Crash Lights and Sirens, Book 1 Page 6

  Caitlin thumps downstairs fully dressed just as Taryn’s slitting open the letter. “Aren’t we going to be late?” she wants to know. Her sweater is an old hand-me-down, pearly detailing starting to fray off around the front pockets. Taryn is going to have to find the money to buy her some new clothes before she moves up to Lee Middle.

  “Buses are on delay while they plow,” Taryn explains absentmindedly. The letter is big and bold, dated the first of the month. It informs a Mrs. R. Falvey that she has missed two mortgage payments and additional late fees will apply. Taryn stares at it for a second, adding up the new amount.

  “Who wants pancakes?” That’s Rosemary herself, coming into the kitchen with Mikey tossed over her shoulder and Connor trailing behind. She’s got jeans on for once, hair up in a knot instead of a scraggly ponytail. Caitlin was right, at least. Pizza obviously went really, really well. “School doesn’t open until nine fifteen,” she informs Taryn airily, plunking Mikey down at the table. “We’ll have a special breakfast to celebrate.”

  “Yeah, Mom, I know.” The fact that Rosemary remembered to check is a miracle in and of itself. Lately, it feels like her good days are getting fewer and farther between. Taryn takes a deep breath and holds out the letter.

  Rosemary’s brow furrows as she reads, then smooths. “It’s okay, baby,” she says, looking up at Taryn with a smile. “We don’t have to pay the full amount all at once.”

  Taryn darts her eyes over to Caitlin, who’s listening avidly from her seat at the island. “Looks serious,” she murmurs, reaching up into the cabinets for the pancake mix.

  Rosemary waves a hand. “I’ve missed three in a row before, back when you were little. We didn’t lose the house then, did we?” She takes the box from Taryn and pulls out the rest of the ingredients for her Everything Pancakes, a recipe she’s been making since Taryn could walk. They’ve got M&Ms and crushed chocolate bars in them to cover the cardboard mix taste. “Falveys have been living here for over forty years,” she tells Taryn, measuring out a cup. “We’ll be fine.”

  The house used to belong to Taryn’s grandparents, a very serious, very Catholic couple who died when she was five and Jesse was just a baby. “Yeah,” Taryn allows. “But we didn’t have a second mortgage then.” Mikey and Connor’s dad was the one who came up with that brilliant idea, back when Rosemary still worked. Then he left, and Rosemary gradually became less and less able to hold down a job. Taryn and Jesse have been treading water ever since.

  Rosemary puts down the mixing spoon and cups Taryn’s cheek. “Baby. I promise it’s fine. We’ll call them later, you’ll see.”

  It’s stupid—later is nebulous and Rosemary could be anywhere by then, in bed with the blinds drawn or over at Sully’s, checked out again for the next week—but the we placates Taryn anyway. She wants today to be a good day. “Okay,” she says, smiling as Jesse slouches in from the living room. He slept on the couch last night, which is better than nothing.

  “Hey, Ma.” He kisses her cheek, nodding at Taryn. “Really coming down out there. You got a ride to work?”

  Which—hm. That’s both a really good question and the first civil word he’s said to her in a while. “Not sure yet,” she says, nudging him out of the way to get four mugs out of the cupboard. Caitlin started drinking coffee last year, although Taryn only lets her have half a cup at a time. “Guess I’ll have to see who’s around.”

  She leaves Rosemary to the pancakes and brings her cup upstairs to the shower, turns the water up as hot as she can get it. There’s a smudgy red-purple bruise at the base of her neck. She’ll have to cover it with some makeup or wear a scarf all day or something. Taryn thinks of Nick’s sharp teeth and the pull of his mouth and shivers under the steamy water. Tries to stop thinking about it.

  She could text him and ask for a ride, obviously, except it seems weird to do it now, like maybe he’ll think she’s expecting something from him. It feels like calling too soon after a first date.

  Not that that was a date, but. Same difference.

  By the time she gets out of the shower she’s decided to either ask Doc or otherwise brave it on her own—if the buses are running it probably can’t be too bad on the roads. She’s yanking a brush through her knotty hair when her phone dings with a text. Pick you up? Nick wants to know.

  So. Clearly at least one of them hasn’t spent his morning thinking things to death.

