Nolan: Return to Signal Bend

by Susan Fanetti

  He shook his head. “Finally caved to the weather. I’ve got one of the SBC trucks. Do you want to go out?”

  Her smile made him feel a lot less fucked up. “Yeah. I just need a few minutes to put myself together.”

  She wore a pair of raggedy jeans with what looked like black tights under them, and another big sweatshirt, this one a crew-neck, which had slid a bit to the side and showed a white bra strap. Her hair was bound in a ponytail at the side of her neck. He thought she looked adorable.

  “You look great.”

  “You’re sweet, but I don’t. I hate to leave you down here with my dad and the others, but the kids are watching a movie. Probably safer with them. I’ll just be a minute or two.” Without giving him a chance to protest again, she turned and trotted up the stairs. He watched her go. The back pockets of her jeans sparkled with sequins or rhinestones or something.

  “What are you doing, Nolan?” Showdown stood again in the wide frame of the dining room entry. His immense arms were crossed over his barrel of a chest.

  “I’m taking Iris out for supper.” A simple answer, and true. And Nolan didn’t yet know more than that. He was following a need, not a plan.

  Show considered him, his eyes—the same color as Iris’s—narrow. “If you hurt her, I will break you.”

  Nolan stared right back. “I know.”

  Finally, Show turned away. Nolan watched as he sat down at the table.

  Shannon came up from the kitchen, and Nolan realized that the smell of cooking beef and rich spice was in the air. He still hadn’t eaten, and his stomach complained noisily. At the dining room entry, she smiled at him. “You want something to nibble on, or a drink, while you wait, Nolan?”

  “No, thanks. I’m good.”

  With a nod, she sat down, and the Horde couples went back to their game.

  Maybe he should have thought it insulting that three members of his club were essentially ignoring him, leaving him to stand in the front hall like some stranger, but Nolan was okay with it. He was angry with all his brothers and had no interest in being social with them. He’d felt more alone in the Keep the night before than he did standing here waiting for Iris. She was the one he was here for, not them. She was the one who made him feel good. She was the one who kept his mind from dark thoughts.

  Iris’s idea of ‘one or two minutes’ turned out to be more like twenty. By the time Nolan heard her coming down the stairs, he’d gotten himself ensconced in the living room with Gia and Bo and the twins. They were watching an episode of Adventure Time.

  Nolan scooted Millie over and got up off the sofa. He met Iris at the foot of the stairs. She’d changed into a different, newer pair of jeans and had a pair of brown suede boots over them and a long sweater with a scarf. She’d done her makeup, and her eyes were rimmed with black. Her hair was loose over her shoulders. And she smelled different. Like flowers and spice.

  “Sorry. I went as fast as I could.”

  “You’re beautiful.” He kissed her cheek. “You ready? You want the Chop House?” It was the nicest restaurant in Signal Bend.

  She made a face, her nose wrinkling. “That’s so fussy. How about Raider Moe’s?”

  Raider Moe’s was a newish place out in Millview, about fifteen miles away. It was a pool hall with food. Nolan had only been there a couple of times, mostly to check it out. It had aspirations of being a biker bar, but the Horde, the only MC for hundreds of miles, had Tuck’s, so mostly Moe’s drew wannabes and weekend riders—and those assholes could get out of hand more than anybody sporting colors would normally get, out of their own zone. In Nolan’s mind, there was little worse than Joe Schmo on a Harley, who thought the engine between his legs made him tough. Put a few shots of Jack in a few of those guys, and you had trouble.

  “Not sure that’s a great idea.”

  “I heard it was cool.”

  “From who?” He couldn’t imagine any of the Horde talking Moe’s up. Even the name was a warning sign. A takeoff on some hipster market in the city.

  She blushed and shrugged, and Nolan figured it was one of the girls around town talking the place up. He didn’t like that, either, but with most of the Horde married or paired up, and the club girl roster well established, there wasn’t much for local girls to do if they wanted to ride on the wild side. They’d started trawling at Moe’s. One of his trips out there had been to rescue Mindy Jasper and a couple of her equally airheaded friends from a band of drunk asswipes.

  Another of his jobs as SAA: designated white knight. When a town girl got herself into trouble, she called the Horde if she could, and it was Nolan who called for backup and rode in. If she couldn’t call, then she told them after, and Nolan called for backup and rode in to teach a lesson. That was how law worked in Signal Bend.

  He took Iris’s hand. “You want to just hit Marie’s?” He tipped his head toward the dining room. “Not like we’re a secret or anything.”

  “Are we a we?”

  Following that need which wasn’t a plan, Nolan pulled on her hand, drawing her closer. In full view of the dining room—and the living room for that matter, though the kids were likely a lot less interested—Nolan slid his fingers into Iris’s hair, bent down, and kissed her.

  The rumble of chitchat that had been coming from the dining room stopped.

  When he lifted away, Iris kept her eyes closed a few seconds longer.

  “I hope we’re a we,” he said.

  That felt true. The stirring in his empty heart told him it was true. The quiet in his head told him it was true.

