Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(42)

“Isaac, I’m sorry.” He shook his head, ready to move on, but she moved to stand in front of him. “Isaac.

My mother cut her wrists and bled out in her bathtub. I found her. I was ten.”

He looked down at her with a start. “God.” Something came over him in a jolt that he could not possibly define, and he grabbed her face and kissed her, fervently, his tongue probing deeply into her mouth. He felt her hands clutching his shirt as she kissed him back. When he pulled away, he searched her face for some kind of clue that she thought making out over their mothers’ suicides was inappropriate, but she simply looked well-kissed. Still, he muttered, “Sorry.”

“Don’t be. I get it.” She traced the length of the scar on his face.

He closed his eyes at the tender contact. “Never known anybody who does before. Nobody gets it.”

“I know. Why’d she do it?”

He shook his head again, hating to go to that place. Then he shrugged. “My father was a mean bastard.

Best answer I got. She didn’t leave a note. Yours?”

“No note from her, either. I don’t know much. My dad did a purge after she died. But from what I remember, and what I know now, I think she was bipolar. My most vivid memory of her is her body in the bathtub, and sitting in there with it waiting for somebody to find me, but I also remember that she used to take me ‘adventuring,’”—Lilli made the air quotes around the word—“her word for it was avventurandosi, and we’d end up in these crazy places with her freaking out because she didn’t speak very good English, and I had to talk to strangers to try to get back home. I’m guessing that was mania. It wasn’t a great time.”

She stopped and furrowed her brow. “Wow. I’ve literally never told that story to another human being, ever.”

Isaac felt the urge to kiss her again, but he tamped it down. “Jesus, Lilli. That’s intense.”

She laughed sadly. “Yeah. Just to get it out of the way, I’m an only child, and my dad died when I was 23. He was awesome.”

“Can I ask how old you are now?” He knew that was a question a lot of women hated.

She didn’t hesitate. “33. You?”

“39.”

She grinned. He loved her smile; her mouth was rosy and lovely, and her eyes lit up. “See, look at how much we’re learning. You said ‘was’ when you mentioned your dad. We both orphans?”

“Yeah. He died twelve years ago. Dropped his bike on an icy road and went under a truck. He was the MC president before me. He was Big Ike, and I was Little Ike until he died. That’s why I hate that f*cking name.”

“Did you live here with him?”

“Not since I was 18. I stayed at the clubhouse. Moved back in here after he died.”

“What about your sister?”

“Martha. Don’t know. She’s four years older than me. She left in the dark one night not long after my mom died, and no one’s heard from her since. I get why she left. My old man was already turning his meanness on her. But she left me behind.”

“Did he . . .” She didn’t finish, but she didn’t need to.

Isaac shrugged. “Some. Not so unusual in these parts. Got better when I grew to be a lot bigger than him. Stopped, for the most part, when I started prospecting.” He shook off the melancholy gloom that was beginning to settle on his shoulders. “Anyway, that’s the past. You said your mom’s English wasn’t good?”

Lilli smiled. “So my past is still in the present, I see. My mom was born and raised in Italy. My dad was born there, too, but he came over really young. They met when he was stationed in Europe—he was in the Army, too. Special Forces.”

“He was a badass, then. I see where you get it.” That pleased her, and Isaac was glad of it. But she’d made him curious. “Lilli, what languages do you speak?”

The pleased smiled he’d brought out disappeared, and she looked guarded again, as she contemplated him. Then, she sighed, as if resigned to her fate. She counted them off on her fingers. “English, Italian, French, Spanish, German, Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew.”

He laughed, loudly, and she looked at him like he was both crazy and rude. “Sorry. It’s just—I don’t get intimidated often, but that did it. How f*cking smart are you?”

“Pretty f*cking smart, but that’s beside the point. I was raised bilingual. It makes picking up new languages ridiculously easy. No need to be intimidated.” Now she wore a sly grin. “Not by that, anyway.”

Okay, now he needed to show her that there was something he could do, too. He took her hand. “Come with me. Get your boots on. I want to show you something.”

When she was appropriately shod, he led her out to the largest outbuilding and unlocked the door. She practically shrieked.

“Hah! You locked it!”

Laughing, he said, “Easy, there, Sport. This I lock. The house, I don’t.” He opened the door, and the strong aroma of wood shavings billowed out on the late morning breeze. It was his favorite smell. Well, second favorite now, supplanted by the natural scent of the woman standing with him. He let her go in first, and she stood just inside the doorway and gaped.

“Isaac, what?” She was taking in what he’d spent most of his life building up. Saws and planes and a massive lathe, chisels and files and rasps, stain and varnish and brushes and wood. A huge work table in the center of the room. All of it neatly organized. He thought this big room was beautiful. He could live in it.