  Sure, Taryn types, sitting down on the edge of the bed in her towel. When she looks in the mirror on the back of the door, she’s smiling.

  She’s waiting on the curb when the Tahoe pulls up, stamping her feet against the cold. She can feel snowflakes landing on her eyelashes, wetness seeping up from the bottoms of her jeans. “Hey,” Nick says, once she’s swung herself up into the passenger seat.

  “Hey.” Taryn busies herself fussing with her seat belt, feeling a flash of that same shyness from last night. He knocks her off her guard in a way she can’t totally articulate. There’s a Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in both cup holders.

  “Those your brothers?” he asks, nodding out the window. Taryn looks and sure enough, there’s Connor and Mikey headed for the bus stop, Mikey punching Connor in the elbow and neither one of them wearing a hat. Caitlin’s a few steps behind them, reading while she walks.

  Taryn feels herself stiffen. “Yup,” she says in her best don’t ask any follow-up questions voice. A thing she has liked about Nick in the past is that generally he doesn’t pry. “That’s them.”

  Her tone must be pretty effective, because he doesn’t pry now either. “So,” he says instead, eyes on the road and one hand hooked over the wheel. “How was your evening?”

  Taryn glances over at him, smirking. There’s a quiet kind of wryness to him it took her a real long time to figure out. “Oh, you know,” she says, examining her fingernails with exaggerated nonchalance. “Had its moments, I guess.”

  Nick huffs a laugh. “Smartass.”

  “Hey, you bait me.” Taryn grins, nodding at the second coffee in the cup holder. “That mine?”

  Nick eases them around the corner slow, other kids trekking across snowy lawns to catch their late buses. Taryn bets there will be at least a couple accidents to start off the morning. “Yeah, Falvey,” Nick tells her. “That’s yours.”

  Taryn picks up the cup, turning toward the window to hide her smile.

  Nick isn’t sure what to expect when he picks up Falvey in the Tahoe. Last time they did this it was awkward and awful by turns, Taryn unable to string two civil words together for months after the fire. Nick used to pray for big accidents.

  Turns out it isn’t like that at all.

  “Thanks for the ride,” Taryn’s saying, clambering out into the frigid parking lot. The drive was fifteen minutes of alternating quiet and chatter, her shiny, messy hair and those nervous hands. Nick wouldn’t put money on it, but he’s pretty sure he’s being felt out for—something. “And the coffee.” Another toothy smile and she’s gone, ducking inside the squat cinderblock building.

  Nick blows out a breath, scrubbing a hand along his jaw. He shaved this morning before taking Atlas out for a walk. The cold air bites at his exposed skin.

  Lynette’s the first face he sees inside, coming out of the kitchenette with her giant coffee mug. “You got your girl again today, Kanelos,” she announces, smirking around a sip. “Almost like someone’s been stacking the roster.” And sure enough, posted right there in the hallway over her shoulder: Falvey/Kanelos, Bus #3451.

  Lyn’s still looking at him, waiting on a reaction. Nick shrugs and works real hard on not giving her one. “Almost like,” he echoes blandly and heads into the locker room to get dressed.

  Falvey’s already at the bus when he makes it out there—how she changes so fast is beyond him, although he bets it helps to have as many siblings as she seems to. Her red hair’s braided sensibly between her shoulder blades. Already Nick wants to mess it up something fierce. “You know, Falvey,” he tells her, figuring the best defe
nse is a good offense, “if you wanted to spend the day with me so bad, you could have just asked.”

  Taryn snorts. “Go screw,” she tells him without hesitation, but she’s grinning when she says it, handing him half the supply list to check. Nick is really, really going to have to watch how much he likes her smile. “Take the list.”

  It’s a busy shift, half a dozen car accidents, two serious enough to transport, plus an old lady who slips down her front steps getting her mail. By the time they bring her to Fairview and break for lunch, it’s after two. Nick stops at a deli he likes not far from the hospital and they get roast beef and kettle chips, two fat sour pickles out of the barrel next to the counter. At the last second Nick gets a cookie too.

  Taryn’s eyes widen when he waves off the crumpled cash she tries to hand him. “Seriously?” she asks as they head across the icy parking lot. She’s got the plastic bag looped around her skinny wrist. “What is this, like, a date?”