  ~oOo~

  Marie herself was sitting at the counter, drinking a cup of coffee and nibbling on a slice of pumpkin pie. She turned when Nolan and Iris came in, and her face lit up with grandmotherly, gossipy glee. Anyone who hadn’t yet heard would have by lunchtime tomorrow—no, even earlier. Tomorrow was Sunday. They’d all know before the nine o’clock service at St. John’s Methodist.

  “Well, hello, you two! Don’t you look like the sweetest pair! Happy New Year!” She got up from her stool and walked in her halting way toward them. A lifetime on her feet in this diner had racked most of her body with ‘the ‘thritis,’ as she called it. Nolan stepped ahead of Iris and met Marie halfway.

  “Happy New Year, Marie.” He bent to accept her hug. She smelled the way all old ladies seemed to smell to him. Perfumey, in a familiar but slightly off way.

  Before he could stand straight again, she patted his sore cheeks. “You need to cover your face when you ride, young man! You about frostbit yourself!” She turned toward the counter. “Orv! There any of Dave’s Bag Balm left back there?”

  Dave was Marie’s husband. He’d been the cook when they’d owned the diner, but he’d died a couple years back. If there was any of Dave’s Bag Balm left in the kitchen, it was years old. Nolan patted Marie’s shoulder. “I’m okay, Marie. Just a little chapped.”

  Orville, Saxon’s father, had leaned out to see what the fuss was; Nolan shook his head. “Hey, Orv. I’m good.” Orv tipped his head and went back to his work.

  Marie had moved on to Iris and was fussing over her. Nolan scanned the diner. He’d picked up the habit in the past couple of years of memorizing the situation of any public space he entered. He almost never needed to use the information, but it helped, when there was trouble, to know where and when the change started.

  The diner was nearly full on this aging New Year’s night. One open booth and three empty stools at the counter, not including the one Nolan hoped Marie would be returning to soon.

  His sights on the booth, he caught Iris’s hand and extricated her from Marie. When the old lady who was the closest thing Signal Bend had to a grande dame hitched her way back to the counter, Nolan led Iris to the booth and sat.

  “I guess we’re a couple now, whether we want to be or not,” Iris laughed.

  “I guess we are.”

  The gossip train in this town was formidable. One meal in public and they’d be linked for months, even if thi
s meal had been entirely platonic.

  It wasn’t platonic at all. That need Nolan felt made it difficult for him to sit across from her. His hands wanted to be on her. He didn’t know where he could take her, but he wanted to feel her skin on his tonight. God, he hoped she wanted that, too.

  Remembering the wet heat of her on his thigh the night before, he thought she did.

  Kari came over with a pot of coffee. “How you doin’? What’ll ya have tonight?” She turned their cups over and filled them.

  Nolan waited for Iris to order and was glad that she got something fairly normal: chicken strips and fries. He ordered a bacon chili cheeseburger—and held the onions.

  When Kari left the table, Iris laughed. “Now I know how you could eat that whole piece of Frankenpizza last night. You have no taste buds.”

  “What? The bacon chili cheeseburger is a classic.” He laughed. “That pizza should never happen again.”

  “It was so awesome of you to eat it, though. The kids loved that.”

  “It’s low on the list of stupid shit I’ve done to make Loke happy.”

  In the middle of making her coffee to her liking—lots of cream and sugar, Nolan noted—Iris went still. Her eyes came up and held on his. “You’re a good person, Nolan.”

  Nolan looked down into his own cup. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

  “I do. You seem sad a lot, but you try to hide it from the people you love. And you focus on making them happy.”

  He wasn’t sure how he felt about Iris digging inside him like that. It wasn’t like they knew each other all that well. As long as he’d lived in Signal Bend, she’d never been in town more than a couple of months at a time. It seemed intrusive of her to make assumptions on limited evidence about who he was, even if maybe she was right. But there was no anger with his resistance. Just a need to change the topic.

  “I’m not sad when I’m with you.”

  “Is that why we’re doing…this?”

  “Would that be a good enough answer?”

  She didn’t respond immediately, and Nolan could tell she was considering the question.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  ~oOo~

  After supper, Nolan and Iris said goodbye to everybody they knew in the diner—which was most of the people there—and he held the door and ushered her out. Right away, he sensed the difference in the air, and he looked up. The sky was a dense dark, nearly black. Shifting his eyes to the sodium arc lamp at the corner of Marie’s lot, he saw what he hoped he’d see—the first swirls of white.

  “It’s snowing.”

  At his side, he sensed Iris’s movement as she looked up, too. “Oh, yeah. Like it started as we walked out. Did you know it was supposed to snow?”

  He shook his head. “I slept the whole day.”

  They were standing only six feet or so from the door to the diner, and the door and the whole front of the building was glass, but Nolan didn’t care. He pulled Iris sharply into his arms and kissed her.

