He slowly opened his eyes, then turned to look at me. Like my mother, he looked tired. It was scary to see how much he’d aged in the past few weeks. Fortunately, his condition hadn’t worsened any.
I wasn’t surprised when he pushed my hand off his arm. I sighed and said, “Do you need anything before I go take a shower?”
“Drk,” he grumbled.
“A drink?” I clarified.
He gave me a jerky nod. I went to the kitchen to get him the juice my mother insisted he drink more of. I half-expected him to chuck it at me, since it wasn’t the beer he probably wanted, but he accepted the glass and took a sip before setting it down on the table next to him. I hurried through my shower and then searched for something to eat. I was surprised to find that my mother had left me some of the casserole she’d made in the microwave. While she usually cooked enough for me, she often stuck it into the refrigerator, since I had a tendency to stay out until “all hours of the night.”
Of course, all hours to her meant anything after five-thirty. And since I often stayed at work longer than I needed to so that I could cuddle the kittens or help Dallas with one of his rehab patients, she was right, I was technically staying out all hours.
After dinner, I watched TV with my father for a while, only taking the remote from him after he’d fallen completely asleep. By seven, I was rousing him and helping him get ready for bed. I was sitting up in my own bed going through the finances when my phone beeped.
I smiled at the sight of Loki and Dallas popping up on the screen. I’d convinced Dallas to let me take a picture of him and Loki, but he’d grumbled (yes, silently) about it the whole time. I’d been surprised (and once again, schoolgirl giddy) when he’d asked me to also pose with Loki for his phone.
Dallas: How’s your father?
Nolan: Good. Asleep.
Dallas: How are you?
I smiled at that.
Nolan: Better now.
I regretted it as soon as I hit send. What if he read too much into it? Yes, it was the truth, but what if it crossed a line? I waited with bated breath for the response.
Dallas: Me too.
My heart damn near exploded. “Get a grip, Nolan, geez,” I told myself out loud.
Dallas: You still there?
Nolan: Yeah, sorry, I dropped my phone.
“Smooth, Nolan,” I murmured as I shook my head. “Now he’s going to think you dropped the phone because of what he said.”
It went on and on like that for a few minutes – me questioning every text I sent. But I began to relax the longer Dallas talked. We started out with our comfort zone topic of the animals and Tom Hiddleston, which then led to an in-depth discussion about which superhero universe was better – Marvel or D.C.
By the time I got the low battery warning on my phone, it was after midnight – we’d talked for four hours straight.
Nolan: My phone is dying.
Dallas: Mine too. You should go to bed. You have to work in the morning and I heard your boss is a real hardass.
Nolan: Well, his ass is pretty hard. I mean, it’s no Tom Hiddleston ass…
Dallas: Just for that, you’re cleaning up Gentry’s pen tomorrow…with a spatula.
Since I was well aware of how large and smelly Gentry’s shit was, I chuckled.
Nolan: Okay, gotta go. Turns out I have to kiss my boss’s hard ass tomorrow.
I chuckled when a gif of Tom Hiddleston saying “That’s hot” appeared on my phone.
Dallas: Night, Nolan.
Nolan: Good night, Dallas.
And just like that, I forgot about the bills and I forgot about Jimmy and I forgot about the fact that Pelican Bay and Dallas Kent were supposed to be just a temporary stop on the road to my new and better life.
My goal the next morning had been to sneak out early since Dallas had mentioned that he was going to be releasing a hawk he’d been nursing back to health that morning. Fortunately, we wouldn’t have to drive anywhere to release it, so that meant we’d be able to get to work afterward.
But my plans were waylaid when I quietly walked past my parents’ bedroom and saw that their door was open. My father was still asleep, but my mother’s side of the bed was already made and her bathrobe and slippers weren’t in their usual spot. Since I needed to get the keys from the hook near the side table in the kitchen, I had no choice but to say my good mornings and explain why I was up so early. Considering what she thought Dallas and I were actually up to, I wasn’t looking forward to her look of censure when she confronted me about it.
