Always Conall (Bitterroot #2)
Page 8
“So,” I finally managed to croak out nervously, “why, um… what are you doing here?”
He smiled wide, his white teeth flashing as he straightened and cocked his head slightly. “I want to show you something. Grab some shoes.”
“Okay!” Mattie hollered as she went zipping by me in the hallway towards her room. I pursed my lips and narrowed my eyes. He seemed absolutely giddy and a bit mischievous. It was a look I hadn’t seen on his face in a long, long time.
A look I had really missed.
It was also sort of contagious, and I found myself smiling back as I slipped on my flip flops. Mattie came bustling out of her room and skipped through the door while I quickly grabbed my purse and keys.
Conall started down the stairs, grabbing Mattie up in his arms to speed up our descent. She giggled and clutched her pudgy little arms around his neck as I followed behind and listened to her give him the third degree.
“What’s the surprise?”
“How big is it?”
“Is it a pony?”
“Is it a kitty?”
“Is it purple?”
All the way through the front door of my building and down the sidewalk.
“What do you think?” Conall asked, putting Mattie down and motioning to a shiny new Subaru Forrester parked along the curb. Glistening chrome and glittery silver paint dazzled me, even on this hazy, smoky summer day. It almost seemed to cast an angelic glow, and I could have sworn I heard angels sing with the freedom, comfort, and reliability it represented, especially compared to my crapped out Taurus.
“What, this is yours?” I asked in confusion. “A Subaru? Didn’t you just buy a pickup?”
Conall shook his head with a smile. “No,” he grinned. “I mean, yes, I did just buy a pickup. But this isn’t mine. It’s yours.”
“Pretty!” Mattie exclaimed and ran to press her nose against the passenger-side window.
My smile faded and a weird feeling began to settle in my stomach. A what-the-fuck-is-going-on-here feeling. “What are you talking about?”
“You need a new car. Here’s a new car.” He held his hand out, gesturing to the shiny vehicle before me.
“It’s so sparkly!” I could barely hear Mattie’s voice over my heartbeat. A glance over at her revealed that she was closely examining the gleaming silver paint.
I turned back to Conall. “I can’t afford—”
“You don’t have to,” he interrupted. “I took care of it. Paid in full.”
“Conall, I can’t even afford the insurance on this,” I tried to find reason in his pure unreasonableness. This was simply insane.
“You don’t have to,” he said emphatically. “I’ll take care of that, too.”
“No,” I argued, shaking my head defiantly. “I can’t ask you to do this.”
“You’re not asking. I want to do this for you and Mattie. I need to do this for you and Mattie.”
I glanced back over at Mattie who was tracing a thin pinstripe that almost looked…
“Purple, Mommy!” she exclaimed happily. “It’s got purple!”
“That’s custom, just for you, Mattie,” Conall grinned and stepped over to the back passenger door. “Look in here,” he smiled as he opened it up to reveal a purple and silver booster seat. “Check this out. This is your seat.”
“Aaaaahhhh!” Mattie squealed exuberantly, jumping up and down before she scrambled into the seat. “Buckle me in!”
“Conall, wait,” I tried again, pulling him off to the side, not wanting to argue in front of Mattie. “This is too much. This is a really, really fancy car. It looks brand new.”
“It is brand new.”
My jaw dropped and my eyes went wide.
“Sage,” he laughed at my astounded expression, “it’s not like it’s a Camaro or Hummer or something. It’s a Subaru.”
“I drive a ’96 Taurus,” I mumbled.
“No, correction… you drove a ’96 Taurus. Your car has died, Sage. Like I told you earlier, it’s going to cost more to fix the transmission than it will cost to buy another piece of shit just like it.”
“But this is brand new.”
“I know that, Sage,” he said, speaking with an emphatic slowness and raising his eyebrow. “I just told you that. I’m the one who bought it.” He stepped closer and put his hands at my shoulders, tipping his head down towards mine and looking into my eyes. “It’s reliable. You can trust it. It will keep you and Mattie safe. You won’t be breaking down on the side of the road or slipping around in the snow. It’s all-wheel drive, and I’ve got an extra set of wheels with studded snow tires on order for you.”
