Chapter 6
6
How’s your sleep? CIA psychologists always ask you that. Are you restless? Yes? No?
Same thing on the polygraph tests. It flickers with a quick tick, tick, tick , swishing in thin, black lines across the screen, and sometimes I say yes . It depends . It was worse when I was younger. Ever since I joined the CIA, learned tools that helped me cope—or, at least, helped me bury myself in work—I sleep better. At the station house, some nights, I’m out with the light switch. Other times, though, I’m awake at three thirty in the morning, flicking through cable channels, wondering if my melatonin gummies will ever kick in. They’re bears. Tiny, sleepy gummy bears. I’ve taken two just now. Calla, Johnny, Nick, and I got home from the bar twenty minutes ago, after a car ride filled with stories about Calla and Johnny’s first dates (a riverboat cruise, dinner at the Ritz in New York), and I’m trying—unsuccessfully—to wind myself down. Every time I even think about closing my eyes, there’s Nick’s voice.
Singing Mariah Carey.
Obnoxiously well.
Where’d he learn to sing like that? Objectively, he’s a good singer; just as objectively, he’s attractive. Doesn’t make me impressed. If anything, I trust him even less now. I don’t like people who surprise me. Shaking my head—shaking Nick out of my head—I swipe off my mascara with a wet cloth, then scrub my cheeks until they’re rosy and red like Santa’s. In the car, I finagled a close-up picture of Calla’s ring and sent it to Gail, along with a coded note about the virus uploads. Now, all I can do for the rest of the night is wait, see what the trackers unearth, and scrub.
I only pause when a knock-knock rattles the door. I’m in the bathroom at the end of the hall, where—when I was twelve years old—Calla cut my bangs with a pair of construction paper scissors. I asked her to do it. Our mom had bangs in one of her old photos with Dad, which we found wedged in the downstairs bookshelf. I told Calla to keep going , keep going , until all that was left was a frayed edge of hair, sticking straight up like a peacock’s crest. Maybe it’s because I’m exhausted, but for some reason, I jam my toothbrush in my mouth and open the door, expecting Calla to be on the other side.
She isn’t. Nick is.
Sidekick Nick, in a worn gray T-shirt and black sweatpants, a plastic toiletry bag clutched under his arm.
“Hi,” he says, back to sheepish, and ugh, you again? I thought he was asleep. Shouldn’t he be in the guest room? In his bathroom, with the duck curtains and the razor? Doing, like, push-ups or something? Instead, he’s staring at me in my mismatched pajamas (plaid pants and a way-too-big T-shirt from the Library of Congress that reads, a book lover never goes to bed alone ).
“Hey there,” I say. Let me tell you, it is impossible to sound seductive with a toothbrush rammed in your mouth. I’ll settle for unassuming.
“I just gave Calla and Johnny the guest room,” Nick quickly explains, looming tall in the doorway; the small bathroom night-light does its best but barely highlights the length of his silhouette. He runs a slow hand through his dark hair. “Calla’s old room has a much smaller bed, so I’m in there, and I was going to use the downstairs bathroom, but your grandma’s sleeping on the couch—”
Ah, right. Says it’s better for her back, like sleeping on a hard plank outdoors. Plus, she enjoys dozing off to the merry-merry cheer of the Christmas tree, lights flashing her into a sleep stupor. So that means... Nick is right next door to me now. We share a wall. Perhaps like he will with Johnny in prison! my inner voice adds.
“I didn’t want to wake her,” Nick finishes in a polite whisper, like he deeply cares about my grandmother’s well-being. Yeah, right. He bites the pillow of his bottom lip. “I saw your light on. Do you mind if I use your bathroom when you’re done?”
I shift from one foot to the other, telling myself not to look a gift horse in the mouth. Or a gift Nick, I guess. The more I mull over his case files, the more questions I have. Was he a part of all the heists? Just the one? Based on what the FBI has gathered, each heist has at least five men on the ground. Does the group change every time? Where are the Joneses selling their stolen goods?
And—most importantly—where are they hitting next with fifty pounds of C4?
