by Unknown
He looks around first, same as Taryn did. She watches him sweep the room without pausing until he notices her, eyebrows climbing in recognition. Taryn squares her shoulders and makes herself keep looking back.
And God, it feels like the dumbest victory in the world, but—
Nick turns away first.
She’s still glowing with success when the bar fades back into focus: “Is this what you—”
Taryn glances up to find the bartender standing beside her, menu outstretched. She snatches the laminated card out of his grasp, annoyed at herself.
“Oooh-kay,” Doc says, her neat bob swinging as she cranes her neck around to stare at Kanelos. Taryn takes heart in the fact that she probably at least thinks she’s being subtle. Doc already knows about Nick anyway, what little there is to know—one night last summer they both got tequila-drunk and Taryn gave her the highlights. She needed to tell someone, the secret pressing down on her like a cancer. She woke up the next morning hungover as sin and fully expecting to find that Doc told her boyfriend who told Pete, but the other shoe never dropped.
“What was that?” Doc asks now, knocking Taryn’s elbow. “Are you two in a fight?”
Taryn smiles. She looks down at the menu, overpriced sides listed in curly green script. “We’re not in a fight,” she promises.
That answer would never be enough to satisfy Doc normally, but tonight her stony boyfriend is beckoning from a table in the corner. Taryn can’t pinpoint what it is she hates so much about the guy—something about his hair, maybe, or the pointed way he always calls Doc “Emily” in front of the other medics—but she definitely hopes their love isn’t a lasting one. Doc and her Vera Bradley purse can do better.
“Can I borrow this?” Doc asks, leaning in to tap a shiny nail off the menu. Her breath is sweet and boozy. “Ed’s really hungry too.”
So much for a ride from her then. Ed, Taryn mouths silently, trying to remember. Ed, Ed, like a kick in the head. “All yours,” she declares, widening her fingers expansively. She’ll just have to leave before the buses stop running.
Doc clatters away on her tidy kitten heels, pausing to drop some extra bills in the bucket almost absentmindedly. Even from here, Taryn can see it’s a lot more than twenty-five bucks. Kanelos is still over there too, chatting to the Ortizes with his coat on. Taryn has been avoiding looking in his direction until now, half-expecting him to leave right after his check was deposited. But when the couple turns to thank Doc, Nick’s gaze zeroes in on Taryn.
Right. Taryn swigs back more of her beer, patting the empty stool beside her obnoxiously.
Kanelos rubs at his jaw, watching her.
Chapter Four
The first thing Falvey says when Nick sits down next to her at the bar, before hello or how are you or any sort of pleasantry, is: “Want to split a basket of onion rings with me?”
Nick raises an eyebrow as he settles himself on the stool. “Was gonna get dinner,” he tells her. It’s crowded in here, most everybody from work plus Ortiz’s friends and family, Mumford and Sons piping in through the speakers and the smell of beer and hot sauce thick in the air. It feels oddly festive, considering the circumstances, but Nick guesses that’s the whole point.
Taryn frowns. She’s dressed in jeans and a flannel unbuttoned just low enough that Nick’s real conscious of not looking. She’s got a spray of coppery freckles across her chest like a handful of confetti, is a thing he happens to know about her. Her red hair’s long and loose down her back. “Onion rings are dinner,” she protests.
“Maybe for you they are.” He orders them anyway, plus an Angus burger and an IPA from the bartender. “Want to split the burger too?”
“I’m a vegetarian,” Taryn declares. She waits just long enough for Nick to get over the shock and remember her eating street hot dogs on half a dozen different occasions. Then she grins. “I’m kidding,” she says, kicking at him underneath the bar. Nick fights the urge to wrap his ankle around hers. “Didn’t think you were going to show.”
That gets Nick’s attention. He wasn’t sure what she was after when she texted him earlier; if maybe I’ll see you there meant they had a plan or they didn’t. He’s never known what the hell is going through Taryn’s head. She’s a lot younger than him, sure, that’s part of it, but honestly he’s plain bad at reading women. He and Maddie were together from high school, and God knows she was never, ever shy about telling him what was on her mind. “Were you waiting?” he asks.