“I can’t—”
“Sage, honey,” he glanced up at the sky, almost as though he was looking for strength and patience from the heavens above, then looked back down at me, his dark eyes sincere and determined, “I’ve been in the Army for five years – five fucking years. Now, it isn’t like I made tons of money, but I barely touched a dime that I made… for five years. No clue why, but I felt like I needed to save it. So, do the math. Even at a low wage, I can afford this. And you need this.” His hand curved around my jaw as he brushed my cheek with his thumb. “Consider it a start towards some of the back child support I owe you.”
I couldn’t speak. Part of me knew he was making at least some sense, even if it was in a totally insane way. I could only stare back at him, breathless with his gift or payment or whatever he wanted to call it. But that breathlessness also stemmed from the emotion I saw deep within his eyes. From that familiar pang of tenderness in my heart. The gentle, firm touch of his hand on my cheek. The tingle of my lips that I suddenly realized were only inches from his.
I could faintly hear my daughter’s voice chattering away behind me. “And there’s a spot for a sippy cup, and, Ooooooh, what’s that?”
Mattie continued to babble on in the back of my mind as I seemed to freeze under his gaze. It was taking every ounce of self-control I possessed not to lift up on my tip-toes and press my lips to his. His expression shifted ever-so slightly, his lids lowered heavily, and his own breath caught as he focused on my mouth.
“Mommy!” Mattie’s voice jerked me from the spell that had paralyzed me. “Is that a TV in the back of the seat?”
That jolted me back into consciousness. “A TV? You got a car with a TV?”
“Well, yeah… I thought Mattie would love that. As she gets older, she can even play video games on it and shit.”
“Conall…”
“Let’s take it for a ride,” he smiled as he tipped his head to the side. “Besides, I need you to take me back to get my truck.”
“Where’s your truck?”
“At the dealership,” he replied.
“So, why don’t you just take the car back to get your truck. Kill two birds with one stone.”
He straightened and folded his arms over his broad chest. “Because the car is for you.”
“Don’t I get some kind of say in what type of car I’m driving?” I asked with a petulant frown. “Maybe I don’t like silver.”
Conall looked at me with eyes full of laughter as he lifted one brow. “You don’t like silver?”
“Well, okay, that’s a bad example. It’s a lovely color. But you didn’t even ask me. Maybe I hate Subarus. Maybe I wanted something different.”
“Do you? We have a few days if you wanted a different car.”
“Like a cheaper car? Or an older car?”
He studied me closely for a minute, realizing what I was doing. “Equal or greater value. I’ve paid cash. I won’t allow it to be less.”
“You won’t allow it?” I looked at my daughter who was engrossed in climbing over the seat into the back cargo area, so I pulled Conall further away from the car and quietly spat, “Who the fuck do you think you are?”
“You’re forgetting something… I grew up with you. I know how stubborn you can be. But, you may recall, I can be just as stubborn. I’m as hard-headed as they come. I’ve paid
for the car. You can accept this car or I can get you a better one. But this car is already in your name. I’ve already got insurance on it, listing you as the primary driver.”
“Conall, I’m not comfortable with this.”
“Sage… you know you need this. I can do it for you. I should have been doing shit like this for you all along.” He held up the keys, dangling them in front of me. “Let’s take it for a ride.”
“But I can—”
“How are you going to get to work? How are you going to get Mattie to preschool? You know the buses in this town are shit.”
I frowned. “I’m working on that.”
“How?”
Pursing my lips, I thought for a minute before answering. “I don’t know yet. I’ll go get a car loan. Or something.”
“Can you afford a car loan? You were just telling me you can’t afford the insurance.”
“Well, it wouldn’t be very fancy. Nothing like this, but I’m working full-time at the hospital now, and once I have documentation that I passed the NCLEX exam, I’ll get a raise.”
