Crash Lights and Sirens, Book 1 (23 page)

So.

Caitlin’s the first to fall asleep, the food or the postcry hangover or just plain exhaustion, folded into the smallest version of herself in the armchair in the corner of the room. Connor goes next, gingery head lolled back against the couch. When Mikey passes out he’s curled in Taryn’s lap like a toddler, thumb shoved in his swollen mouth. Taryn strokes through his hair over and over again. After a while Nick notices her shifting her weight underneath him, like she’s getting ready to lift and carry him upstairs.

Nick gets up first. “Want me to?” he asks, motioning at the heavy, boneless mass of kid draped over her shoulder. It’s the first thing either one of them have said in almost an hour. The TV is still jabbering softly away.

Taryn’s eyes flick in his direction and back at her brother, alert. “I can do it,” she says, bracing one arm on the sofa for leverage. She stands up and hitches Mikey higher on her hip.

“I know you can,” Nick says.

Just then her phone trills, vibrating across the sofa arm like a live thing. She can’t bend with the kid weighing her down, so that’s the end of that particular stalemate. “I got him,” Nick murmurs, sliding his hands down between their bodies. Miracle of miracles, Taryn lets go without comment, Mikey sleeping through the transfer like a champ, messy head coming to rest against Nick’s shoulder with the kind of weight only achieved by the stone-unconscious. He smells like stale milk and boy.

“Hey Emily,” Taryn murmurs, picking up the phone and turning her whole self away from them. The line of her spine makes for a very elegant wall. “How is she?”

Nick doesn’t love the dismissal, but there’s not a whole lot he can do about it with an armful of bruised six-year-old. He waits until he’s certain the call is just a routine check-in, then trudges upstairs in pursuit of the right bedroom. The first one he checks looks distinctly feminine, two single beds shoved against opposite walls and a dingy rug shaped like a strawberry in the middle. Next is the bathroom, still in complete shambles. Finally he hits on what looks like the safest bet, a tiny room with cheap, aluminum-frame bunk beds beside the window and a rocket ship stenciled on the far wall. When Nick flicks off the overhead, a friendly Elmo night-light blinks on in the corner.

“Here you go, buddy,” he says, tucking Mikey into the lower bunk and mounding the solar-system covers on top of his tiny body. It’s cold up here too, what feels like shitty insulation coupled with bad central heat. And God, Nick knew Taryn’s family wasn’t well off, all of those little clues adding up, but it’s different to witness firsthand. The exposed wiring and chipped paint aren’t theoretical.

He runs into the two older kids on the way down, Caitlin holding her brother’s hand to lead him up the stairs. “Our mom’s stable,” she tells Nick in a voice gone scratchy and worn from crying. “Just so you know.” Her T-shirt says
Berry Cool
across the front, an explosion of textured raspberries along the hem. Nick can see a spot of red on the shoulder that might be blood.

He nods his acknowledgment. Then he takes a chance. “Listen, Caitlin. Did any of the other medics see your brother?” He wants to be prepared. If the Department of Children and Families is going to be beating down the door in the next hour, Nick would prefer a heads up before the inevitable happens.

Caitlin stops, nudging Connor up ahead with her knee. Her stare is deep and still. “You mean Mikey?” she says. “No. I told him to hide under the kitchen table before I called.” She chews on her hair for a second before continuing. “Are you gonna report it?”

Nick shoves both hands deep in his pockets. He should. Any other call, any other family, and that would have been his first instinct. “No.”

Caitlin nods, looking at him for another minute. “Okay,” she says.

Downstairs he finds Taryn neatening the kitchen in a haphazard kind of way, bouncing from the sink to the table to the counter and back again like a pinball inside an arcade game. She changed her clothes when she cleaned herself up earlier, jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt. In the half second before she notices him watching, it looks like she’s made entirely of glass.

“So.” Taryn catches sight in the window above the sink and turns to face him, wringing a dish towel between both hands like she’s aiming to strangle it. “Happy now?”

Nick blinks. It’s after midnight, the spindly outlines of a few spring trees just visible in the tiny yard. “Am I happy?” he echoes. “Why would I be happy, Falvey?”

Taryn shrugs, defiant. “You solved the big mystery, didn’t you? What’s the deal with Taryn’s family?” Her lips twist. “Well, congratulations, Niko. Now you know.”