I expected her to be standing by the stove or cleaning the counters like she was prone to do in the morning, but to my surprise, she was sitting at the kitchen table. Her back was to me, so she didn’t see me. I had the chance to grab the keys and just go, but when I heard her let out a soft sniffle, I hesitated. An unexpected pang went through me when she lifted her hand to her face and wiped at her eyes.
She was crying.
“Mom?” I asked as I rounded the table so I could see her.
To my amazement, she didn’t try to hide what she’d been doing.
She was a mess. Her eyes were red-rimmed and swollen behind her glasses and her hair hadn’t been brushed. Her robe was hanging open. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought something had happened to my father, but I’d seen for myself that he was fine.
“It’s really true,” she murmured. “I…I didn’t know.”
At first, I thought she was talking about the fact that I’d slept with Dallas, which didn’t make sense since she’d already seemed pretty certain of that fact.
But then I saw the credit card beneath her trembling hands.
Her pained eyes lifted to meet mine. “Edith and I went with some of the ladies from the church outreach committee to dinner last night. They’ve all been so kind with helping me out with the cooking these past few weeks that I wanted to thank them, so I offered to treat them. The bill, it was expensive, but nothing too bad.”
I already knew where she was going with this since I managed the money in my parents’ accounts. They’d had even less money than I had in my own account, which was what I’d used to pay for the dog food the previous day. I’d warned my mother not to spend any more money this week until I got my paycheck, which was happening the following day.
“The waiter, he…he told me my debit card was declined, so I gave him a credit card. I thought it was a mistake.”
I sighed. While I’d made enough of a dent in the credit card bill to keep the company from calling the debt collectors, they’d frozen the account.
Another fact I’d shared with my mother.
“He said the company told him to cut up my card, but he gave it back to me instead.”
“Mom,” I murmured. “I told you all this-”
“I know,” she said with a nod. “I know you did, dear. But I thought you were just being argumentative.”
I ignored the stab of pain that her comment sent through me. “I’m trying to fix it, Mom, but I need more time. Which means you need to be careful about what you spend for a while.”
I was shocked when my mother reached across the table and patted my hand. She wiped at her eyes with a tissue she’d pulled from the sleeve of her robe. “I called Mr. Wilson last night when I got home – his wife’s on the church outreach committee with me,” she explained. “He said you paid the overdue mortgage with your own money. Is that true?”
“Yes. I paid all the bills as best I could with the money I had left in my savings.”
My mother nodded and dropped her eyes. I waited for her to say something else, to thank me, at least, but she didn’t. Anger burned through me, but I quelled it. It was just a reminder that I was here for one reason and one reason only. To get them back on their feet.
It wasn’t to fall in love with a group of broken animals.
It wasn’t to live out some fantasy with their equally broken rescuer.
It wasn’t to try and fix something that was unfixable.
“I have to go,” I muttered. “Don’t spend any money until I can deposit my paycheck tomorrow, okay?”
I got up to leave, but my mom said, “Nolan, wait.” She dabbed at her eyes and then stood, straightening her robe as she did. “I’ll make you some breakfast.”
“No, thanks, I need to go.”
She stepped into my path and put her arms up as if to grab me. But she stopped at the last moment. “Please, Nolan, let me make you something. I can make you a sandwich with some nice ham and eggs and cheese on it…to take with you. It’ll just take me a minute, I promise.”
Her tone was so uncertain that I hesitated. My mother never offered to do things for me. She told me what she was doing and that was that. No argument. And while she hadn’t exactly asked this time around, it was still different.
I wouldn’t allow myself to read too much into it. “Fine,” I said. “I’ll, um, go start the car to get the heater going. Be back in a minute.”
