20. Nolan
20
NOLAN
I was still thinking about my exchange with Lilah the next morning in the kitchen. I’d hit the gym early with Jude, then the sauna. Now I was drinking a smoothie while I made chocolate chip pancakes, the news on mute.
Lilah loved chocolate chip pancakes, one of many things I’d learned about her in the month she’d lived with us, little facts I unearthed like an archeologist digging for treasure: slowly, painstakingly, trying not to break anything while I chipped away at a hidden gem.
I’d been at war with myself over whether or not to join her in the hot tub. She’d felt vulnerable when I’d found her coming out of the sauna in Jude’s clothes that first night and I was still trying to make her comfortable at the house, make her feel safe here.
We all were, even though Rafe tried to hide it.
But my avoidance wasn’t entirely selfless. I fucking dreamed about the way she’d looked standing outside the sauna, Jude’s tank plastered to her damp skin, her full tits straining the fabric as she crossed her arms over her chest. Her legs were shapely and muscular under the shorts he’d given her to wear, the clothes somehow sexier than any bathing suit she might have worn in another life.
I’d wanted to peel them off her skin, lift the shirt over her head, close my mouth around one of her nipples, sink my fingers into her hot cunt.
Not good.
I was glad my back was turned to Jude. He’d know my raging hard-on was because of Lilah and so far we’d carefully avoided the elephant in the room that was our attraction for the woman we had no business wanting.
And it wasn’t just her body I wanted. I heard the soft thump-thump of her heartbeat in my dreams too. Its rhythm was a lullaby I felt in my bones after all the time I’d spent listening to it through my stethoscope, making sure it was steady, like a fucking nervous parent standing over a newborn’s crib, making sure the baby was still breathing.
I was deep in thought, waiting for two of the pancakes in the pan to turn golden brown, when I heard Rafe behind me.
“Storm has something for us,” he said.
I looked over my shoulder. “On the car?”
Rafe slid onto one of the chairs at the island and opened his laptop with a nod. “Said she could send it to the encrypted account, but I thought we could go in person instead.”
“You just want an excuse to surf.” Jude was drawing something I couldn’t see, his pencil making soft scratching sounds on his sketch pad.
“And?” Rafe didn’t bother looking up from his laptop.
“We did the Peak yesterday,” Jude pointed out, looking up at him. “And the surf’s wild this time of year.”
“And?” Rafe repeated.
Jude and I liked to live on the edge, but Rafe’s need to risk his life was pathological.
“Fine,” Jude muttered, turning his attention back to his sketchbook.
I smelled butter and turned back to the pancakes in the pan. Another ten seconds and they would have burned.
I turned to the island and a plate already piled high with pancakes.
Rafe eyed them with a scowl. “One thing I can say about our house guest, we’re eating a lot better.”
“We always eat well,” Jude said.
I slid the pancakes out of the pan and poured the last of the batter to make two more pancakes.
“We always eat healthy,” Rafe corrected. He glared at Jude. “Nolan’s chocolate chip pancakes and those late-night grilled cheeses you’ve been making Lilah aren’t usually on the menu.”
Jude flushed. Had he really thought we didn’t know about the grilled cheese?
“Just trying to make her feel at home,” Jude said.
“Don’t,” Rafe said, walking to the coffee machine. “This isn’t her home.”
“You don’t have to tell me that,” Lilah said, entering the kitchen.
I had to hand it to Rafe: he didn’t even look embarrassed to be caught talking shit behind Lilah’s back. And I had to hand it to Lilah too: she didn’t seem at all thrown by the fact that Rafe didn’t want her here.
“Good,” Rafe said, waiting for his coffee to finish.
“I can leave, you know,” she said, standing next to the island. I loved the way she looked in the morning, a little tousled and sleepy, her long hair loose around her shoulders. Her sweats couldn’t hide the curves of her body and I groaned inwardly as my dick hardened all over again. “I still have my apartment.”
