Untouchable_A Small Town Romance

by Talia Hibbert

  Aside from that particular mystery, living with Nate was easy. The kids were sweet. He was sweet to the kids. He was sweet to her, damn him, and it made her feel constantly on edge. Because no-one could be that pleasant forever, right? Surely it wasn’t a normal, natural thing? The kind of people who toasted bagels for everyone in the morning and cleaned up after themselves without issue and asked about your day as if they really gave a shit didn’t actually exist. It was just a front they put up for nefarious reasons.

  Except she couldn’t imagine what nefarious reasons Nate might have to smile at her with such kindness, or joke with her even when she was prickly, or otherwise mind his damned business 24/7. Oh, and pay her on top of that. She didn’t get it. At all. And when she’d asked Ruth about the matter, all her nightmare of a sister had said was Evan’s nice all the time. Maybe Nate’s just one of those people.

  Honestly, Hannah had far preferred it when Ruth could be trusted to support her ruthless cynicism.

  The following Tuesday night—or rather, Wednesday morning—she woke up inexplicably early again. It didn’t make any sense, and it certainly didn’t ease her suspicions that this whole situation was some kind of elaborate twilight zone trap. Still, just like last time, she dragged a cardigan on over her scant pyjamas and wandered downstairs.

  And, just like last time, she found Nate.

  He was sitting in the dark again, head bowed over his phone like a supplicant. The little glowing rectangle lit up his face, and for a moment she stood there in the doorway and watched him.

  He sighed as he tapped at the phone. The exhalation seemed to hold a century’s-worth of sheer exhaustion. Beyond the strong lines of his jaw, his cheekbones, his hawkish nose, his face looked drawn and strained. Indigo bloomed beneath his eyes like bruises. He ran a hand through his too-long hair, and she tried not to stare at the tattoo on the inside of his elbow. But really, who had tattoos there? Surely that had to hurt.

  Then again, she remembered darkly, he had a nipple piercing, too. The nipple piercing that, when she’d seen it last week in the dark, had made all of her thoughts fall clean out of her head. So clearly he didn’t mind pain.

  “Hey,” she called softly from the doorway. She’d been trying not to startle him, but he still jumped a little. She’d noticed, over the past week, that once he was focused on something, the rest of his world melted away. He didn't see anything else, hear anything else…

  Hannah imagined that sort of focus could be put to use in a lot of interesting ways.

  Actually, Hannah tried to imagine very little, because her imagination was a wild and reckless creature that could not be tamed. Dear Lord.

  “Hi,” he said finally. “Fancy meeting you here.” And then he smiled.

  She had a slight problem with Nate’s smiles. Especially this one, the slightly teasing one that was wry and sharp-edged and uneven. Zach’s sexy grin was the one that had achieved seductive infamy in Ravenswood, but she was starting to think of his as the knock-off version. Because Nate hadn’t smiled much back when they were young, but now? Now, he was the king of smiling. Smiling was his bitch. He owned smiling.

  And she clearly need more sleep, if the loopy train of her thoughts was anything to go by.

  Stepping into the room, she nodded at the phone in Nate’s hand and asked, “Everything okay?”

  He gave a negative sort of grunt as she settled down beside him on the sofa. Usually, Nate employed full sentences, probably for the kids’ benefit. To set a good example. But she’d started to notice that when they were alone, he didn’t bother—and she wasn’t sure if she should find that insulting. Of course, the mortifying truth was that she actually quite liked it, because it made her feel like he was comfortable with her.

  Ridiculous. Ridiculous, ridiculous, ridiculous.

  He held up the phone and said, “I’ve been reading about lung cancer.”

  Her internal ramblings came grinding to a halt. “Oh, Nate. Don’t do that. You shouldn’t do that.”

  He gave her a look. “Would you? If it was your mother?”

  And really, what could she say? She already knew the answer.

