Chapter Ten
“It’s nothing,” Nick quickly explained. “Just a sprain. I’m fine, Mom. I swear.”
“Are you sure?” she asked, sounding weary and strained. “Just because I’m here doesn’t mean you need to hide things from me. I can handle bad news.”
Nick wasn’t so sure. He scrubbed the heel of his hand across his brow. “I’ll have Sassy drop Riot and me off tomorrow at River House so you can see for yourself. I won’t miss seeing you again like I did this morning.”
“Everyone was asking where the two of you were. They all missed you.”
“Well, I miss you,” he said, needing her to hear and understand that just because she was there didn’t mean he’d stopped thinking about her night and day.
“I miss you, too, Nicholas,” she replied softly. “How is Sassy?”
Nick glanced toward the open door to the guest bedroom. He could hear rustling down the hall from hers. There was no way he could tell his mother about what had happened here last night. “She’s doing okay.”
“You know, I’ve been doing some thinking. If she wants to buy that house she was talking about—the fixer-upper—I think she should. She sounded so excited about it.”
Nick froze. He was currently sitting in the fixer-upper—the one Sassy had made the leap and purchased two years ago. The smells of semifresh paint and sawdust from her months of DIY renovations didn’t mix well with the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. “Mom…”
“I could even dig into our savings—the money from your father’s estate—and help her put down the down payment if it would help with the interest rate.”
The room swam for a moment. Nick kicked for the surface, fighting to breathe through the tight feeling wrapped around his chest. His mother had spent that money in the grips of her addiction, so much so they’d had to sell the house they’d lived in since Nick was born.
He put his head between his knees. Goddammit.
Not this. Not now. He’d thought the therapy sessions at River House, the proximity to urgent care and his regular visits with Riot had been keeping the worst of her disease at bay.
He knew what the end game was. He knew eventually he’d lose her to dementia. But he’d thought the status quo would hold. He thought there’d be more time…
“Nicholas?”
“I’m here,” he rasped. “I, uh… I’ll talk to her.”
“See that you do. She’s practically a daughter to me. I’m happy to help. She doesn’t even have to pay me back.”
“I’ll tell her,” he promised, feeling numb. “Do you need me to bring you anything tomorrow?”
“Just yourself. And maybe some of those shortbread cookies. You know the ones?”
“I do.” He cleared his throat when his voice splintered. “I love you, Mom.”
“I love you, too, Nicholas.”
“See you tomorrow?”
She chuckled. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Something stabbed the corners of his eyes, hot, biting needles of emotion he couldn’t stanch.
He said goodbye and sought Riot’s warmth next to him.
His large snout rested on Nick’s knee. He petted him, knowing his buddy needed the rest after visiting so many different people.
Riot might be sociable, but spreading his love around could be wearing on him.
“Everything okay?” Sassy called from down the hall.
Nick swallowed the knot in his throat. “Fine.”
“Is your mom up for a visit tomorrow?”
His hand traced unthinking circles across the top of Riot’s head. “She says so.”
“Good. Chayton’s grandmother gave me a gift basket. She wanted me to take it to her.”
“That was nice of her.” Nick heard his own dull voice and bit into his cheek, trying to hold back the emotions.
“You sure you’re okay?”
He sighed. No. “Yeah.” He racked his mind for something else to talk about before he lost it. “Jacob told me his brother Mark is coming home soon.”
“Yeah?”
“No one’s seen him since his discharge from the Army,” Nick said.
“That’s right. A year ago.”
Should he relay to Sassy other details her cousin Jacob, a National Parks SBI special agent, had shared with him—specifically, about a possible human trafficking ring operating in the area?
He thought of the dead woman in Dark Canyon Wilderness, about Fern and baby Gracie, Ava’s abduction…
Glancing at the door to his room, he went through what had happened to Sassy over the last twenty-four hours…
a near hit-and-run and a thwarted break-in.
He could easily believe what Jacob had told him. And he didn’t want it touching Sassy. He didn’t want it anywhere near her.
A curse blew through the quiet of the hall.
He frowned at the door. “Are you okay?”
A pause. Then, “No.”
He rose to his feet. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing. I just… The zipper’s stuck.”