  Nick raises his eyebrows. They haven’t talked much since they got on the bus this morning, one call after another and the endless whine of the siren. “If I was taking you on a date, Falvey, you’d know it.”

  That makes her flush, a deeper pink flooding her cold-rosy cheeks. “Oh yeah?” she asks, and it sounds like a playground challenge.

  “Yeah.” Nick unlocks the cab and they both climb in, breath visible in the icy air. He cranks the heat and holds his hand out for his roast beef. Then, because she’s still looking at him and he doesn’t know what it means, “Do you want me to take you on a date?”

  Taryn exhales noisily, not saying anything for a moment. She looks put out by the question. “Listen,” she tells him, pulling one leg up underneath her and fussing with the white deli paper on her sandwich. Her gaze is somewhere in the neighborhood of the gearshift. “You know I just got out of—”

  “I know.” Nick holds his hand up to stop her. The last thing he wants is an I’m not ready for a relationship right now speech from a twenty-four-year-old, especially Falvey. Fuck, he practically wrote that speech himself. “It’s fine.”

  Taryn nods, opening her bag of chips and fishing one out without looking at him. Nick takes a bite of his sandwich and tries to figure out why he’s annoyed.

  “We could hang out,” she says as a follow-up.

  That gets his attention. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” Taryn makes a face like it’s no big deal, like it’s a whole different universe from him buying her dinner. “Watch basketball, I don’t know.”

  This girl. Nick reaches down for his water bottle. “You wanna come over and watch basketball?”

  “Maybe. It’s just an example!” she protests when he keeps staring at her, but she’s smiling now, sheepish. Her eyes are gray today, the same pale color as the sky. “Is that weird though?”

  “You wanting to come over and check out the Celtics?” he asks. Is this a date, Jesus fucking Christ. “I mean, a little.”

  “Shut up,” she says. “Not that.” Then, off his blank expression: “Lynette told me, okay? About your house, and your—” Taryn stops, shrugging aggressively.

  Ah. That kind of weird. Nick chews through another bite while he thinks over his answer. “Lyn does like telling that story,” is what he finally settles on, nudging the cookie over to Falvey’s side of the dashboard. She’s nothing like Maddie, looks or personality, anything about her at all. When they first met, Nick thought she wasn’t his type. “We could do it anyway,” he tells her, watching carefully. “Hang out.”

  “Yeah?” Taryn crunches another chip, watching him right back. “Even if it’s weird?”

  Nick thinks about that one for a second, how there are probably better prospects for a casual sex partner than someone he works with every day. He wants her though, Falvey, with her bright hair and that sharp-serious face, the palest nipples he’s ever seen on a person. Wants her now, actually. Which is ridiculous—they’re on the job, for starters, dispatch burbling away about an accident near Great Barrington and the bulky winter uniform obscuring the lines of her body. Still, it would be easy for Nick to tip back her head and just— “Even if it’s weird,” he confirms.

  Taryn lights up like Christmas morning, taking a huge bite out of her pickle. “Cool,” she says, mouth full.

  Cool. Nick smirks.

  They get one more call after that, a suspected overdose in a triple-decker down the far end of town, all the abandoned row houses. When they show up, a bunch of shiftless-looking kids are crowded along the stacked porch, open cans everywhere. One of them waves at Taryn as they press through to the door.

  “Know him?” Nick asks, glancing over his shoulder at the greasy hair and too-small beanie.

  Falvey shrugs, unslinging her pack as a girl holding a busted-up cell phone points them toward her friend. “Used to hang around my brother when they were kids.”

  Nick studies their patient, rolled-back eyes and vomit all down the front of her grimy hoodie. Christ, three o’clock on a Friday, and this is what they’re dealing with? “Hope they aren’t buds anymore,” he tells Falvey, reaching into his kit for the Ewald tube so they can pump the girl’s stomach.

  They make it to Fairview with her vitals still strong, Taryn flipping on the siren and gunning it while Nick tries to get the patient to focus on him in the back. It’s hard going. According to her friend, her name is Sasha, but she isn’t responding to that or anything else he tries, barely managing to stay conscious. Nick can’t get a straight answer on what she took. She’s a surprisingly heavy transfer from the stretcher to the hospital bed, this thick solid weight like her body’s already starting to shut down.

