Untouchable_A Small Town Romance

by Talia Hibbert

  She snorted. “I was never dating Rae. Relax.”

  “I’ll relax if you agree that this is exclusive.” That seemed like the only thing he could push for right now. The only thing that wouldn’t make his wary Hannah nervous. But slow and steady won the race, didn’t it? That’s what he always told the kids, anyway.

  She stared at him for a moment, biting her lip. He kept his expression calm and his muscles relaxed, even as his heart pounded like a drum. Then, finally, she spoke. “Exclusive and secret. Right?”

  He should’ve expected that, he supposed. It made sense, after all. And from Hannah, he’d take what he could get. So Nate nodded, and smiled, and said, “Exclusive and secret. Obviously.”

  But the words were bitter on his tongue.

  Chapter Twenty

  “The mental is physical.”

  - Hannah Kabbah, The Kabbah Code

  There was a clock in Hannah’s head. It was ticking.

  She didn’t know when her time would run out, when the bomb would detonate or whatever the fuck, but she knew it would happen eventually. Every time Nate wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair, the ticking got louder. Every time he played absently with her braids, or made her breakfast, or held her hand, it sped up.

  It only stopped when he bent her over his desk and kissed his way up her spine and fucked her hard.

  She was trying her best to ignore that damned clock, and sometimes she even succeeded. Because being with Nate, even if it was illicit and undefined and everything else that would usually make Hannah’s skin crawl… well, being with Nate made her happy.

  The only real problem was keeping the source of that happiness a secret. Even Beth had started asking her why she was always singing—badly—and why she wasn’t quite as strict anymore. On Sundays, Hannah went to church and thanked God that her little family consisted of one unbelievably oblivious mother and one adorably unobservant sister.

  Until the fourth Sunday, when she went to her mother’s for dinner and found Evan sitting in the living room, his arm around Ruth’s shoulder.

  Hannah froze in the doorway. Her sister’s boyfriend turned his head to look at her. “Hey Hannah. How are you?”

  Terrible. Because you—you are not my mother or my sister. You don’t live in the clouds, and you read facial expressions without trying. So I’m fucked, Evan. That’s how I am. I’m absolutely fucked.

  She allowed herself that small, self-indulgent moment of panic before pushing it away, pasting a smile on her face, and chirping, “Great, thanks! You?”

  The words sounded plastic even to her own ears, but she didn’t let her smile falter. No-one ever got anywhere without a can-do attitude, now, did they?

  Evan paused before answering. “I’m good. How’s the party planning?”

  “In full swing!” she laughed nervously. Zach’s birthday was coming up, and Nate was throwing him a surprise party. So for the past few weeks, they’d been making the arrangements together—and taking occasional breaks for certain extracurricular activities. Aaaand now Evan was staring at her as if he knew all about those extracurricular activities, and was just waiting to burst out with the truth and shame her completely.

  Actually, she might be imagining that. Her ever-present anxiety expected him to leap up and shout, “Aha! I can tell just by the look on your face that you’ve been sucking Nate’s dick when you should’ve been setting up a Facebook event!”

  But all that came out of his mouth was, “Cool. Blog going okay?”

  Hannah’s cheeks heated. She looked past him to glare at Ruth. “You told?”

  Ruth blinked like a cornered rabbit. “Was I not supposed to? I thought it was Mum I couldn’t tell.”

  And then, like a cherry on top of that clusterfuck cake, Patience Kabbah floated into the room and asked, “What is a blog, Hannah?”

  Great. The one time Hannah needed her mother to be oblivious, the woman started paying attention to conversations.

  “Nothing, Mummy. It’s a… a computer thing.”

  Patience wrinkled her nose. “Ah. Come and help me with dinner, now. You want me to take your hair out later?”

  “Oh, yes. Yes please.”

  “Good.” Patience floated away again like a cloud of absent-minded, cinnamon-scented perfume. Hannah followed, flashing Ruth a death stare over her shoulder.

  What? Ruth mouthed.

