And also a moron, because Showdown would absolutely kill him if he trifled with his little girl.
“I don’t know.” Shit. That was not the right answer. But he guessed it was maybe the true one. Still, he didn’t know if he could feel anything real for anybody anymore, or if his heart was in a box in the ground in Southern California, and Showdown’s daughter was not somebody to experiment on.
“I don’t know what that means.” Iris shoved her hands into her coat pockets and stared at him, her expression open and frank, without guard or hostility.
He reached toward her face, then caught himself and dropped his hand. “I don’t, either. Iris, I’m fucked up. My head is…it’s not a good place. It’s better if it didn’t mean anything.”
She took a step toward him. “Better for who?”
Before he knew what he was doing, he was fucking kissing her again.
She leaned into him right away and opened her mouth under his. His tongue found hers, and he felt the breath of her sigh against his cheek. Jesus.
He didn’t know why he was doing it again, standing on the sidewalk around the corner from Main Street, where most of the town, not to mention all of the Horde, was working on this gift drive, but he did know he was kissing Iris. It wasn’t about Ani, not this time.
She broke away first, taking back the step she’d made earlier and dropping her eyes so she was looking at the ground. “Nolan…”
He dropped his eyes, too. She was wearing bright red cowboy boots, and it made him realize that he didn’t think he’d ever seen her in any kind of shoes but cowboy boots. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I keep doing that.”
Her head came up quickly, and she frowned as she stared right into his eyes. “Well, that sucks. Don’t do it again until you know why.”
She spun on her heel and began pushing the cart up the sidewalk. Nolan stood there like a jerk for a couple of seconds, watching her walk away. Then he shook some sense back into his head and ran after her.
When he took charge of the cart, she didn’t protest, and they walked together to pick up a load of gifts.
~oOo~
Christmas with the Horde was always happy chaos. For Nolan, the morning started out calmly enough; he’d spent the night at home with his mom and brother, and they’d opened their presents to each other and had a little bit of breakfast.
Usually, he was hung over from the club party the night before, but this year, he’d bailed early, while he was still sober. Show and Shannon and all of their kids had been there, and Nolan didn’t trust himself to get drunk around Iris. Even sober, his lips had a tendency the past few days to get stuck on hers, and he didn’t even know if he liked her that way. Or if he was even capable of it.
So he’d bailed while the club kids were still around and the party was still at a PG rating. He’d tried to ride, but it was too cold, even for him, and he’d turned around and headed to his mom’s house after about half an hour. He’d been stretched out on the sofa watching television when his mom and Loki had gotten home from the party.
His mom had given him one of her patented looks that said, I know something’s wrong, but I know you’re not going to tell me what, so I’m not going to ask, but now you know that I know, and then she’d sent Loki to bed. Once he was down and had sworn to stay in his room until morning, she’d come in with a glass of Jack Daniels for Nolan and wine for her, and they’d put all the presents under the tree.
Afterward, she’d turned off all the lights except the tree and the lights she’d strung around the windows and fireplace, and they’d sat together on the sofa, drinking and staring at the pretty tree. Nolan had put his arm around his mom’s shoulders, and she’d rested her head on his chest, and he’d known right then that it was the best moment of the whole holiday.
The morning, as usual, was all about Loki. He didn’t believe in Santa anymore, but their mom still liked to do the holiday up as big as she could. Nolan understood it, and he was a little envious, too, in a retroactive, nostalgic way. When he’d been little, his mom had been dead broke, and his bio-dad had been a deadbeat, and they’d never had anything. Most of the time, they’d been living on the bleeding edge of homelessness. Christmas had never been a big deal. He’d never believed in Santa, because his mom hadn’t been able to afford to pretend the old dude was real.
Things had been a lot better, moneywise, since Loki had been born. Their mom wasn’t rich, but Havoc had left her some decent bank, and money had been stable. The past few years had been really good, financially. There were a lot of presents under the tree, and, as always, Loki’s eyes about bulged out of his head when he saw the spread in the morning.
Nolan enjoyed watching his brother open his gifts. Loki was a good kid. He appreciated every gift, and his mom, or Nolan, got a hug and a thank you for each one. The thank you was a real one, with a little explanation about why he liked the gift.
After breakfast, Nolan helped Loki put together a LEGO Star Wars set while their mom made some kind of casserole to bring to Badger and Adrienne’s, where the real chaos would happen. When the casserole was ready, Nolan packed up his mom’s SUV with gifts for the rest of the Horde, and they headed over.
By noon, the whole club—all the members, their old ladies, all of the kids, and even a club girl or two—was at Badger and Adrienne’s house, and the din was overwhelming. There were something like a dozen little kids in the Horde family now, all of them hopped up on the rush of sugar and new toys, and it was too cold to send anybody outside to play.