She nodded emphatically and then hurried to the refrigerator. I went out to the car and got my dad’s car going, since I’d reverted to using it so my mother would have her car. It took several tries to get it going and then I cranked up the heat. When I returned to the house, my mother appeared by the door, paper bag in one hand and one of my father’s thermoses in the other.
“Coffee,” she said as she handed it to me. “You need something hot for your drive.”
“Thanks,” I said, unable to hide the suspicion in my voice. “I really have to go.”
“Okay. See you tonight.”
I nodded and hurried from the house. My mother’s behavior was weirding me out. It was almost like she was, what…sorry?
That couldn’t be right.
Could it?
Chapter Ten
Dallas
“It was just weird, you know?” Nolan murmured as he took another sip of his wine.
Sounds like she was trying to thank you or tell you she was sorry, I typed before showing the screen to Nolan. I was using my tablet instead of my phone so it was easier for both of us.
We were sitting on my living room couch after having eaten a huge dinner that had included pot roast, mashed potatoes, and green beans. I’d opened the bottle of wine afterward in the hopes of convincing Nolan to stay a little longer. I wasn’t a big wine drinker, but I’d inherited half the contents of my parents’ huge wine cellar from our old house after my father had died. I had no clue about wine, but Nolan seemed to have liked whatever I’d randomly picked, because he was on his second glass. His skin was flushed with a little bit of color and his eyes were relaxed and bright. As soon as we’d sat down, he’d sunk into the soft cushions of the couch and immediately turned so he was facing me while we talked.
I liked that despite the fact that I wasn’t actually speaking, he still interacted with me like I was. Most people didn’t do that.
Nolan definitely wasn’t “most people.”
“I guess,” he said. “Too little, too late,” he added.
I resisted the urge to touch him. Our conversation throughout dinner had been light and easy, but when he’d mentioned needing to go home before I’d opened the bottle of wine to get him to stay, he’d gotten quiet. I hated when Nolan was quiet because he was such a vibrant personality.
“Dallas, can I ask you something? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”
I nodded. We hadn’t talked much about me, so I’d been expecting him to eventually press the issue. There were still some things I never wanted to tell him, but I knew that if I wanted to keep Nolan as a friend, I needed to be willing to open up a bit more.
I watched as Nolan shifted closer to me until our knees were touching. A soft smile graced his lips and I barely hid my own smile. Nolan was definitely feeling the wine now.
“When did you know?” he asked. “That you liked guys instead of girls. Or do you like girls too?”
I shook my head. Just guys. I knew when I was thirteen.
“But you had a girlfriend in high school. Sarah something…”
Sarah Anders, I acknowledged. I think she was suspicious, but she never asked me outright. She probably didn’t want to know.
I didn’t add the fact that I’d had a disastrous prom night with Sarah. Thankfully, I’d been able to blame my lack of an erection on alcohol that I hadn’t actually consumed but pretended that I had. I’d ended things with her shortly after that, saying I was just too busy with baseball to date anyone.
“Did anyone know?” Nolan asked, his voice sympathetic.
My older brother. I told him when I was fifteen. Right before we moved to Pelican Bay.
“Maddox. He’s in the military, right?”
I managed a nod, despite the fact that pain was spreading throughout my belly.
“Hey,” Nolan said, his hand settling on my arm as he shifted even closer. “We don’t have to talk about it…him.”
I nodded and tried to focus on how good it felt to have Nolan’s fingers brushing my skin. It bothered me more than I wanted to admit that Nolan likely knew about the accident and what my brother had said to me just before he’d left to return to the army. Doc Cleary had let it slip once that Jimmy’s mother, Edith, had been in the house that day and overheard Maddox telling me he’d wished I’d been the one to die in the accident instead of my mother.
Does your family know? I asked him.
“Yeah,” Nolan said with a sigh. “Said I was going to go to hell and they’d pray for me and all that,” he muttered with a wave of his wine glass. “On the positive side, it got me out of church for the next…forever,” he added with a faint chuckle.
That explained why I hadn’t seen much of Nolan at church.