  Later, Hannah mouthed back, pouring every inch of sisterly menace she could into a half-second glare. Which was rather a lot.

  But Ruth, the cow, seemed unconcerned.

  All through dinner, Hannah was cool, calm and generally Hannah-like. Not giddy, not overly cheerful or excessively relaxed; just her normal, ordinary, stick-up-the-arse self. She thought she did quite a good job of it, too. It wasn’t hard, with nerves stiffening her spine and sharpening her tongue.

  But when she and Ruth stood to clear the table after dinner, Evan pulled the plates from Ruth’s hands. “Sit down,” he said. “I’ll do it.”

  Then he looked at Hannah and she knew that she was busted.

  By the time they reached the kitchen, she was so nervous that the click of the door shutting behind them almost made her drop a crystal glass. She had a minor heart attack when it wobbled in her grip. If she smashed the crystal, Mum might be upset enough to glare at her. Or speak sternly, even. Hannah didn’t think her nerves could take that.

  While she was staring, frozen, at the glass in her hand, Evan put down his plates. Then he took the crockery she was holding and put that down, too. Then he put his hands on her shoulders and said solemnly, “Something’s wrong with you.”

  She scowled. “Nothing’s wrong with me. Get off.”

  He gave her a suspicious look. “You’re distracted. And… weird. You keep doing this thing with your face.”

  “What thing?”

  “Kind of like a smile. A weird smile—”

  “You can stop saying ‘weird’ now.”

  “—but then you cut the smile off really fast. Like it’s not supposed to be there.” He narrowed his eyes. “Yeah. Something’s up with you. I don’t like it.”

  She huffed out a breath. “Oh, piss off. You’re not my dad, you know.” But really, Evan behaved like everyone’s dad.

  “I’m kind of your brother.” He folded his arms and leant against the kitchen counter.

  “You are not my brother.”

  “I’m your brother-in-law.”

  “Oh, did I miss the wedding? Congrats.” She rolled her eyes and shoved him out of the way. Or tried to. He didn’t move, the giant fucker. “I need to get in that cupboard,” she gritted out, glaring hard enough to kill.

  Oh, if only.

  Evan studied her for a moment, his eyes searching. “If you were ever in trouble,” he said gently, “you’d tell me. Or Ruth. Or someone. Right?”

  “Yes,” she lied. “Of course.”

  He didn’t seem convinced—but he did step away from the cupboard. As she crouched down to find the Fairy Liquid, he murmured, “I’ve got my eye on you, Hannah Kabbah.”

  Great. Just what she fucking needed.

  Respect thy mother and thy father.

  It wasn’t Hannah’s favourite commandment. She didn’t typically need motivation to respect her mother, and she absolutely refused to respect her so-called father—but then, God probably understood why.

  Truthfully, Hannah only ever thought of those words when she found herself in a situation like this one: sitting on the floor with her back against the sofa, arsecheeks slowly going numb, Mum dragging at her freshly washed hair with a comb

  Respect thy mother and thy father. Respect thy mother and thy father. Respect thy mother and—

  Patience hit a button on her decades-old hair straighteners and a cloud of steam poured out, singeing Hannah’s ears.

  “Oww!” she howled. “Mother! Please!”

  “Stop moving your head,” Patience tutted. “Is not hot.”

  “Why am I even letting you do
this?”

  “I want to see how much your hair has grown,” Patience reminded her.

  “That won’t matter if you burn it all off!”

  “Cha. Duya. What’s wrong with you? You’re arguing so much today.”

  Oh, fuck. She was supposed to be Ordinary Hannah right now, and Ordinary Hannah let her mother do whatever she wished. Ordinary Hannah was quiet and obedient at home. But Hannah hadn’t been ordinary for a while now. She was swooping to the top of a rollercoaster with Nate, the pleasure exhilarating, the threat of an inevitable drop looming large. Oh, how she dreaded that drop.

  It might break a fundamental part of her.