Removing my toothbrush, I push the minty paste into one of my cheeks and talk as normally as I can. “Suuure. Need to brush your teeth? Just come on in now.”
When Nick tilts his head, I realize—annoyingly—that I’ve already memorized him. I’d have no problem describing every angle of his face to an FBI sketch artist. The freckle above his lip and the scar on his chin. The precise thickness of his eyebrows.
Why does that bother me so much?
“You sure?” Nick asks.
“Yeah.” Steeling myself, I step aside, giving him space to walk by. A smoky pine scent crashes over me as he brushes past my shoulder. That soap of his again. It irritates my nose. In the almost dark, I offer him the toothpaste tube, even though he probably has his own.
“Thanks, but I—” He gestures into his toiletry bag, fishing out his toothbrush and a tube of Crest. Sensitive brand. Gentle whitening. The same as mine. “Well, hey, look at that.”
“If you pull out the same floss as me, I think that makes us friends.”
Nick laughs. “Never heard that rule before, but I believe you.” His fingers reach into his bag, obscuring the floss. “Are you ready for it?” he asks, like he’s about to perform a magic trick.
He whips out Wegmans own-brand floss with a theatrical flourish.
“That is so niche ,” I argue, hamming it up.
“Wegmans brand? With the glide-and-slide? Are you kidding me? It is the only acceptable kind.”
“Agree to disagree.”
We brush in abject silence for the next sixteen seconds, but then, true to his earlier statement, Nick can’t stand the quiet. He speaks around his toothbrush. “Hey, were you all right earlier? In the kitchen, when Calla told us about the wedding. And then at the bar when they were talking about how they met. You looked kind of... sick.”
“Did I?” I say, noncommittal, treading carefully. Inside, I’m cursing him. Grandma Ruby almost interpreted the look on my face, but she’s known me my entire life. How did this guy? The paranoid part of my brain wonders: Does Nick have a file on me, too? As Johnny’s head of security, he might. What would it say? My online life is a fabrication. My job at the Department of Education is a fairy tale.
“Must’ve been a surprise,” Nick says, brushing, before passing me an irritatingly sympathetic glance in the mirror. “I don’t blame you. This is turning into one hell of a holiday.”
I spit daintily into the sink and fix him with a look, deciding to spin this into a joke. “What if I told you that I looked sick because I’d... eaten some bad shrimp on the plane?”
“Bad shrimp,” Nick repeats around the toothbrush, dubious.
“Yes.”
He’s blunt now. “Then I’d have to question what kind of person would trust plane shrimp.”
“Yeah, that’s fair.”
“Did you know that raw shrimp can contain over seventy different types of bacteria?”
“I... did not.” Pause. “Nick, are you a germaphobe?”
“You mean, am I a completely reasonable person who acknowledges the existence of germs that are everywhere, then yes.”
“How the heck were you a bodyguard, then?” I ask, half happy that I’ve diverted the conversation. “You have to touch everything.”
“My secret weapon,” he says, deadly serious, “was hand sanitizer.”
“I respect that,” I say, “even though I’m an eat-off-the-floor person. Three-second rule.”
Nick looks aghast. “Please say you’re joking.”
“I’m joking,” I say, not joking, and wipe my mouth with the washcloth, hopping onto the countertop by the seashell night-light. Time to kick the flirtation up at least ten notches above floor shrimp. “So,” I say tentatively, “tell me about yourself, random man in my bathroom.”
Giving one of his slow smiles, Nick appraises me, packing up his toothbrush and rinsing out the sink. “What do you want to know?”
I shrug, the T-shirt slipping purposefully down my shoulder. Cool air tickles my skin, and I see him scan the bareness for just a second. “Anything.” I raise a coy eyebrow. “Secrets, preferably.”
Nick runs a hand over his mouth, a laugh in his throat. “Secrets, huh? Don’t have many of those.”
Liar , I think. “Liar,” I tease, crossing my ankles.
He shifts over a few inches, so we’re face-to-face, and presses his lips together in a sigh. “I might have one or two,” he says, deliberating. One of his hands works its way down the side of his neck, and the bottom of his shirt lifts up half an inch, exposing a tan slice of stomach. “Last year, I got pulled over on Route 1 for speeding.”