  He locked his phone with a click, extinguishing its light. Still, she saw the shadowy outline of his head as he shook it, visible in the low moonlight. “Maybe I’m reading a load of Google bullshit, but everything seems off to me. Her symptoms are…weird. Different. Worse than they should be.”

  “Don’t stress yourself out,” she said firmly. “It won’t help anything. Not a single thing.”

  “I’m already stressed out. Always. My heart rate seems to think life is the grand fucking derby.”

  And now her heart was kind of breaking. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “I know,” he whispered back.

  But it didn’t seem like enough. What would be enough?

  Nothing, she realised. Pain wasn’t neat like that. It wasn’t about checks and balances, and there was no spell, verbal or otherwise, to make it disappear. Maybe that was why she felt so impotent, sitting here beside him, knowing he was suffering in a way she couldn’t comprehend. Maybe that was why she ached with the urge to hold his hand. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d held an adult’s hand. But she wanted to comfort him, and hand-holding was comfort, wasn’t it?

  It didn’t matter, in the end, because she wasn’t going to do it.

  Instead of reaching out, she nodded towards the vast, ghostly shape standing just a few feet in front of them and said conversationally, “How about that fort, hm?”

  She could almost feel the relief radiating from him. Nate didn’t like heavy subjects. He liked to keep things light. She understood why.

  “It’s a feat of engineering,” he said. “I’m very proud.”

  The kids had built the mammoth structure of blankets, pillows and furniture just yesterday. Apparently, it was a castle. No-one was permitted to take down the castle, on pain of death—which was a direct quote from the lovely Beth.

  “They did it alone, too,” Hannah said. “I was making dinner. I didn’t help at all.”

  “You didn’t?” he asked, disbelief colouring his voice. He’d been with his mother.

  “Nope. I came in and they were done. Have you been inside yet?”

  “I have not. Which is very poor parenting, I know.” Without hesitation, Nate went to crouch beside the fort’s shadowy entrance. He looked over at her, his eyes catching the low light, gleaming like something celestial. “Are you coming?”

  “Me?”

  “No, the household ghost. Yes, you. Have you been in here?”

  She huffed out a breath. “I’ve had a look.”

  “A look?”

  “You know, poked my head in.”

  “Oh, that won’t do. Come on, Hannah. That’s not very supportive, now is it?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The kids put their hearts and souls into this majestic architecture, and you haven’t even nipped in for tea? I’m shocked.” He clicked his tongue. And then, as she squinted at him through the darkness, Nate began squeezing his broad shoulders through the fort’s narrow entryway.

  “Careful,” she murmured. “You’re a lot bigger than the kids.”

  “I am? I had no idea.”

  She snorted.

  “You’re coming in here too, you know.”

  “I most certainly am not.”

  “You most certainly are,” he said calmly. As if it was perfectly ordinary for them to have a conversation about a fort while he crawled deeper and deeper into said fort. “You’re very uptight, you know, Hannah.”

  “Uptight?!” She spluttered in outrage, as if it wasn’t true. Which it was. But Good Lord, he didn’t have to say it.

  “Yep. Not that I mind.”

  “How very gracious of you,” she drawled.

  “I mean, it works to my advantage. And it’s cute.”

  Hannah almost choked on her own tongue. Cute? Cute?! What the fuck was that supposed to mean?


  “But I’m getting worried about the amount of work you do,” he said casually, as if he hadn’t just thrown her into a minor internal crisis. “I’m in, by the way.” A glow that she could only assume was his phone lit up the fort from within, and she saw the dark silhouette of his body, half-sitting, half-lying in the crouched space.

  Jesus. She hadn’t been this into a shadow since she’d watched Peter Pan as a kid.

  “Are you coming?” he called.

  “No. What do you mean, you’re getting worried?”

  “Let me rephrase that,” he said. “You are coming.” Why did he have to say coming like that? Why did his voice have to be so deep and rich and ugh, this fucking man. Irritating, he was. Beyond irritating. “And what I mean,” he added, “is that you never stop. You must’ve cleaned the house a thousand times in the last week. You and the kids play the kind of games that even I can’t be arsed with, and I’m their dad. And when there’s nothing else to do, you’re in your room typing… Well, whatever it is you’re always typing.”

