Calm & Storm (The Night Horde SoCal Book 6)
Page 36
Show nodded. “He is, and he does. That’s the problem, that maybe it’s serious. He’s…I don’t know. Dark. Too dark for Iris. And too old at heart. She’s twenty-three years old, and she still sleeps with a teddy bear. She’s got a degree, but she wants to live at home and work on Main Street.”
“What’s her degree in?”
He laughed. “American Studies. I don’t even know what that means. But they don’t make jobs in it, I guess.” He coughed loudly, and Nolan stood straight and looked over. Both Show and Bart waved, and he returned it. Bart saw Iris then, looking flushed and pretty. She waved, too. They looked like a couple of teens who’d been caught in the back seat of Daddy’s Buick. By Daddy.
“That been going on awhile?”
“Just the past couple days, far’s I know. They’ve been trying to be discreet. You see how that’s going. But Iris has been fluttering after Nolan since he came back home from Cali. That’s, what, four years? They haven’t been around each other much, but it was enough for her to catch a bad case.” He sighed. “This is the first time he’s taken notice back. He hasn’t been much interested in anything but club girls. If he’s doin’ that, though”—Show waved his hand in their direction; they were walking back to the house—“I don’t know.”
“I’ll say it again: he wouldn’t fuck around with her. He loves you too much, and he respects the club too much.”
“I know that. Still don’t like it. Shannon says I was wrong about Badge and Adrienne, and I almost killed Badge over that, so I should take a seat and button my lip, but damn. What is it with my girls and bad boys? Rosie’s guy’s some metalhead guitarist. Hate that skinny fuck. By the time Millie’s looking at guys, I don’t think my creaky old heart’ll be able to take it.”
Bart laughed. “You’re asking honestly? You don’t know why they like bad boys?” Even as he gave Show a ration of shit, the thought that Lexi, too, might someday prefer guys like them gave him a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. But he had a long time before he had to worry about that.
Show glowered, then cracked a smile. “Fuck. Yeah, I know.”
Further discussion on the topic was foreclosed as Nolan and Iris came up on the porch. Iris’s cheeks were flaming red, possibly from the cold, but probably not exclusively. Nolan’s cheeks were a little rosy, too.
After an awkwardly casual few words of chitchat, they all went back inside.
Bart went with them; the urge to be alone and gloomy had eased from his chest. He wanted to be in the warmth and light with his family.
~oOo~
That night, he tucked all his children into bed one by one. Deck had conked out in the truck on the way home, and he didn’t wake, so Bart just pointed his sleeping boy at the toilet until he peed, then tucked him into bed and kissed his forehead. Ian and Lexi, he sent off to sleep sitting with them and talking about the day—what they’d liked best, what memories they wanted to keep, what they wanted in the new year. When they were all quiet and snug, he picked up Demi, who had also had an exciting day, full of new people and dogs, and carried the pup out to the yard for some bedtime business.
While the pup snuffled around in the yard, dragging her nose through the hard dirt and dead grass, Bart looked up. The night was cloudless, cold, and silent. Stars stood out against an almost fully black sky. Country sky—so full of stars. The peace of a sky like that was a thing, like the power of a thunderstorm, a man could forget when he spent too long away from it.
“Daddy?”
He looked back and saw Lexi standing inside the screen door. At his notice, she pushed it open and came onto the porch. She was wearing her snow boots, unlaced, under her flannel Christmas nightgown, and she had wrapped herself up in her comforter.
“What’s wrong, baby princess?”
“I was lonely.” She came down the steps and crossed the yard to him. Her limp was noticeably better, but he met her halfway anyway. “Why are you out here?”
“Letting Demi do her business.”
Lexi looked down at the ground, and Bart saw that the pup had curled up against the big elm and was sleeping.
“Oh. Got lost in thought, I guess. We should go in. It’s cold.”
“You were looking at the stars. They’re prettier here than I ever saw before.”
Bart picked her up, and she wrapped her arms around him. She was small, like her mom, and still fit his hold. “Yeah, that’s just what I was thinking. You know, when I met your mom, one of the first things I did was take her for a ride and show her the stars. They were even brighter than this where I took her, because there wasn’t a big light like that one around.” He nodded at the dusk-to-dawn light by the barn.
“I don’t know how they could be brighter.”
“I’ll take you sometime and show you. Okay?”
Looking up at the sky, Lexi nodded. “There was a book at the library at school about a girl whose dad died. Her mom told her to look at the stars. She said they were souls in heaven, and when they twinkled, that was people in heaven sending love home. Do you think that’s real? Or was it just real in the story?”
Bart looked up at the sky, and all the stars seemed to be twinkling now. “I don’t know, Lex. I would really like it to be real. It feels good to look up and see her love.”
Again, Lexi nodded.
He held her close. “I think we can make it true. What do you think?”
“Maybe that’s why we moved. Maybe Mom wanted us to.”
He turned his gaze to her, but she was still looking up, rapt. “What do you mean?”
“We wouldn’t have been able to see her love from where we used to live.”
For the first time since the day they’d arrived in Signal Bend, Bart lost control of his emotions when he wasn’t alone. Tears filled his eyes and then slid down his cheeks, chilling, almost freezing, in the sharp cold. He hugged Lexi even closer, and she tipped her head down to his.
“I’m sorry I made you sad.”
“You didn’t, baby princess. You didn’t at all. You just made me know for sure that we’re gonna be okay.”
THE END
Thank you to all my readers for taking this trip with me.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride, bumps and all.
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