He’s led with an actual crime? Idiot. I sit up straighter and ask the natural follow-up. “How fast were you going?”
“Seventy-seven in a seventy-five. Massachusetts police will get you for anything. But that’s not the secret. It’s more the reason I was speeding. I wasn’t paying attention, because...”
“Because...?”
Nick leans back, arms crossed, like the secret is about to bowl him over. “I was too busy blasting Taylor Swift.”
Can’t help it. I snort with a burst of unexpected glee. Is that the truth? Or a calculated attempt at vulnerability? To make him seem more approachable, warmer, less threatening. Won’t work on me. “Wouldn’t have pegged you for a Swiftie.”
“I’m much more a George Strait, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan type of guy, but every once in a while, the mood strikes.”
“Is that how you’re such a good singer? Cruising down Route 1, belting out ‘Bad Blood’?”
He waves this off, modest. Modesty might come across as sincere to anyone else, but I’m suspicious, picking it apart. The corner of his mouth is turning up again, and god, just stop it with the mouth . “I’m not that good,” he says.
“Nick, come on.” My forehead scrunches. “Michael Bublé wants his voice back.”
Nick drags his teeth over his bottom lip, as if he’s reluctant to admit something. “Church choir,” he finally says. “Eight years.”
Guy’s like a priest , Johnny had said. Maybe this fits in one exceptionally small way. I cock my head at Nick, remembering those photos in his file—him and Johnny’s men, crowded into the same pew at church. Fucking hypocrites. “Eight years. Wow. That’s a long time.”
“It is,” he says, nodding, dark hair illuminated in the half-light. “It was never for me, though. It was always for my grandmother. I wanted to play the acoustic guitar instead, or maybe, like, the ukulele. Don’t laugh! You can’t tell me that ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow’ doesn’t give you a lump in your throat. But singing made my grandma happy, so... do I get a secret now?”
My mind highlights the grandmother thing. Puts a pin in it for later. “From me?” I lightly kick the cabinets with my heels. “Thought you knew all the stories.”
“Still have questions,” Nick says, tapping his own wrist on the spot where the crescent moon outline is on mine. “What’s your tattoo mean?”
Why’d he go straight for that? My thumb rubs at the shape as I forbid any irritation from seeping across my face. Nick picks up on my moment’s pause, waving off the question with a soft hand. “Know what? Don’t answer that. You don’t have to answer that.”
Then why’d you ask it? Shaking my head, I recover easily, tucking two chunks of blond hair behind my ears. If there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s skirting around personal questions. “No, it’s fine. Calla and I just went hiking a lot when we were little. Camping under the moon and all that. It reminds me of being a kid.”
Half-truth, half-lie.
I almost follow it up with, Do you have any tattoos? Even though I know he doesn’t. And he knows that I’ve seen the length of his naked body, half wrapped in a towel: the tan slope of his waist, the way the cloth hugged his hips, freckles, a dark trail of hair.
Instead, I look up at him through my eyelashes. “You get another question. Hit me with it.”
Nick doesn’t waste any time. It’s like he already had the question prepared. His lips part. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you were coming home for Christmas?”
The words seep in, twisting and stabbing a little. How did he know exactly where to hit me?
My shoulders scrunch as we stare at each other: me still on the countertop, him right in front of me, the air heavy between us. This bathroom is minuscule. Starting to feel like purgatory. One big step forward in the dim light and we’d be chest to chest. The closeness amplifies the question, makes it pinprick my skin.
My face is neutral. Voice is neutral. “Like I said, I wanted it to be a surprise.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing.” Nick appraises me with his dark eyes, inching forward. Stalking forward. Invading my space like a challenge. Maybe he’s smarter than I’ve given him credit for, this guy. His eyebrows cinch in the middle, as if he’s confused. “It seemed more like a surprise to you .”
We’re so close, I can feel the heat pulsing off his skin. And I have those thoughts again: the what-ifs. What if he attacked me from the front? What if I slammed him into that towel rack? So I’m back to the half-truths. That’s what I’m trained to do when I’m in a tight spot. Give an inch but leave the mile.
