighs, jamming his hands into his pockets and settling in to wait for the inevitable game of keep away. He feels wrung out, the sex plus the conversation in the kitchen, how he can’t tell if he blew it with Falvey or not. Even if he did blow it, it’s possible it might even come as a relief. He thinks about Maddie around Taryn more than he does at any other time, bizarrely, like the very fact of her is a reminder of what he lost. That talk was the longest he’s had with anyone on the subject in three whole years, his sisters included. Nick isn’t sure how he feels about the fact that the twentysomething he’s sleeping with is the one who finally brought it out in him, but there it is. So much for easing her into things, Christ.

He does like her though. He was not lying about that.

Atlas trots back out of the woods with the branch and makes to lay it at Nick’s feet, then changes his mind at the last second and darts away with it still between his teeth, growling fit to alarm the neighbors. It’s a cycle that gets repeated every time they play fetch. Atlas will guard the stupid thing for five more minutes at least, Nick knows, vicious in the face of exactly zero adversaries. It’s an odd quality in a dog, always expecting the worst. Most of the time he’s steady as a river, but every now and then Nick gets a glimpse of whatever happened to him before he became a rescue, all the crap people can inflict on an animal half their size. Some days he bolts his food fast enough to throw up.

“Come on,” he says when Atlas’s growl finally winds down. “S’dinner time.” Those are the magic words apparently. The dog drops his useless stick and comes, this slow, sheepish wag that only lets up when Nick rubs him behind the ears. Nick gets the feeling he was hoping for a different outcome to the game too.

“Next time, buddy,” he mutters.

When he goes to bed that night his sheets still smell like Falvey, girl sweat and her stale perfume, a vanilla-candy scent that could’ve been borrowed from her kid sister along with the socks. It’s the first time Nick’s pillow has smelled unfamiliar in years. He lies there with a hard-on that won’t quit and looks around the room speculatively, taking in the dim walls and crappy avocado crown molding. It would look good in white, he thinks. Falvey’s right. With the windows, it does get a lot of light.

On Monday, Nick works the night shift with Ortiz and barely sees Taryn at all, just flashes of her red hair down the other end of the cinderblock hallway at clock-in and clock-out. The plan is to head home separately at dawn Tuesday morning and catch some sleep, then eat lunch together before the three to eleven cycle starts. Nick thought about inviting her over to the house right after shift—they could nap together, he guesses, make it feel less like…what it feels like—but
slow
is still the watchword. Considering how they left it on Sunday, he’s barely even sure the date is still on until Taryn texts him around four in the morning.
if i fall asleep on you don’t judge me
.

Well. Ortiz is out buying coffees, the bus on idle.
You won’t fall asleep
, Nick texts back.

We’ll see
, Falvey declares.

Sure enough, she turns up at noon, looking drowsy with her hair still damp from a shower, pale, clear skin and no makeup anywhere to be seen. Her hello kiss is soft and wet. Nick holds her mittened hand and keeps his eyes open, those fair, fair eyelashes.

“So, um. The omelet raised the bar pretty high,” Taryn tells him as he takes her coat, biting her lip. “We better not be ordering in pizza or something.” Her voice breaks weirdly. She sounds brassier than her usual self too, louder and chattier, and it takes Nick a second to realize she’s shy.

Fuck eating lunch. He’s putting her up against a wall.

In the end, they don’t get a chance to do either. Nick gets a call from Alexandra before they even make it to the kitchen. He hits ignore the first time but she calls back right away, not bothering to leave a message. That time, Nick picks up on the first ring.

He’s sensitive to urgent phone calls, all those weeks spent on shift with his cell volume jacked up to the highest level, wondering if today would be the day Maddie took a turn for the worse.

“Niko, thank God I caught you,” Alexandra breathes. “The main oven’s broken.”

Which—shit. Nick closes his eyes for a second. The main oven at the diner goes out every six weeks or so, this crotchety old behemoth that’s outlasted both their parents. “Did you do the wooden spoon trick?” he asks her. When he opens his eyes again Taryn’s watching him curiously, ankles crossed where she’s leaning against the archway. They stalled out in the dining room before his phone rang, and her mouth is pink and smudged.

Alexandra’s voice is harried. “Of course I tried the wooden spoon trick,” she tells him irritably. Nick can picture her in the restaurant kitchen, a mechanical pencil shoved into the bun at the crown of her head and the line cooks all edging around her with no small amount of fear. “And Io did it too, but it’s not working.” She pauses for a minute, then, “Are you outside? You sound out of breath.”

Nick makes a face. Falvey’s smirking now, this small, secret smile like something about him is amusing to her, maybe. She’s toying with the top button of her shirt. “I’m not out—no. Can you call the repair guy?”

“And spend a hundred and twenty dollars just to have him come out here and tell me we need a new one?” God, she reminds him so much of their mother it’s creepy. “I know we need a new oven. Can you just come over and look at it?”

“Seriously?” Nick leans back on the edge of the dining room table, scrubs a hand across his face. There is nothing in this world he wants to do less right now than get in the car and go to the diner. “This minute?”