He was tense about Iris, too, trying to navigate the narrow path between obviously avoiding her and getting too close to her. She seemed to be using the same map. They kept catching each other’s eyes and turning away.
Before dessert had been served, Nolan had had all he could take.
It was easy to disappear in all that noise and activity, so he grabbed his coat and slipped out. Then he started walking.
When he was a kid, he used to walk all the fucking time. Whenever his head got too loud, he’d just walk until he could think clearly again, and then he’d walk until he’d gotten right with whatever was bugging him. Or right enough to rejoin the world, anyway. Since he’d had a bike, now he rode. There had been times that he’d put a few hundred miles on his bike on a single trip, never with any destination in mind.
For almost as long as he could remember, his head had gotten loud, and he’d had to move to make it stop. He remembered the first time. He’d been maybe eight, and his mom hadn’t been able to pay the fee for a field trip his class was going on. They’d gone without him, and he’d spent the whole class day, until the last bell, sitting in the office next to the secretary’s desk.
Even that young, Nolan had understood how hard things were for his mom. His bio-dad had been gone most of the time, so it had been just his mom and him, struggling alone, and he’d seen a lot more than she thought he had. Until Havoc, Nolan and his mom had never had anybody in their corner except each other.
So on that day, as lonely and ashamed as he’d been, he hadn’t blamed her at all.
He’d been furious and hurting, but he’d had nowhere to send it. It had just churned and churned in his head and his gut all day long, while he’d sat in that little student desk next to the secretary and been made to stay quiet and do worksheet after worksheet.
After the bell had finally released him from his torment, he’d started off on his route home. They’d lived in a crappy apartment only a few blocks from the school. But he hadn’t turned in on their street. He hadn’t been finished walking.
By the time he did make it home, he’d walked for more than an hour, and his mom was a terrified basket case. But he’d felt better.
That night, when she’d sat on his bed and asked why he’d gone so far, he’d talked to her about his day and told her he’d just needed to walk. He hadn’t understood it yet, but she’d seemed to. That weekend, she’d walked a route with him that kept him in their neighborhood, a path she’d deemed s
afe, and asked him to let her know when he needed to have a ‘walkabout,’ and always to come home.
He’d been moving ever since, on feet or wheels. Usually, he went at night, when the world was calm and quiet, and he often went without telling anyone.
But he always came home.
That day, just needing to escape the happy volume and activity of the house, not feeling angry so much as hemmed in, he walked away from the front door, headed down the long driveway, and turned onto the gravel road. As noisy as the house had been, the world outside held the cold silence of Christmas, when everyone everywhere was indoors enjoying the company of those they loved.
He’d only walked about twenty minutes before his toes were freezing inside his boots, so he turned around.
When he got back to Badger’s driveway, which was packed with cars and trucks, he saw that the hatch of Rose’s little blue Subaru was up, and somebody was leaning into it. Expecting Rose, he walked up without a second thought, but it was Iris who stood.
“Hi,” she said when she saw him.
He was too close by then to do anything but go to her. “Hey. You need some help?”
She reached up and brought the hatch down, latching it with more force than was probably necessary. “Nope. Just packing up some gifts. Rose is driving back to Chicago tonight, so she wants to motor soon.”
“You leaving, too, I guess?”
Iris turned and leaned on the back of the car. “No. I’m staying here. I got a job on Main Street.”
“You’re going to live in Signal Bend? With your dad?”
“Well, yeah. For now, anyway. I guess I’ll get my own place at some point.” She tilted her head, and her blonde hair swept over her shoulder. “Do you have an opinion on my living in Signal Bend, Nolan?”
The way she asked the question, it was pretty clear that she was asking something else as well. He took a step toward her, put his hand on the hatch, and leaned in a bit. “Straight talk, Iris?”
“That would be cool, yeah.”
Iris just seemed to take life the way it came. He kissed her, she liked it, she leaned in. He told her he didn’t know why he had, she called him on it, told him to stop. He showed up standing next to her sister’s car, she said hi. He offered her the truth, she said yes please. Nolan didn’t think he’d ever known anyone like that, who just stood still and accepted life as it happened.
“I like you. I liked kissing you, and I seem to want to do it a lot. But you and me is a bad idea, for a whole lot of reasons.”
“My dad.”
“Well, yeah, he’s one. But that’s not really it. It’s me. I don’t…” He stopped, not sure how to explain. But he’d offered her straight talk, so he said, “I don’t think I’d be good at being in a couple, and I don’t think us just hooking up is smart.”
“I don’t want to hook up with you. That would be too weird.”
“I agree.”
