7. Nolan
7
NOLAN
There was a beat of silence when I half expected Rafe to haul Lilah to the front door and throw her out into the snow. But he just glared at her, then made a sound I recognized as an attempt to hold back his rage and stalked to the coffee maker.
I studied Lilah’s face, glad to see the color had returned to her skin. I regretted not dealing with the gash on her cheek the night before but there had been a lot going on. I’d have to do that this morning.
She’d always been striking, even in high school, but now she was even more beautiful. Her dark blonde hair highlighted her piercing green eyes while her lush mouth almost made a mockery of her high cheekbones and delicate bone structure. In a world full of smiles made homogeneous by orthodontics, the tiny gap between her front teeth only added to her appeal.
She was more than pretty — she was interesting. I could have stared at her face for hours, trying to figure out what made me want to commit it to memory.
As for her body, well, I tried — not very successfully — not to look too closely. It felt off-limits, both because she was vulnerable and because of what we’d done to her in high school.
The black sweats hung on her frame but that didn’t mean I couldn’t see that she was banging.
I shifted in my chair at the island, glad I was sitting down so she couldn’t see my hard-on.
Fuck. I felt like a fucking animal.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, hoping I sounded clinical, like a medic and not a horny douchebag who wanted to nail the wounded girl in front of me.
“Better,” she said. “I can move my fingers and toes.”
“Mind if I take a look?” It sounded almost suggestive to my ears, but I guess that was because of my dirty fucking mind.
Lilah didn’t seem to notice.
“Sure. But, um, could I have some coffee?” she asked.
“I’ll get it,” Jude said, jumping to his feet.
Rafe moved away from the machine, looking like he wanted to murder us all.
My breath caught in my throat when she looked up at me and offered her hands. I knew she had to be tough to make it through the woods in the snow — we were five miles from Blackwell Falls and even farther from Greenvale, the next closest town — but right then she looked like a wounded bird and fuck me if I didn’t want to shelter her from the storm.
Figuratively and literally.
I squeezed her fingertips. “Feel this?”
She nodded. “They do feel a little weird. My feet too.”
“Weird how?” I asked.
Jude put a cup of coffee in front of her. “Want sugar or cream?”
“No, thanks.” She took a drink of the coffee and her ensuing sigh went straight to my already enthused cock. “Weird like I almost have pins and needles, or like I did have pins and needles and it hasn’t quite gone away.”
“That’s pretty normal,” I said. “It’ll take a while for your circulation to be optimal again, especially with the AVS.”
“What’s AVS?” Jude asked.
“Aortic valve stenosis,” Lilah said. “It’s a heart thing.”
“You have a heart condition?” Jude asked, obviously surprised.
“Yep. And I left my meds in my bag. Luckily Nolan had some beta-blockers.”
“Have you always had it?” Jude asked.
I wondered if he was thinking the same thing I was thinking, the same thing that had kept me up most of the night, riddled with shame: Lilah had been sick when we’d set her up at that party, when we’d gotten her naked and texted her nudes to everyone in school.
It shouldn’t have mattered — I already knew what we’d done was fucked — but I felt like even more of a dick knowing she’d been sick, and that was saying something because I’d been feeling like a dick for the past six years.
“I was born with it,” she said.
I knelt at her feet and pulled off the socks I’d put on the night before. I was relieved to see that there was no discoloration in her toes, a good sign.
“Can you feel this?” I asked, pinching her toes.
She nodded. “But it’s like my fingers. They still feel a little numb.”
I slipped her socks back on and got to my feet.
“They can’t fix it?” Jude asked. “The heart thing?”
“They can replace the broken valve,” she said, “but it’s heart surgery, so they try to control it instead.”
“You’re probably hungry,” I said. “I’ll make you some breakfast.”
“I need to go home,” she said.
“The roads aren’t clear yet,” Jude said. “We got almost two feet of snow last night.”
I stared at her mouth as she bit her full lower lip, mesmerized by the plump flesh caught against her tooth. I’d never kissed Lilah Abbott, not even that night in high school when we’d gotten her naked. Now I had the urge to feel her mouth give way under mine, to feel the tangle of her tongue.
“Shit.” I knew she was upset because she looked down, letting her long hair form a curtain over her face.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “But you can stay here until the roads are cleared. I know that’s not what you want but we don’t really have a choice.”
“How long will that take?” she asked.
“Could be later today, could be tomorrow,” I said. “They usually plow the roads in town first.”
We lived up on the mountain by design. The kind of work we’d done in the military didn’t make it easy to go back to regular life, get a nine-to-five, live in a house with a white picket fence or an apartment where everyone was in your business.
The dishonorable discharge wasn’t the only thing that haunted us.
Plus, we weren’t exactly the “linger-in-a-coffee-shop” or “have-lunch-at-a-cute-bistro” type.
Lilah didn’t answer, and I knew she was getting her head around the whole thing.
“I’ll get you that breakfast,” I said, heading for the fridge. “You’re probably starving.”
Rafe folded his arms over his chest and glared at her like she was the enemy. “Then you can tell us what the fuck was going on last night.”