“Maybe.” Taryn shrugs, not looking at him. “I mean. S’a good cause and all. Didn’t want everybody to think you were a dick.”
“Uh-huh.” The burger shows up before Nick can figure out what else to say, plus a heaping pile of onion rings in a red plastic basket.
Taryn seems glad of the interruption. “See?” She picks up a ring and bites in, pulling a long string of onion out with her teeth. “Dinner.”
“Right.” Nick isn’t sure if she’s making a point of some kind here, ordering foods you never normally would on a date. If she goes for the deep-fried garlic pickles next, he guesses he’ll know to back off.
Not that he’s planning on—
Christ.
“So I checked the donations bucket,” he tells her, flattening out the bun. “Looks like Ortiz is making off with a haul.”
Taryn tears a piece of crunchy batter in half, face suddenly sad. “Yeah,” she says, licking ketchup off one freckly thumb. “I hope they get enough for the op.”
“Me too.” The baby girl is in ICU right now, Nick knows from Lynette, stable but not thriving. He thinks about Ortiz’s wife and her frenetic thank-yous, how she’d probably much rather be with her kid than here. “Guess we’ll find out.” Falvey doesn’t reply.
They eat in silence for a while after that, Taryn picking at his fries on top of her onion rings. Nick can’t think of what to talk about. Riding together leaves you with the oddest, most-lopsided body of knowledge about a person, and though he knows Falvey’s tampon brand and her favorite foods, he’s got nothing on her family or her thought processes, what she’d wish for if a genie ever said boo. It makes for a strange brand of familiarity.
Finally she sucks down the last few slippery bits of onion, propping her chin on her hand to watch him. She’s got nice eyes, Taryn, pale and witchy gray-green. Nick happens to know that underneath the makeup her eyelashes are the same golden color as her freckles.
“What?” he asks, setting down the burger.
Taryn shrugs. “Nothing.” But the line of her jaw is set like it’s something. Nick watches her sneak a mushroom off his burger, not shy about leaning into his space. “I was waiting,” she admits after a beat, picking up the thread of their earlier conversation like they never stopped talking. “For you to show, I mean.”
Nick feels himself go still.
Falvey isn’t done. “Possibly I, uh, might need a ride home later.”
Which—huh. Nick can’t tell if she means it as an invitation or not. “That so?”
Taryn raises her eyebrows, playful. “Yeah,” she says, grinning. “That is so.”
He thinks about kissing her then, thinks about curling his hand around the back of her pretty head right here in the middle of the bar. Just to see how she’d react. Nick’s not entirely sure what he’s after with Falvey, is the flip side of things, if it’s just that he’s bored and trying to scratch an itch or if it’s something else. The night of the fire, her chin tipped up and the way she said his name? He thought maybe it was something else.
They’re still looking at each other when Doc calls out to Taryn from across the bar, engaging in a series of exaggerated pantomimes that translate roughly to I need to pee and you should too. Falvey rolls her eyes. “Duty calls,” she tells him, sliding off her barstool. She nudges her warm thigh against his before she goes. By the time she gets back Lynette’s made herself at home beside Nick, going on about the new Italian place in Stockbridge—her husband’s out of the doghouse, apparently. Nick watches Falv
ey size up the situation, then follow Doc over to a table with some of the other rookies.
So. That’s the end of that, he guesses.
For a girl who was waiting on him she sure stays far away the rest of the night, beating Doc’s boyfriend at Buck Hunter and nursing a pint of Sam Winter, laughing like she hasn’t got a care in the breathing world. Nick can feel her though, this weird awareness of where she is in the bar at any given moment, like she’s giving off some kind of hum only he can hear. He orders another beer, minds his own business. Taryn doesn’t. At around eleven he comes out of the bathroom and finds her waiting, leaning against the wall next to the ancient pay phone like there’s no place she’d rather be.
Nick blinks. “Hey,” he says. There’s the narrowest strip of skin showing between her waistband and her shirt. “Where you been?”
Taryn smirks. “Like you weren’t watching.”