Even the half-truth, though... it’s more personal than it usually is. It hurts. “Maybe it occurred to me that spending Christmas alone was a shitty idea, and I just wanted to see how everyone was doing. Sweetie Pie, Grandma Ruby... Calla. I haven’t been the most present sister lately.”
The night-light throws a yellow glaze over Nick’s hard jaw. “Don’t be so tough on yourself,” he says, tapping my knee with the back of his hand. My knee that could easily slam into his groin. “No one talks about their sibling like Calla talks about you. You must’ve done something right.”
I nod, tamping down my annoyance again. What the hell does Nick know? “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.” He’s still holding my gaze, refusing to drop it like I did to him at the bar. He shifts infinitesimally forward, and—suddenly, this feels easy, too. Suspiciously easy. The sudden heat that’s building between us. The way he’s studying me. Yes, Sweetie Pie is farting audibly downstairs, and yes, we’re bathed in the glow of a cheesy seashell night-light—but the heat is there . It’s there in the gentle sweep of his eyes, which look like they’re categorizing the curves of my mouth.
“Sydney, do you think I could take you out to dinner?” Nick asks, just as sudden, in a quiet, sensual way that makes me wonder who’s seducing whom. Darkness curls around him. “I don’t want to get in the way of your family time, though. So whenever works for you, if you’re interested.”
“Yeah,” I say, matching his intensity. Yanking the reins back with full force. “I might be interested.”
Nick smirks in a way that probably works on other women. “Maybe tomorrow? Should we say tomorrow and see how it goes?”
“Tomorrow,” I agree, glad that everything’s going according to plan, and before I lose any momentum, I take a calculated risk: pushing myself off the countertop and closing the space between us. My fingertips find his arm. Rising up on my tallest tiptoes, I kiss him softly on the cheek, lips caressing the slight stubble of his skin. I’ve surprised him. His body goes rigid for a second, taut muscles tensing further, before he relaxes into it.
I leave with a bounce in my step. “Night, Nick.”
He stares after me, chest slowly rising and falling. “Night, Sydney.”
—
Back in my twin-size bed, I crash almost immediately, sliding into that empty void where my melatonin gummies kick in, where I usually have strange, incoherent dreams.
This one’s different.
The bathroom is billowing with steam, and someone’s behind the curtain, whistling. My subconscious realizes: That is Taylor Swift.
I mean, it’s not Taylor Swift behind the curtain. It’s Nick. He’s bopping along to the tune, his tall frame jamming behind the ducks.
“Come in,” he says, lighthearted, as if I’ve knocked on the door instead. Annoyed, I reach for the curtain, sliding it back inch by inch to reveal Nick, fully clothed, standing under the rushing water. In dreamland, this is nothing out of the ordinary. It is absolutely not weird that he’s wearing the christmas sweater sweatshirt, lathering the sleeves with a bar of pine-scented soap. Bubbles pop and spread against the fabric.
What the hell am I even doing here?
It feels like I should be... moving. Leaving. Scuttling away from him.
Just then, Nick slaps his head theatrically with his palm. Duh! He should be showering without his clothes! Idiot. I know this. He knows this. A moment of urgency passes between us before— slowly, holding eye contact with me the whole way—he peels off the sweatshirt, leaving only the wet plane of his glistening chest. My breath catches painfully in my throat, and that pisses me right off. He is all slopes and angles, trim and tight. When I was awake, I did notice the long scar on his abdomen, the exact placement of the freckles on his hip, but it was clinical. I was trying to place him in a tall stack of files.
Dream Sydney isn’t clinical. She notices the trail of hair, leading down below his waistline, and the sculpted way his muscles flex. He has two perfect dimples on his lower back. “You joining me?” Nick asks, voice husky now, unbuttoning his pants where the dark hair dips, and I—
—wake up like a bomb’s exploded, shooting up in bed, sheets tangled against my legs. My heart’s pounding like a marching band drum, and I am boiling . Way, way too hot for winter in Maine. A thin sheen of sweat covers my body, pajama shirt sticking to my skin, and I peel it off in one swoop, chest heaving in the thin morning light.
Fuck.