  “Now, no fidgeting,” Patience ordered, as she made another sharp parting. The edge of the comb felt like a knife. Patience’s usual airy-fairy delicacy vanished like smoke in the wind when it came to styling her children’s hair.

  Not that Ruth would let their mother near her head like this. No; clearly, Hannah was the fool of the family.

  I am thirty fucking years old, sitting on the bloody floor while my mother straightens my damn hair and puts a bump in the front like it’s two-thousand-and-fucking-one. God has forsaken me. And if I find Him, I will be having stern words.

  In the midst of that internal rant, Patience spoke again. Her voice was absent, soothing as always, but her words hit Hannah like a fist to the gut. “I know something is bothering you, angel.”

  Fuck. Now her mother was noticing? Hannah gritted her teeth into a tight smile and stared at the TV screen in front of them. “It’s nothing.” Her eyes latched onto the familiar sight of Noel Edmonds’s silver bouffant.

  Take my word for it. Don’t ask me any questions. Focus on Noel and his shiny hair. Tut at the contestants for taking pointless risks.

  “You mustn’t lie, Hannah. It’s a sin. What is wrong?”

  Clearly, psychic suggestion wasn’t working. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “Is it the job? With the children?”

  Hannah almost choked at the question, slapping a hand to her throat. Nice. Subtle. You really played it cool there, Kabbah.

  “The father,” Patience pushed, her concern clear now. “He treats you well?”

  Arguably too well. Definitely too well. “He’s nice,” Hannah managed to croak. “You know he’s Zach’s older brother, right? Evan’s friend Zach, I mean.” Any association with Evan, no matter how tenuous, was a positive mark in Patience Kabbah’s book.

  But she didn’t sound mollified. “I know who Nate Davis is, Hannah. I am in a book club with his mother.”

  “Ah.”

  “He comes to see her often. He drives her to places. He seems like a very sweet boy.”

  “Mmhm.”

  “You went to school with him, didn’t you?”

  I went to school with a lot of people, Mum. “Yes. He was in my class.”

  “He ran off to worship the devil in London, didn’t he?”

  Hannah tried not to smile. “I couldn’t say. But I will remind you that he’s here to help his mother, and he has two kids, and his wife passed away—”

  “God rest her soul.”

  “God rest her soul. So we should be good Christians and speak nicely about him.” Honestly, this conversation was odd. Patience Kabbah was not the sort of woman to gossip about people, or disapprove of people, or even think of people. She typically existed on another plane. Hannah sometimes wondered if she even knew what day it was.

  And yet, somehow, she’d noticed that her daughter was acting strangely. She’d even managed to pin down the cause, whether she realised it or not.

  Hannah’s heart ricocheted around her chest. Fuck. Her mother had been playing them all along. She was secretly a hyper-aware Sherlock Holmes in sheep’s clothing, and now she was on the cusp of ferreting out Hannah’s biggest secret. This could not stand.

  She searched frantically for a topic important enough to serve as a distraction. The murky waters of her mind had never been more fucked up—but out of nowhere, a suitable subject bubbled to the surface. It was one she’d been avoiding for a while, one she desperately wanted to drown. Now she clung to it like a life-raft, blurting the words out abruptly. “Do you ever hear from Dad?”

  Silence fell, heavy as January snow. Hannah tried not to wince as another puff of steam passed over her sensitive scalp. A full minute passed, filled only with the tinny applause of the Deal or No Deal audience.

  Then, finally, Patience said, “You have never asked me about your father. Not for years. Not once since he left.”

  Well, no, Hannah supposed she hadn’t. She didn’t like talking about him. The word ‘Dad’ tasted like rust on her tongue. Of course, once upon a time, she’d loved talking about him. She’d told all the kids at pre-school: “My dad’s rich and he comes to see us every month, all the way from Sierra Leone because he loves us, and he buys us whatever we want because he loves us…”

  Yeah. Kids were easily confused. And rich men, it turned out, were easily bored. Even with their second families.

  “I didn’t need to ask,” she said finally. “You told us what happened.” They’d been given an unfulfilling, childish sort of explanation at the time, and then a more complete story when they were slightly older. By which point, the most important thing had already become clear: their father was not coming back.