Halfway between Audra’s age and his, Nick reminds himself. Still. “How d’you figure that?” he asks, leaning in to prop an arm against the wall, close but not close enough to crowd her. It’s private here, a long, dim hallway snaking around the back of the bar, but Nick feels compelled to leave room for the Holy Ghost anyway. All these stops and starts have made him cautious. “Been watching me watch?”
Falvey tips her chin. “Just a hunch,” she supplies, shrugging with the easy grace of a person who knows she’s not wrong. Her pale cheeks are flushed, the beer or the stuffiness or both. “Anyway. Could be I need that ride now.”
Nick isn’t ready to let her off the hook. “Could be, huh? You don’t know for sure?” He’s been waiting on her, is the truth—normally he would have left an hour ago.
“Maybe I just didn’t want to interrupt your evening.” Falvey shrugs, uncrossing her arms and pushing off the wall like she intends to lead the way to the parking lot. Only then she stops short.
“God, seriously, are you ever gonna make the first move?” she asks, one hundred and ten percent out of the blue. Her laugh is unexpectedly nervy. “It’s been my turn twice.”
Nick’s eyebrows damn near hit his hairline. “Your turn—Christ, Falvey, this isn’t a game of Go Fish.”
Taryn smirks, mirroring his expression, but underneath the clowning she looks nervous. “So? Tell me to get lost then.” She’s still standing inside the cage of his arm.
It’s easy to make the first move when you’re as sure of the other person as Falvey is of him, Nick reminds himself. He ought to tell her that and walk away.
He doesn’t.
Her mouth tastes like Sam Adams and medicinal lip balm. Nick fists his hand in her messy red hair and holds on. “There you go,” he says finally, pulling back. God, she’s only been broken up with Pete a couple of weeks. “First move.”
“Mm-hmm.” Taryn blinks at him, those green eyes taking on a gold tint in the dim light of the hallway. Nick can hear the sounds of the bar drifting around the corner, Springsteen and a spray of Jerry’s horsey laughter. “Congratulations.”
Nick blows out an irritated sigh. He knows he got to her, the slightly labored way she’s breathing and the blush that’s crept down her chest. But fine. If she wants to be a pain in the ass, then she can be a pain in the ass. “You want me to drive you home, or what?” he asks.
Taryn’s pale eyebrows lift. “In a minute.” Nick’s dropping his hand from the wall when she grabs it, lacing her fingers through his. “I told you,” she says, when he looks at her curiously. “I did it twice.”
She did it— Christ, Nick’s pretty much had enough of fucking around here.
Maybe Falvey has too, because she kisses him right back this time, letting him lick his way into her mouth and press her up against the wall. Nick can feel her everywhere at once. When she nips along the edges of his tongue, he lets out a growl before he knows he’s going to do it, hips pressing hers back into the plaster. Taryn gasps.
“Good?” he asks, then doesn’t wait for an answer. Instead he tucks one hand against the nape of her neck underneath that waterfall of hair, back where the skin is so hot and so soft it’s all he can do not to turn her around and set to sucking, not to haul her into the bathroom and pull those tight jeans down around her thighs. Taryn grins a cheeky grin against his mouth.
“Knew you had it in you,” she murmurs.
Nick catches her bottom lip between his teeth and tugs. “You’re a brat, you know that?” One thigh slides between hers to investigate, pressing up. She’s warm there too, all these secret pockets of body heat.
Taryn keeps smiling. “You have no idea.”
They kiss like that for another full minute until probability says there’s no way they’re not about to get caught. Nick’s thirty-three years old, for fuck’s sake; the last thing he wants is Lynette or somebody coming around the corner and getting a show. He tells himself to stop, and doesn’t. It feels like he physically can’t, Jesus, like they lit a long fuse on the night of the fire and it’s been sparking along up until now, the flame getting closer and closer until—
“Come on,” Taryn gasps, pulling away with such violence he’s surprised she doesn’t crack her skull on the plaster. Her lips are swollen and spit-shiny. “You’re driving.”
Nick exhales carefully. He’s half-hard already, heavy inside his jeans. “And where am I driving to?” he asks, watching her face.