Now he knows.

It explains the shit with Pete, he guesses, in broad terms at least—whatever he saw, Taryn sure as shit wasn’t about to give him the opportunity to see it again. Nick thinks he’s going to need to be very, very careful. He’s not sure why she hasn’t already kicked him out. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asks.

Taryn rounds on him. “Because it’s none of your business, Nick, Jesus. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred I have it under control, and just because we’re—because you—” She shakes her head, sounding close to tears, and swallows. “It’s my family, okay? It’s none of your business.”

Nick chances one step toward her, scratching through the hair at the back of his neck. He wants like hell to get his arms around her. Knows there’s not a hope in the world. “It’s my business now, wouldn’t you say?”

“No!” Taryn explodes. “I didn’t want this!” She glances toward the kitchen door, lowers her voice. “I told you I didn’t want this. I was really clear about that, and you didn’t listen, and you pushed and you pushed and you made me—you made me—” Taryn breaks off, hands fluttering in front of her like birds. “Forget it,” she says, like she’s pulling herself back from someplace dangerous. “You should go.”

Yeah, there’s no way that’s happening. Nick takes another step. “Made you what, exactly?” he asks.

Taryn shakes her head again, stubborn. “Nothing,” she insists. “It doesn’t matter.”

It does matter, is the problem. It matters to Nick more than he’d like. “Say it,” he tells her. “By all means, tell me what exactly it is I made you do.”

“Fuck you,” Taryn says. “This was supposed to be casual.”

“And now it’s not?” One final step and he’s close enough to touch her, but she’s folded into herself like origami, all angles and elbows. Nick wants to pry apart her crossed arms and open her back up, smooth her out again the way he would a piece of paper. “Is that what I did? Because you could have ended it at any time, sweetheart.” Nick doesn’t know why he keeps dangling that particular option in front of her. A dare, maybe. “That’s on you too.”

“No, it’s not!” Taryn shouts, hands flying open of their own accord. “Christ, that’s what I’m saying. I couldn’t just break up with you, Nick! You told me all this stuff about your wife and you made me like your stupid dog and freaking got me invested and then—”

“Made you like my dog?” Nick laughs, he can’t help it, even though the bit about Maddie stings. “Taryn, come on, let’s not—”

“—and then it was too late, and now I’m like, in love with you or whatever, and I didn’t want any of this.”

The silence after she cuts herself off is astonishing. Nick can’t think of a single useful thing to say.

Taryn seems to run out of steam then too, arms dropping down to hang at her sides. The dish towel she’s been clinging to all this time droops like a flag at half-mast. “Anyway. Emily called, and my mom’s going to be okay, probably. No brain damage.” Her stare is as hollow as Caitlin’s. “You said you’d go as soon as we knew.”

Nick can feel his heartbeat everywhere in his body at once, as sudden as if he’d injected himself with epinephrine from the back of the rig. “I don’t think that’s what I said, actually,” he tells her, reaching out and hanging up the dish towel. “Taryn.”

“Shut up,” she hisses. She’s curled into herself again, arms wrapped around her midsection like a stabbing victim. But then just as suddenly she’s uncurled, hands sneaking up inside his uniform shirt with a purpose. “Let’s just—shut up.” Her lips are cold and dry on his, and when she wrenches her mouth open Nick tastes salt.

Christ. At this point he’d be willing to give her whatever she wants, wherever she wants, even if the answer to both is—and yes, it looks like it definitely is, because there’s her chapped hand slipping down to close around his dick. Jacking him hard, in front of God and the fluorescent microwave clock and— Nick hisses against her mouth. Taryn wiggles away long enough to get her jeans and underwear around her ankles and then she’s back on him, pulling out his cock and opening up her hips. She’s too short by a mile, so Nick boosts her to the countertop and drops to his knees. When he licks a stripe up the center of her cunt, she’s as dry as the desert. And that’s—huh.

That reminds Nick of something.

“Taryn.” He leans his head against her warm, pale inner thigh. “Talk to me for a sec.”

“No.” She wiggles, one hand coming down to clutch at his hair. “Go.”