“Why don’t you think you’d be good at being in a couple? Or was that just your way of being nice and not saying right out that you wouldn’t want to be in a couple with me?”
There was no accusation in her voice, nor any passive aggression. She sounded simply curious.
“I wasn’t being nice. Truth is, I’ve been thinking about you a lot the past few days, so I’m not just being nice. I’m being real. I…I don’t feel much. About anything. I don’t have much to give. So I’m better on my own.” He’d never actually said that aloud to anybody except his mom, once, and it hurt a lot more than he’d anticipated.
He didn’t add that the one emotion he was still capable of feeling acutely was anger. He knew it would hurt him more for Iris to know that.
She studied his eyes for several seconds, and then she put her hands on his face and pulled him close. She kissed him, just an innocent, soft little thing, almost a peck. He closed his eyes and felt how soft her lips were, smelled the flowers of her perfume.
“I’m sad for you,” she whispered.
“Pity is not something I want.” He stood straight, and she dropped her hands.
“That’s not what I said. You seem sad a lot, and now you tell me you don’t feel much, and that makes me sad. But I don’t pity you.” She chewed on her lip, then added, “If you want to just hang out, be friends, that’d be cool. Everybody else I know in this town is a lot older, a lot younger, or a twat like Mindy Jasper.”
Nolan laughed at her last comment. Mindy was definitely a twat. But he didn’t understand Iris’s reaction. “You’re not mad? Or hurt?”
“I like you, Nolan. I think you’re one of the good guys. I’d be good with seeing if we could work together. But I didn’t fall head over heels because of a couple of kisses. I have more sense than that, thank you very much.”
She was smiling up at him, and Nolan felt that stirring in his chest again. He might have accidentally kissed her again except that just then, there was a loud cough behind him. He turned and saw Show and Bart on the porch, watching the whole scene.
“Fuck.”
Iris laughed. “One, we’re grownups. Two, we weren’t doing anything. And three, if he’s mad, it’s you he’s going for, so I’m good.”
“Great. Thanks.” They turned and walked toward the house together. As they got close, and Show’s eyes hadn’t left them for a second, Nolan noticed that Iris looked a lot less confident than she’d sounded. Her cheeks were bright pink, and she hadn’t been blushing over at the car.
He smiled and followed her up the porch steps. Show stepped up, stood to his full height—a good four inches or more above Nolan’s—and looked down his nose at him.
“Daddy, don’t be a jerk,” Iris muttered as she walked into the safety of the house. Show held his position for another beat, then relaxed and walked in. Bart, with the wry grin of somebody who thought he knew it all, waved Nolan to head in before him.
Inside, Christmas was still happening at full volume, and now Nolan was glad for the distraction.
Each time he was with Iris, he was bummed when it was over.
But everything he’d said to her was true.
CHAPTER FOUR
“Any questions?” Geoff set the receipt book on the desk and smiled at Iris.
“Is there a reason you still use a paper receipt pad?” She pointed at the digital tablet propped on the desk. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”
“For credit card purchases, we have the square, but I find that it’s a lot easier to write on paper than to try to type in a detailed sales record or even use the stylus.” Geoff shrugged. “I just like it better. Call me old-fashioned.”
Iris grinned. “You’re old-fashioned.”
Geoff grinned back. “Be that as it may, Miss Iris, but I ask you: what better place to be old-fashioned than an antique shop?”
“Good point.”
On her first day of work, a couple of days after Christmas, the shop—and Main Street itself—was pretty quiet. All the shops had Christmas clearances going on, but these weren’t the kind of businesses that had people lining up outside the doors before they opened. Iris knew that Main Street would have a busier Monday than normal, but it wouldn’t be crazy.
Geoff hadn’t offered much Christmas-specific stock in any case, so he didn’t expect to do a big day at all. It was a good day to learn her new job. She had gotten the full tour and an explanation of the sales recording process before the gargoyle bell had tinkled even once.
When it did, Geoff turned to her. “Why don’t you take the book and wander around the shop, get to know the stock and where it came from. A big part of selling what we sell is being able to talk about it. Let me know when you have questions.” Then he headed up to talk to the customer.
Iris reached to the shelf under the desk and pulled up a heavy, old-fashioned ledger. Geoff had already shown her how he logged in every acquisition and gave it a number, based on its chronological order in the ledger. The tags on the items for sale included that number and the price. When the item was sold, the final sale price w
as added, and then a line was penciled through the entry.
The ledger was a bit cumbersome, but Iris cradled it in her arms and wandered through the shop, beginning at the sales room farthest back, which was windowless and full of rugs and paintings. Taking a methodical approach, she found an item to start with and then studied each item nearest it in sequence. It would probably take her a whole week, at least, to know everything in the shop, but she found the task fascinating.
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