  As always, she went with him, molding her body to his. Her arms came around his neck, and he felt her fingers in the hair at his nape. Without pulling away, with his lips still on hers, he said, “I don’t want to take you home. I want…I need…”

  He didn’t know how to say it and not sound like an asshole. He needed to be naked with her. He needed to be as close to her as he could get. He needed to feel as good as he knew how to feel. He needed to fuck her.

  But he didn’t need to finish his sentence. Because she said, “I do, too.”

  “I don’t know where we can go.”

  “It’s cold, Nolan. Can we talk about it in the truck?”

  “Fuck. Yeah, sorry.” He took her hand and led her to the truck.

  When they were inside, with Nolan’s kutte hanging on a hook against the back window, he started the engine and got the heater going. If the damn cab had had a bench seat, he might well have suggested that they go park somewhere. But it didn’t. Besides, it was a work truck and needed a cleaning. It smelled like sweat, dirt, cigars, and sawdust.

  “Can’t we just go to the clubhouse? You have a room in the dorm, right?”

  Nolan shook his head. “I don’t want you having to do the walk in the morning. Not you, Iris.”

  “The walk of shame? Isn’t that only after a one-night stand? That’s not what this would be, is it? I don’t have those. I told you I didn’t want to just hook up.”

  The little dots of snow began to form into discernible flakes. Nolan watched them settle on the windshield; the cab wasn’t warm enough yet for the glass to melt them, and he could see the lacy pattern each one made.

  He shifted in his seat so he could face her straight on. “No. Not a one-night stand.”

  She smiled. “Then it’s not a problem. I’ve walked through the clubhouse hundreds of times. Plus, you drove, so you have to take me home.”

  Iris was sweet and giving—and naïve. If she walked out of the dorm in the morning, especially with him, it would be much more than a regular walk through the clubhouse. It would mean something. Maybe only he could know how much.

  He closed his eyes and dug around in his heart and mind. Show would not tolerate anything less than a real commitment between them if they went that far. Last night, Nolan had been terrified—truly distraught—when he’d felt the fade in his connection to Analisa. Was he ready to go as deep with Iris as he’d need to go to keep her father from killing him?

  He didn’t know. But he wanted her, wanted what she brought him. He needed her.

  “Okay. Clubhouse it is.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  They didn’t talk on the short ride to the clubhouse, but Nolan reached across the console and laced his fingers with hers. She loved his hands—they managed to be both graceful and rough at the same time. His fingers were long, with blunt, flat nails, and his palms were broad. His skin was callused from work and riding.

  Most of the men Iris knew had hard, rough hands. Her father’s were starting to look like they’d been through a wood chipper. She liked hands like that. They showed a man’s character, she thought. In college, she’d dated a few guys who had never worked much with their hands, and their skin was as soft as hers—sometimes even softer. That had felt strange to her.

  Her stepfather, Ray, was an office guy—an executive with a power company. Ray had soft hands. He even had regular manicures at ‘the club.’ And Ray was a jerk who was too free with those soft hands.

  Iris preferred men who belonged to a different kind of club. And had a different kind of hands.

  Even her sister’s taste in men was rougher than average, though she wasn’t into guys like their dad. Rose’s boyfriend, Christian, played guitar in a death metal band. For his actual, real job.

  Their father hated him. Manifestly. Actually, all their parents hated him, even Shannon. It was the one thing they all agreed on: Rose had terrible taste in men. Christian was, at Iris’s estimate, something like the ninth rock jerk Rose had been with, but this one seemed to be sticking to the golden princess.

  Iris thought he was okay. In the pantheon of weird guys Rose had liked, he was pretty decent. He was pretentious as hell, and his band had this gross shtick at their gigs where they stripped nearly naked and smeared fake blood all over themselves and each other, and any dope in the audience who got too close, but he was also a vegan fitness junkie who put no ‘poisons’ in his body, and for that he was a major upgrade from some of the other winners. Iris had been sworn to an uncomfortable secrecy about a couple of Rose’s exes—secrets their father would kill over if he knew. Literally.

  She and Rose were sworn to a similar kind of secrecy about Ray.

  Iris’s boyfriends had never elicited strong reaction from her parents. Her father had been suspicious and vaguely hostile, of course—that seemed to be the most pleasant way he knew how to be around men who liked his daughters—but otherwise, no one had seemed to have much of an opinion about the men she’d brought home.

  She hadn
’t always had much of an opinion about them, either, frankly. After a couple of heartbreaks, and another time or two where a past she’d pushed behind her had been dragged painfully forward, Iris had focused her interest on safe men. Gentle and kind. She’d thought she wanted that. Safety. Security. And she did—but not only that.

  Maybe that was her draw to Nolan. He wasn’t safe. But he needed it.

  When Nolan parked the truck near the clubhouse door—the lot was almost empty—he turned off the ignition, reaching around the wheel with his left hand, but he didn’t move to get out. He wore a heavy silver ring on his middle finger, and she traced her thumb over its surface. All the Horde men wore big rings. This one had a funky letter ‘H’ carved into it. Iris assumed it stood for Havoc, Nolan’s stepdad. Or dad, she guessed. Nolan had his last name.