But Nick can’t go. The night of the fire was like this, exactly like this, only Nick was on his knees in his own kitchen. They hadn’t stopped to talk that time either. It was the worst call he’d ever gotten on the job, the two of them busting into a smoked-out housing complex along with the fire department. The ignition point turned out to be some idiot trying to heat an electric kettle on the stove, but at the time all Nick knew was that the smoke was thick and chemical. It was nearly impossible to see their patients through it, a young mom and her two babies. The woman smelled like booze and had probably passed out before the fire even began. The kids, though—the older one lost two fingernails and all the skin off his knuckles clawing at the locked front door. He was too short to reach the latch. Falvey tried to resuscitate him for half an hour, tiny compressions on his toddler body. Nick finally had to pull her off.

They’d needed three body bags in the end.

When it first happened, Nick thought it was about the baby, that Taryn was reacting to the senselessness the same way he was. Now, here in her home with her younger siblings asleep upstairs, he finally understands it was about the booze.

“Did you mean it?” he asks her, cupping one cold foot. He thumbs along her instep, presses harder. “Huh?” he prods when she doesn’t answer right away. “Falvey.”

“Nick—” Taryn squeezes her eyes shut, tossing her head like a horse. She’s still got those chilly fingers twisted in his hair. “Let it go, okay?”

She barely said two words to him for months after the fire. Turned that pale, pretty face into a mask. Nick was surprised by how much that burned him, like he’d let her under his skin without ever meaning to do it.
This was supposed to be casual
, she said.

“I don’t want to let it go.” Nick rocks to his feet then, slides his hands behind her knees and tugs until she’s right on the edge of the counter. Gets his face down close to hers. “Did you mean it or not?”

“Yes.” Taryn huffs a noisy breath, looking everywhere but at him. She sounds so, so pissed. “Yeah, I meant it, okay? Is that what you want to hear? But it doesn’t change the fact that—”

“I love you too.” Nick cups her angry face in two hands that aren’t quite shaking. He hadn’t realized how bad he wanted to say it until now, how it’s been getting bigger and more uncomfortable inside him, taking up space next to his heart and lungs. He loves the shit out of her, is the truth. Has been the truth for a while. “Taryn. Hey. I’m in love with you too.”

Taryn drops her head back in disgust like she just found out they need to work a double on the snowiest day of the year, and plus she has a headache and somebody left old McDonald’s in the ambo, and maybe her socks are wet on top of it. “Ugh,” she whines, really and truly put out by the idea. “Seriously?”

Nick laughs out loud. “You’re a brat, you know that?” he asks.

“You’re a brat,” she counters. Then, in a different voice altogether, “I’m a disaster.”

“You’re not,” Nick says, almost before she’s even got the words out. “You’re perfect.” He gets his mouth on hers then, warm and damp. “You hear me?” he murmurs. “I know you, and I love you, and you’re perfect.”

Taryn shakes her head. “You can’t say stuff like that to me,” she tells him, squirming. He can feel her getting wet though, pressed together so close like they are. He nudges her thighs wider apart, rocks himself against her. Taryn gasps. “Nick. You can’t—”

“Yeah I can.” He does it again to make the point, pulling her forward even more so that she has to shift her weight to him, those wiry arms wound tight around his neck. “See?” he says, up against her soft, pink tongue. “Love you.”

Taryn whines in response—a different kind of whine this time, sharp and needy, kicking her jeans all the way off and wrapping her legs around his waist. She lifts herself, like she’s looking to line them up, then feints at the last possible second. “Say it again,” she orders.

“Brat,” Nick murmurs against her flushed cheek. He threads his hand through the base of her ponytail and pulls, exposing her white neck. “Love you.” Taryn
hmms
, then
hmms
again when he sucks. Her skin is warm and powdery. Nick feels dizzy with relief. “Love you. Love you so much.”

“Oh my God,” Taryn gasps, sounding for all the world like a teenager whose mom is embarrassing her at the mall. Down between them though, she’s as wet as anything. Nick slides a hand up her thigh and cups her, pressing the other one against her lower back until she gives in and grinds messily into his palm. “This is such a bad idea,” she whimpers. Nick is pulling back to have a discussion about exactly why it isn’t—he loves her, she makes him happy, he’s not scared of her fucked-up family—when she continues. “What if someone comes down?”