His feet planted in the thick carpet at the threshold of his room.
She’d said something about changing when they’d returned home from the reservation.
For her meeting with artists, many of whom she represented, she’d dressed in a flowing yellow maxi skirt with a purple chunky knit sweater over the top.
She’d completed the look with a floppy wide-brimmed hat.
By the end of the day, she’d managed to collect nearly a dozen pieces for the silent auction and had looked good doing it.
Nick knew how important the Colton fundraiser was to her.
She wasn’t comfortable with the idea of generational wealth and enjoyed employing her family’s holdings to bring attention to the Indigenous and/or female artists she’d dedicated her life to championing.
The money for the auction would filter back into the community, and the buzz the fundraiser would bring to Zephyr Gallery would benefit the artists she exhibited on a regular basis.
She grunted, clearly frustrated. He planted his hand against the wall, measuring the steps between his room and hers. “Need help?”
“Um…”
He waited. She’d been practically monosyllabic toward him after the visit to Ava and Chay’s place.
As much as he’d loved watching her interact with the artists on the rez, he’d wondered over the clear verbal distancing.
The quiet return journey to Dark Canyon had been markedly different than the ride away from it this morning, with their hands clasped and the radio at full blast.
“Yes,” came her hesitant reply.
He crossed the distance to her partially open door, parting it the rest of the way.
Across the room, she stood before a full-length mirror.
The chunky knit sweater puddled around her bare feet.
Her hat lay upside down on the bed with Rogue’s large bottom overflowing the hollow bowl in its center.
The cat flicked her tail irritably and narrowed her eyes on Nick as he froze in the doorway.
The sweater had been hiding the fact that the skirt was actually a dress—a sunny yellow sleeveless number that complemented the perfection of her warm copper skin.
His thoughts eddied, mind upending rapidly and emptying.
The zipper was caught near the line of her waist. He could track the small round knobs of her spine.
She held the bodice of the dress in place with her hands, eyeing him over one shoulder.
When she shrugged, the movement of one wing-shaped shoulder blade made his mouth dry completely.
“I can’t get it over my hips like this or over my head,” she pointed out, gesturing helplessly, “and I’m afraid to rip the back, because I just bought this dress last week and paid way too much for it.”
“It’s nice,” he said lamely, toes rooted to the floor.
She pivoted enough to get an angle on what was happening at the base of her spine in the mirror…enough for him to see that she’d shed the dress’s straps and the front of her shoulders and collarbone were bare, too.
His brain fried. It was the only excuse for the bolt of need that lit through him with all the devastation and intensity of a Saturn V rocket on the verge of implosion.
“The zipper’s teeth are caught in the fabric,” she noted. “Could you try prying it loose without tearing it?”
He spread his fingers on both hands apart and ignored the jarring protest from his injured one.
Suddenly, they felt ungainly. He didn’t know what to do with them any more than he had when he’d hit his first growth spurt in junior high.
Giving himself a good pep talk, he moved to her as she turned back to the mirror, gathering her long black tresses against the left curve of her slender neck.
Concentrate, Malone, he coached, tilting his head to get a better look at the culprit. The zipper had indeed tried to eat the dress’s yellow linen. “Hold still,” he said when she shifted on her feet.
The words came out rough, and she stilled.
He saw gooseflesh pebbling across the surface of her back and closed his eyes.
She was so beautiful. It wasn’t news to him.
He’d realized it in eighth grade after he’d invited her to his house.
They’d shut themselves in his room to work on a joint science fair project.
He’d had the ideas. She’d had the artistic flair to make it come together in an attention--getting fashion the judges couldn’t possibly ignore.
As they’d hunched over the trifold poster board on his floor, it had struck him.
She had struck him—the way her smile dug into one corner of her mouth, the way she tucked her hair behind the shell of one ear, the slightly wide set of her eyes and the effervescent laughter that always lurked there, waiting to bring someone a smile.
She was the most perfect human being he’d ever seen or imagined. With his comic book collection and his penchant for sci-fi, he’d imagined a lot.
His attraction had had him in a bind. He’d been dumbfounded, disillusioned and scared out of his gourd of her ever finding out.