Falvey gives him a look like he’s been lobotomized. “Somewhere private,” she whispers, loud enough to echo down the hall. Nick raises his eyebrows and watches her turn a dull red, the blush spreading like someone’s coloring between her freckles with a crayon. “Oh, like you don’t want to just as bad.”
She’s not wrong. Nick tips her bossy head back and kisses her roughly, sealing the deal.
Taryn spends the walk to Kanelos’s truck trying to figure out her game plan.
She had a strategy to get them to the parking lot, sure—separating by the pay phone, her circling around to say goodbye to Emily while Nick headed straight for the Ortizes and his coat—but that was pretty much where her forethought ended. Now that they’re actually here, in the cold and not talking, Taryn is a lot less sure of herself.
“Over here,” Nick’s telling her now, holding open the door that leads to the second level of the garage. It’s the first time they’ve spoken since the bar and it’s weird, charged and serious like Taryn’s never been with a guy. If it were Pete, they’d be bumping shoulders and joking.
“Hurry up,” she mumbles, ducking in close under the exit sign for a kiss that’s more chin than lips. “M’cold.” The fluorescent lights turn Nick’s crooked grin orange.
Part of the problem is that Taryn isn’t sure where they’re going to go. Her place is right out, obviously, and she knows enough about the history with Kanelos’s wife to feel strange about inviting herself over to his. Lynette told her the full story last fall, how they bought the house and then not three months later she died, pneumonia brought on by Huntington’s. “At least it was quick,” Lyn said. “She was still mostly herself.” Taryn thinks about Nick’s unfinished kitchen and shivers.
“Cold, huh?” he asks when they get inside the truck. He flicks the heat on full without waiting for an answer, tilting all the vents Taryn’s way so warm air buffets her immediately. Something uncurls in the pit of her stomach. It’s dark here, she’s noticed, way in the corner with no other cars around, the closest one eight spots away at least.
And the Tahoe has a big backseat.
Nick catches her looking. “Seriously?” he asks, the ghost of a disbelieving smile flickering across his face. He’s got a pretty mouth, Kanelos, oddly feminine considering how New England solid he is everyplace else. There’s a well-built kind of steadiness to him that reminds Taryn of slate and granite, of geese flying south in the fall. “In my truck?”
Taryn shrugs, shy all of a sudden. He has that effect on her more than anyone else. “You got a better idea?” she demands.
“I got a lot of better ideas, Falvey,” he tells her mildly, pushing
her hair out of her face with one big hand. His palm feels warm and rough against her skin. She’s trying to come up with a way to tell him why it’s not a good idea to take this to either of their bedrooms, but then, “Get back there.”
Taryn inhales, the lick of desire in her middle getting stronger and brighter. She likes him, God, way more than she’s let herself even think about since the fire. She’s going to need to watch her step. “Not that much better then,” she sasses, shrugging out of her bulky parka and pushing it onto the floor of the truck with an audible swish. Nick doesn’t laugh.
She clambers between the two front seats while he opens the door and slides in back, letting in a chilly slice of air that leaves Taryn shivering. “Hurry,” she murmurs, goose bumps springing up inside her button-down as he reaches behind him to pull the door shut. “Come here.”
Nick comes. The angle of the yellow light across the garage leaves it even darker in the backseat, his face hard to make out as he closes the distance across the slippery leather. He’s still wearing his jacket. Taryn remembers being real little and building forts out of bedsheets and kitchen chairs, the warm, humid dimness and the feeling of being safe.
“Hi,” she says, once she’s swallowed.
Now Nick grins, ducking his head close to kiss her. “Hey, Falvey.”
Taryn sifts through the dark hair at the back of his neck, feels his pulse ticking away underneath her thumb. Her own heart is throwing itself against her chest. She bites at his mouth to take control of the kiss and is surprised when Nick lets her, holding still even as she takes his bottom lip between her teeth to worry. The redder his mouth gets, the more it looks like a girl’s, strangely lush against the sharp cut of his jaw. All of a sudden Taryn wants to sink her teeth in everywhere, wants it rough and quick. She felt the same way in the alley outside Old Court, an itch all through her body and not enough road in the world to run it out on. She half-expects Nick to stop her this time too, curl a hand around her upper arm and tell her to be easy.