  My blog, her mind supplied. Yes, I have a blog. I have a lot of feelings and I am a millennial cliché. It’d be really cool if you could read it and love it and tell me how fabulous I am and feed me chocolate fingers.

  Then, somehow, her treacherous tongue actually allowed an ounce of that drivel to run free. “My blog,” her mouth said, without any permission whatsoever.

  Hannah wondered if 30 was too late in life to apply for a brain transplant. Just a complete and total brain transplant. Was that a thing? No? Okay, never mind.

  “You have a blog?” he repeated. “Really? Huh. Would you show me?”

  Calmly, Hannah replied, “I would rather die.”

  He burst into laughter. “And she calls me dramatic. Can’t you tell me something small? Like… what’s it called?”

  “You want me to tell you the name of my blog?” she snorted. “What, so you can Google it and read everything? Okay.”

  “I wouldn’t read it if you didn’t want me to.”

  “Sure.”

  “I really wouldn’t,” he insisted.

  “Could we move back to the original point?” she asked. “Please?”

  “Oh, fine. Party pooper. Basically, I don’t want you to take on too much. Just because I’m paying you doesn’t mean you should work your fingers to the bone.”

  The irony of him saying that when he wandered around with eyes cradled by painful shadows was almost too much to bear. Ruth always described Hannah as mothering. Well, she had the most intense urge to mother Nate Davis all the way into bed.

  Not like that, obviously.

  He just looked really fucking tired, was all.

  “Noted,” she said finally. “I will, ah… relax.”

  “I’m not saying you should, or you have to. I’m saying you can. You definitely, definitely can. But I will say you have to have some fun every so often.”

  “Oh, I do?”

  “Yes. Like right now. Get in here.”

  Could he hear the smile curving her lips without permission? “No.”

  She could definitely hear the laughter in his voice. “Hannah. Get in the fucking fort.”

  “Fine,” she huffed, as though it were a great trial. As though she didn’t really want to, even though, of course, she did. She’d wanted to since the minute she’d seen it. But Hannah was a grown-up, a sensible and mature adult. Sensible and mature adults did not crawl into pillow castles.

  And yet, here she was, doing it anyway. Because Nate had pretended to make her. She kind of loved him for that—in the general sense of the word, obviously. Not the… Well, never mind. The meaning was clear. Totally clear. And since this was her head, and she knew how she’d meant it, she really didn’t need to have this argument with herself anyway, so there.

  She knew she’d made it when she bumped into Nate in the dark. The light of his phone had gone off again, so she had zero warning before her head knocked into something that might have been his shoulder. Or his knee. No, probably his shoulder. Whatever it was, the skin was bare, and even though her bloody forehead was hardly an erogenous zone, she found herself shivering anyway.

  These odd physical reactions she kept having were getting out of hand. She never had them around Zach or Evan, and they were both just as handsome as Nate. Theoretically. Objectively.

  But, Hannah realised with a jolt, Nate wasn’t just objectively handsome anymore. He was actually handsome. Really handsome. As in, she would really like to find his mouth in the darkness and kiss it.

  Oh dear God.

  “So,” he said grandly. “Here we are. In the lap of my children’s brilliance. What do you think?”

  “It’s… beautiful,” she squeaked.

  He laughed. “But we can’t see anything!”

  Pull yourself together, woman. “Right,” she said, her voice closer to human than dolphin this time. “I just meant, you know, the experience. Beautiful. Ten out of ten.”

  Nate snorted. “Are you feeling okay?”

  “Oh, you know. Tired,” she said.

  Never coming down here again, she thought. You awful, attractive bastard. What on earth have you done to me?

  Every night, Nate sat in the dark and poured over medical websites until his eyes swam and the words danced way worse than usual.

  Every few nights, if he was lucky, Hannah came to rescue him.