I hated that she was still paying rent on her apartment. She couldn’t afford it with her shitty job at Burger Haven, and I was starting to doubt it would ever be safe for her to go back to her place. She couldn’t stay here forever — and she wouldn’t want to — but that meant finding a new place, building a new life somewhere Vic couldn’t fuck with her, and that wasn’t an easy option either.
“You can’t go back to your place,” Jude said. “Not yet.”
Rafe took his coffee back to the island and Lilah moved toward the machine, the two of them like dancers choreographed to move around each other without touching.
“Then when?” she asked, grabbing a mug from the cupboard over the machine.
I liked how easily she moved around the kitchen, the way she knew where everything was. She looked right in our house, like she belonged. Felt that way too, even though I knew that was weird after only a month.
“When it’s safe,” Rafe said, tapping on his computer.
I couldn’t have been more shocked when she marched across the kitchen and slammed Rafe’s laptop closed.
“What the fuck…?” Shock was written all over his face.
Mine too, probably.
“That’s not good enough,” she said. “In case you haven’t noticed, my life is on hold. I’m down two jobs and still paying rent. You won’t even let me go into town alone because of Vic fucking Lombardi. And I’m stuck here, an unwanted prisoner, with no ETA on when it’s safe to leave.”
“Not our fault you got involved with Vic’s shady shit,” Rafe said.
“Hey!” I barked at Rafe. “Not cool. This isn’t Lilah’s fault.”
“Yeah, man,” Jude agreed. “Lilah’s a victim in this.”
“Whatever.” Rafe glared up at Lilah. They looked like two bulls facing off, although Lilah was a whole lot prettier. “The point is, you were in a bind with no place to go. We gave you a place to go. You’re welcome.”
“You’re being a real dick,” she said.
“Agreed,” Jude and I said at the same time.
Our days of agreeing with everything Rafe said and did were behind us. We’d had concerns about Captain Sandoval from the beginning, but Rafe had been all in on him as a mentor. Jude and I had kept our thoughts to ourselves, had followed Rafe like usual, and that blind loyalty had fucked us all in the end.
I couldn’t be sure about Jude, but I was pretty sure we’d had the same epiphany after the whole thing: we loved Rafe like a brother, but he wasn’t a god, just a man, as fucked-up as we were.
“I need some kind of plan,” Lilah said to no one in particular while her coffee brewed. “Rafe’s a dick but he’s also right. This isn’t my home.”
“We’re working on it,” Jude said, still sketching.
Lilah grabbed her cup and took a careful sip. “Working on what?”
“On figuring out what Lombardi is up to so you can go back to your life,” Jude said, his attention on the drawing. He was like that when he drew — not fully present, like he’d stepped through the page into the scene he was bringing to life.
Lilah’s forehead crinkled in the adorable way it did when she was trying to figure something out. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry about it, boss.” Jude had taken to calling Lilah “boss” when she got demanding. She’d frowned the first time he’d done it, but she must have been okay with it because she never told him to stop.
“Don’t make me stab you with that pencil, Jude.”
He looked up, blinking to clear his vision like he was waking from a dream. He set the pencil down and closed the sketchbook. “We know you can’t stay here forever, but you can’t go home until Vic and Mr. Suit are neutralized as a threat, so that’s what we’re going to do.”
Lilah was the one who’d given the name “Mr. Suit” to the mysterious guy who visited the Dive, and since we didn’t have a name for him, we’d taken to doing it too.
Lilah leaned against the counter. “How? And why didn’t you tell me?”
There were lots of things we hadn’t told Lilah, but she didn’t need to know that.
“Because it’s none of your business,” Rafe said. “Let us work.”
“In this case your work is very much my business,” she said. “I have a right to know what’s going on.”
I put the two freshest pancakes on a plate and set it down in front of the empty chair at the island. “These are for you.”
She glared at them suspiciously, then crossed the kitchen to sit down. Lilah could never pass up food. It was one of the things I loved about her because I felt the same way.
“These look amazing, but they’re not getting you off the hook.” She reached for the syrup. “Start talking."