Nolan settled his wine glass on the coffee table and then turned back to me. “Who was the first guy you kissed?”
That was a topic I definitely didn’t want to discuss, so I pointed at him and wrote, You tell me first.
“His name was Anderson. Yeah, that was his first name,” he said, his eyes bright. “His family was super rich and well-known – like the Kennedys or something. He was at Juilliard because he was planning on being an actor. Anyway, we met at this orientation thing and started talking while we were waiting for the tour we were on to start. About fifteen minutes into the tour, he pulls me into this room and just lays one on me. I was so surprised, I don’t think I even reacted. I think he was surprised, too, because he kept telling me it was a mistake and not to tell anyone. He ran back to join the tour and never talked to me again.”
I couldn’t help but let my eyes drift to Nolan’s mouth and think what a waste his first kiss had been.
I typed, He was a fool.
Nolan shot me a goofy grin. “Agreed. What about yours?”
I shook my head.
“Come on, I told you mine.”
I sighed and pointed at him.
“No, I already went,” he said.
I shook my head and pointed at him again. But for once, he didn’t get what I was saying. I picked up the tablet.
You was all I typed.
His brow furrowed in confusion. It took him about five long seconds to finally get it.
“What?” he choked out.
You were my first kiss, Nolan.
“What?” he said, his voice going high and loud. “So that night in the truck was the first time you-”
I shook my head. God, I didn’t want to do this. But I knew I didn’t have a choice.
No, I’ve had sex with men before, I’ve just never kissed any of them.
Not surprisingly, Nolan was confused. “I don’t understand.”
I pulled in a breath. My first time was with a guy I met in a club in the Twin Cities when I was around twenty-one or so. I fucked him in the alley behind the club, then I left. I never even knew his name. None of us were in that place for romance, if you know what I mean.
“Oh,” Nolan murmured as understanding dawned. “Do you do that a lot? Just…hook up?”
&
nbsp; Humiliation swamped me as I nodded my head and dropped the tablet on the cushion between us. I made a move to stand, but Nolan grabbed my wrist.
“Dallas, wait, please. I’m sorry, I wasn’t judging.”
His hold on me was firm and I didn’t want to inadvertently hurt him, so I settled back down. But I couldn’t look at him.
“Dallas,” Nolan whispered, and then his hands were on my face. “You’re just so beautiful and kind and amazing and…it hurts to know that you’ve never had anyone show you…” Nolan’s words dropped off. He muttered a curse word under his breath and then pressed his forehead against mine. “I’m messing this up,” he said softly.
I let my hands cover his wrists where he was holding my face. We stayed like that for several beats before Nolan released me and sat back. He remained close enough that our legs were still touching.
“So how was I?” he asked, a small grin spreading across his mouth.
I rolled my eyes at him and then brought my hand up and held it flat in the air and shook it a little each way.
“So-so?” Nolan said in mock outrage. He fell silent for a moment and when he next spoke, his voice had gone heavy with seriousness. “I guess I should try to improve my score.”
And just like that, the lust that had been simmering in my belly exploded. I fisted my hands to keep from reaching for him, but it was a wasted effort because Nolan was the one to lean forward. He stopped just before his mouth met mine. “Can I, Dallas?”
There was nothing on earth that could have kept me from nodding.
Nolan let out a soft breath right before he covered my mouth with his. His hand came up to gently grab my neck and I wanted to cry when I felt his thumb softly grazing over the scars on my throat. I expected him to seek entry into my mouth, but instead, he closed his lips over my lower lip, then my upper, then he just pressed one gentle kiss after another against my mouth, his lips firm but soft against mine. He kept up the pattern until I was panting against him. I’d wrapped my arms around his waist at some point and he’d ended up practically in my lap. So when he pulled back just a little, there wasn’t much room for him to go since I didn’t want to release him.
Locked in Silence_Pelican Bay [Book 1] Page 13