  It felt like being rescued, anyway, when she showed up in her enormous cardigan and gave him someone to needle and a goal to work towards. When he was alone, Nate thought about the fact that he’d run away from home, that he’d stayed in London even after Ellie’s death, that he’d rarely come back to visit, and now his mum might be… dying. And he’d wasted time thinking she’d last forever.

  But when Hannah was around, all he thought about was making her laugh and smile and fucking relax for once, because she so desperately needed it and so obviously couldn’t manage it without encouragement. Extreme encouragement. The kind that was pushy and obnoxious enough to make her feel as though she had to join in, she had to laugh—it wasn’t her fault, she wasn’t being weak, she could blame it all on him.

  Yeah, he had her down by now. It had only been—what, two weeks, since she moved in? But he had her down. At least in that regard. The rest of her was still a mystery.

  A mystery that was none of his concern. Teaching an employee how to have fun couldn’t be called unethical, but wondering too deeply about her life goals and her hobbies and the things that made her wary… that was heading into dangerous waters.

  So when she showed up that night, a blessed distraction from an article that was making his brain vibrate in his skull, Nate kept things upbeat. It wasn’t hard, really. Not once he noticed her feet.

  “Jesus, woman.” He winced as she curled up like a kitten beside him. “Are those socks?”

  She looked down, as if to check. “I think it’s quite clear that they are.”

  “Please tell me you don’t wear socks to bed.”

  “Not all the time,” she said. “But usually. I’m surprised you never noticed before.”

  It didn’t seem polite to explain that his focus was usually somewhere higher than her feet. “Oh dear God,” Nate grimaced. He wasn’t even feigning horror, at this point. But really, this was a good thing: he’d found a flaw in a seemingly perfect woman. She wore socks to bed, which was demonic behaviour. He should be happy about it. “Hannah, you do realise that only cursed people sleep in socks. Don’t you?

  She rolled her eyes, letting her head fall back against the cushions as she sighed. She always managed to straddle this odd line between stiffness and grace…

  And now he was thinking about Hannah straddling. Nate turned his mind to safer things, like the 2D shapes in Josh’s latest homework project.

  Ah. Much better.

  “So you’re one of those anti-sock people,” she said dryly. “How disappointing.”

  “Only at night. Obviously at night. Sleeping in socks is unnatural.�
� His tone was solemn. “It’s okay. I won’t judge. But I will offer help and support in this difficult time.”

  “I like socks,” she sniffed. “They make me feel secure.”

  “Secure?”

  “Feet are very private.”

  “The absurdity of that statement aside, why is privacy a concern when you’re in bed?” Nate demanded, barely-contained laughter colouring his voice.

  Her lips twitched, then actually managed to smile. “Privacy is always a concern, Nate.”

  She really was unbelievable. And the worst part was, he liked it. Especially right now, when she managed to relax and joke while still being her usual buttoned-up self. When she was like this with him, he felt as if he’d done something right—and, strangely, as if he’d gotten a gift in return. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe because she was so beautiful, especially when she smiled, and Nate liked looking at beautiful things.

  Yep. That was probably it.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, and he realised that for the past few seconds he’d actually been staring, in complete silence, at Hannah’s mouth. Fuck, that was weird.

  And what did he say, to make it less weird? Why, he said, out of nowhere, “I’m not staring at your mouth.”

  Because, really, what was more reasonable and non-threatening and totally unsuspicious than a sentence like that?

  She blinked. “Um… Oh. I mean—”

  “I’m really tired,” he added quickly. “So fucking tired. I was just, you know, staring. At nothing. But your face was in the way of the nothing, so…”

  She was still blinking. She looked, in a word, baffled. But then her expression changed, and she said, “It’s fine. I’m used to people looking.”

  And now he was baffled. “You’re used to people looking at your mouth?” It was an excellent mouth, to be fair. But he’d have thought most people would have better manners and more functioning brain cells than him.

  “At my teeth.”

  “Your teeth?” He frowned. “Why would anyone stare at your teeth?”