“How long is that going to take? My guess is it will likely be a month or so before you even get the paperwork, plus another month or so before a raise shows up in your paycheck.”
I glared at him for a moment before heaving a frustrated sigh and looking away. I hated that he had figured that out.
His voice gentled, soothing and full of promise. “Don’t fight this. Let’s just go for a ride.”
“Yeah, Mommy,” Mattie called out from inside the car. “Let’s go for a ride.”
Finally, I looked back up at him, still a little pissy at what appeared to be my defeat. “You and I need to get some shit down in writing or something. This is too much. I don’t need all this.” Conall’s brows knit together and he frowned, so I continued on. “This needs to be fair to you, too, Conall.”
“If I agree to that,” he said, “if I agree to formalizing some agreement, will you accept the car?”
“Conall,” I started again.
“That’s my deal. We’ll get stuff sorted out, Sage, I promise,” he said solemnly, “as long as you take the car.”
“Fine,” I finally caved, and Conall smiled widely. “But it will be part of the agreement, even if it is the only thing in the agreement.”
Taking my hand, he turned it up and pressed the keys into my palm. “Now,” he winked, “let’s go for a ride.”
Chapter 8 ~ Placer Lake
Sage
As much as I hated to admit it, even to myself, the Subaru was really fucking awesome. It started right up with barely a touch, which my old Taurus hadn’t done in damn-near forever. It didn’t make weird noises when I turned corners or sputter precariously when I stepped on the brake.
Mattie loved it, especially the TV. And the purple trim. Just as I was getting ready to buckle her into her new seat for the maiden voyage, she squealed.
“Aaaaahhhh! Stop! I need a movie!”
“Mattie, we’re not—” I began.
But Conall reached into the front passenger seat and pulled out a bag. A bag containing a whole bunch of My Little Pony movies. My mouth dropped as I gave him a hard look.
“What?” he smiled as he held them out for her to pick one. “What’s the fun of having a TV in the car if you don’t have a movie to watch?”
“Oh! Friendship is Magic!” Mattie shouted. “I love that one! I want that one!”
“Mattie, you already have that one in the house,” I suggested.
“Well, now she has one for the car, too.”
“Conall,” I sighed. “This is crazy.”
“No, it’s practical.”
“Having two copies of the same movie is practical?” I looked at him incredulously. “That’s kind of the opposite of practical.”
“I didn’t want you to have to be moving movies back and forth from your apartment to the car all the time,” he smiled. “One less thing for you to worry about.”
“Buckle, Mommy!” Mattie called out. “Let’s go! I wanna watch my movie!”
“We are not done discussing this,” I warned Conall as I reached in the backseat to help Mattie with her seatbelt. Conall only smiled, rather infuriatingly, and folded his large frame into the passenger seat.
“Ok,” Conall said as I sat behind the wheel, “where to?”
I looked over at him, a little bit unsure. “I’m not really sure.”
“Where do you usually go when you want to take a drive?”
“I usually don’t. I was a little wary of taking the Taurus very far. For good reason, apparently,” I shrugged.
“Where have you wanted to go?”
I thought for a minute. I’d lived in Bitterroot my whole life, but had barely been out of town in years. Thinking back to some of the places my family went as kids, my mind shifted to a spot I’d always loved.
Dreamily, I murmured, “Placer Lake, up in the mountains.” As I looked over at Conall, he smiled. “I’ve always wanted to take Mattie there.”
Conall’s eyes softened. “Now’s your chance,” he said with a warm, rich voice.
When I was a kid, I’d been pretty sure that Placer Lake was enchanted. It was stunning, about an hour up a winding, dirt road through the pines and aspens to a wide glacial valley surrounded by snow-covered peaks, even in the middle of summer. My dad had taken us up there so many times as kids, and, as usual, Conall always managed to hop in the truck with us as we headed out of town. Those were some of the happiest days of my life. And I hadn’t been there since he died.