  Really, what more was there to ask about?

  “True,” Patience allowed. “But you have never asked why I fell in love with a married man in the first place.”

  Hannah’s jaw dropped. “I… You…” I would rather die than ask anyone about something like that, but especially not my mother.

  Patience gave a little laugh and patted Hannah’s shoulder, as if she’d heard that thought. “We are very different, angel. But I do love you so.” She sighed and ran the straighteners over another section of Hannah’s poor hair. “You know, I don’t like to speak badly of your father in front of you girls.”

  Did that mean Patience spoke badly of their father at all? If so, she certainly hid it well.

  “But,” the older woman went on, “Now that time has passed, I have decided that he did not behave correctly. I think, perhaps, he used our positions to his advantage. I worked for him, you see. Did you know that?”

  “No,” Hannah whispered. She certainly had not known that. The words settled greasily in her stomach, heavy and sickening.

  “I cleaned his office,” Patience said. “And he was there so much—he was a lawyer, you see—it was as if I lived with him. Things were not fair between us, I don’t think. Of course, it all worked out for me, in the end.” She pressed a quick kiss to the top of Hannah’s head. “But I understand now, why my mother was so angry at the time. It is not something I would want for my daughter. Especially not you. You are not like me. You are very sensitive.”

  Hannah should snort at that, should mock the idea that she could ever be considered more ‘sensitive’ than her wispy mother. But for some reason, she couldn’t bring herself to make a sound.

  Instead she sat rigid, locked into place by her own screaming thoughts. It was as if the volume had been turned up on all the snide whispers she’d spent the past month ignoring. Relationships aren’t for you. No-one’s going to catch you if you fall. Happiness is always temporary.

  The clock ticking in the back of her skull had never been so loud.

  Finally, she croaked out, “You don’t need to worry about me, Mummy. You really, really don’t.”

  “I’m sure.” Patience patted her shoulder absently. “You are a very sensible girl. So much more sensible than me.”

  That was Hannah, alright. Sensible.

  Nate wasn’t worried about Hannah, exactly, but he was wondering where she’d got to. She returned from her mother’s around the same time every Sunday, but today the kids’ bedtime came and went, and she didn’t appear.

  It was only when the summer sky began to darken that he heard her key in the front door. And even though she’d left just that morning, he couldn’
t stay put in the kitchen, planning food for Zach’s surprise party, when he knew she was in the house. He went to her so fast, he might’ve been embarrassed if he weren’t past the point of caring about that shit.

  He loved her. And he couldn’t tell her yet—not until his top-secret plans came to fruition—but he also couldn’t hide it.

  She was in the hall, hanging up her keys by the door. He circled his arms around her waist from behind, bending down to murmur in her ear, “Hey.”

  “Hey,” she said.

  It was just one word, but it sent a skitter of unease down his spine. She sounded… off. Flat. Like she was lying. But you couldn’t lie about “Hey”. That didn’t make any fucking sense. Nate turned her in his arms. She moved to face him stiffly, slowly, as if the air was thicker than it should be.

  He looked down at her smooth, blank face and felt something like panic shake him. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, pulling away from him. Manoeuvring around him as if he were just an obstacle in her path.

  He followed her into the living room, trapped between the urge to reach for her and the fact that she obviously didn’t want him to. Forcing his frozen tongue to work, he said, “You changed your hair.”

  She shot him a dour look over her shoulder, pushing the thick, dark mass out of her eyes. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “Does it matter?” She sat down with a sigh. “I’ll probably get braids again in a couple of weeks.”

  “Okay.” He sat beside her. “Well, I think you look nice.”

  Her lips pressed into a hard line. She glared at him as if he’d just insulted her stationery collection. Then, out of nowhere, she said, “I don’t want to have sex tonight.”

  Oh. He was so relieved, he didn’t even laugh when she whispered ‘sex’. “Is that why you’re being weird?” he asked, reaching out to catch her hand.