  “Thanks,” the triage nurse says tiredly when Nick gives her a rundown of the girl’s vitals. “Looks like more of that cheap-ass ecstasy.” Nick can’t tell from her face if it’s going one way or another.

  Not that he wants to know, really. The trick to this job is to disassociate, stop thinking about patients immediately after the drop-off. All Taryn asks him when he joins her by the reception desk is, “Know the drug?”

  “Dirty E,” Nick says, zipping the blue EMT coat to his chin. He wonders if she was hanging back because she was hoping to avoid Pete or hoping to run into him. “That crap with the highway paint again.”

  “Ah.”

  They have a ton of paperwork this time, on account of pumping the girl’s stomach—sometimes it seems like the more complicated the care they provide, the more they have to cover their asses, a correlation Nick gets tired of day in, day out. At least there’s only an hour left of shift. Nick radios dispatch, asking them not to send any more calls to Bus #3451 unless it’s an emergency.

  “Want to take these back to the Barn?” he asks Falvey, holding up the stack of forms. “The other guys might’ve put a movie on.” The Barn’s got a rec room along with a kitchen, plus rows of cots in case anyone wants to take a nap between calls. It always smells like burned coffee and sweat inside, a locker room for grown-ups.

  Falvey smiles her secret, bitten smile. “I mean, we could,” she says, finishing the last bit of cookie from lunch. “Or we could stay right here.”

  It takes Nick a second to clue in to what she’s after, both feet up on her seat and her paperwork stacked on top of the console. When he leans in, she tilts her chin up right away. She tastes like chocolate and sugar, a couple of crumbs stuck to her plush bottom lip. Nick licks them off and slips his fingers into the hair at the nape of her neck. Just like last night, the skin back there is very warm.

  Taryn hums as he kisses his way deeper into her mouth, dragging her bottom lip down and nipping along the wet edges of her tongue. Two seconds into it, already it’s not a middle-of-the-day kind of kiss. It’s an awkward angle, both of them leaning across the gap between the seats. Taryn scoots closer until their thighs are touching, heat bleeding right through the scratchy fabric of their uniform pants.

  “Fal-vey,” Nick mutters then, real quiet and real slow. They parked facing a wall in one of the reserved spac
es in the side lot to get the paperwork done, away from the ambulance bay, but it’s hardly an abandoned garage in the middle of the night. Her mouth is brand-hot against his jaw. “We’re at work.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Taryn nods, teeth back behind his ear and down underneath his starchy collar. She gets his shirt untucked, palms smoothing up and inside over the sensitive skin of his stomach, thumb dipping into his navel. Already he’s stupidly, ridiculously hard. “And lucky for us, our job has a bed built right into the back of it.”

  Nick snorts. “That’s not a bed.”

  “Well.” Taryn’s fingertips glance over his waistband. “Close enough.”

  Fuck, he wants to. He wants to take her into the back and lay her out and get her naked, to hook her knees over his shoulders and camp out until she keens. “Fuck, girl,” he says, cupping the back of her skull—it feels delicate compared to the rest of her, like something Nick wants to protect. “What do you got, like, a vehicle kink?”

  That tickles her at least, a half-moon grin against his mouth. “Maybe,” is all she says.

  Maybe. It would be so easy, God; he lets himself picture it, pressing a hand between her legs against his better judgment and earning a pleased, quiet purr for his trouble. Still, though. Still. “You working Sunday?” he finally asks.

  Taryn blinks at him. “No.” Out the window the sky already has that twilight quality to it, the better part of the day mostly spent. “Why?”

  Nick shrugs. He told himself he was going to go slow the next time they did this. He’s gotten her clothes off twice now; he wants to see how she looks in a bed. “Celtics are playing.”

  Falvey’s eyebrows flick up for just a second in recognition, the rest of her face staying still as a lake. “You asking me to hang out, Kanelos?” She closes her thighs around his palm and traps it against her inseam, warm and secret.

  Nick reaches up for her braid. “Yep,” he answers, tugging lightly. “Gonna give me a hard time about it?”