And Conall could see that. Conall knew how much that place meant to me.
And Conall made it possible to share it with Mattie.
The rest of the afternoon had an almost dreamlike quality to it. The green grass and the wildflowers in the mountaintop meadow. The crystal-clear water that streamed down from the snow-capped peaks. Mattie was thrilled with the deer (they weren’t quite as thrilled with Mattie) and the frogs (they didn’t really seem to care one way or the other). She was pretty sure Conall was magic as he skipped rocks across the still water of Placer Lake.
She needed to know who he was. Conall and I really needed to get this shit sorted out, because there was a bond developing between the two of them. In the week or so since he’d been back to town, Mattie had become purely enthralled with everything about him.
Yet, what if he didn’t stay? There were so many things that I didn’t have control over, and that scared the shit out of me. The thought that Mattie was growing to love him terrified me. And if she knew who he really was…
This couldn’t go on indefinitely.
Something had to change.
Conall
Somewhere during the latter part of the day, Sage’s mood shifted. Her brows became tightly drawn. A tension emanated from her, and concern filled her eyes.
It was nice while it lasted.
Driving back down to town, as Mattie conked out from an afternoon of playing in the strong sunshine of the mountaintops, Sage grew quiet. Withdrawn.
She closed up and set her defenses.
And I couldn’t really blame her.
“So,” I asked, “think it’ll do?”
“Hmm?” she quietly murmured as she looked away from to road to glance over at me. “What’ll do?”
“The car…”
She gave me a graceful smile. “Yeah, it’s very nice, Conall. I still say it’s too much, but thank you.”
“So, what do you got going on this week?” I asked as we neared town. “You work tomorrow?”
“Yeah, I have night shifts through Wednesday, and I’m filling in for someone on Thursday afternoon for a couple hours.”
“So, would you want to go do something on Thursday evening?”
“Um, I can’t…” Her voice sort of trailed off and she gave me a sidelong look before she continued. “Jeff will be back.”
Jeff.
Fucker.
“Right,” I muttered. “Sex night.”
“Around that side of the building,” I said, pointing in the general direction to guide her. “So, when you’re out getting laid, what do you do with Mattie?”
Sage pursed her lips. “I have a sitter, an older lady who lives in my building. She’ll keep her overnight.”
“But it’s not sex night.”
“Conall,” she started, but then she simply sighed deeply. “Just… don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t ruin this day. It was nice. It was fun to be with you and Mattie. We need to figure some shit out, but Jeff is my business.” She turned to look at me as she put the car into park. “We talked about this.”
“Right. Who we fuck is our own business. I forgot.” I got out of the car, closing the door quietly to avoid waking up Mattie in the back seat. As I strode to my pickup, I heard Sage’s car door open and close.
“You know,” she said angrily, “I waited. For years. And you didn’t even fucking call me. And now you just want me to drop everything when I don’t even know how long you’re going to be here.”
I turned to look at her, my hands on my hips and feeling a deep frustration burn through my chest.
“What the fuck, Conall?” she quietly spat. “You don’t get to make me feel like shit for wanting a halfway normal life.”
“What you’re doing isn’t normal, Sage. This isn’t you.”
“Fuck off,” she said, and started to turn away. “You don’t even know who I am.”
I grabbed her arm and pulled her back up to me. “That’s bullshit. You always had your head in the clouds, always dreaming of some knight in shining armor that was going to whisk you away. You are a hopeless romantic. So this thing with this motherfucking Jeff guy… this is not you.”
“That girl you knew is gone, Conall,” she choked out as she pulled her arm away violently. “She never came home from that muddy bank when you left.” Her eyes turned up to me, haunted, the blue almost unnoticeable in the fading light. Unless you knew it was there. But that luminous color had haunted me for years. It had burned into my soul. “So don’t tell me what I’m like. Don’t tell me what I do and don’t do. We’re friends for Mattie, while we get things figured out for her. That’s it.”