Nolan: Return to Signal Bend (Signal Bend)(12)

He set the box down at Lilli’s side. When he turned, he met Candy’s eyes and smiled. She had been a club girl, once upon a time, and Nolan had had quite the crush.

He wasn’t sure he would have been man enough to fall in love with a club girl, living with the knowledge that the woman he loved had been with so many of his brothers. He thought that might make him crazy. But Double A was in deep, and it didn’t seem to bother him. They had a baby girl together now, and they seemed happy as could be.

As Nolan came back out onto the sidewalk, Ian stood just outside the door. He was staring down the way, scowling, and Nolan followed his look. He saw his mom and Bart talking, just out of hearing range. It seemed normal to Nolan, though they stood pretty close together.

He got down to Ian’s level. “What’s up, Ian?”

The boy shrugged, bringing a reluctant shoulder up and then dropping it. “I don’t like my dad talking to her.”

Ian was only eight, but Nolan still felt defensive for his mom. “They’re just talking.”

“Everybody wants to be my mom. I just want my mom.”

Nolan knew that feeling intensely well. After Havoc had been killed, it seemed like every single one of the remaining Horde men had decided to step into his place. Len had been the most obnoxious about it. That guy had seemed always to be around exactly at the moment that Nolan most needed to be alone, when he’d thought he was closest to just losing his shit completely. It had pissed him off so much. But it had probably kept him alive.

Even to this day, ten years later, the older Horde slipped into Dad Mode with him—Len had done it just the other night, warning him off of Iris.

“They’re helping your dad, dude. And you. Not trying to be your mom. I promise.”

Ian scowled, and Nolan stood up and ruffled the boy’s blond head. He also knew that sometimes a kid just needed to be left alone to feel angry and hurt.

When Bart put his arms around Nolan’s mom and gave her a quick but sincere hug, Ian made a strangled kind of noise and stalked off to sit alone on a bench at the end of the boardwalk.

Feeling kicked by emotion himself and needing to get out of that scene, Nolan stepped off the boardwalk and decided to go check on the loading area, where the club van and three loaners were being filled with the packages wrapped and ready for delivery. They were rolling packages from the wrapping stations back in mail carts that Cox had borrowed from his uncle who worked at the main post office in Springfield.

Iris was back there with Badger, Isaac, and Gia, Isaac and Lilli’s daughter. Fuck. He hadn’t seen Iris since the other night. With an audience, he couldn’t exactly get into a big discussion about what had happened, however, so he went up to Badge and said, “Just checking in. Everything good back here?”

“Yeah, brother,” Badger answered, jumping down from inside the van. “Everything good up front?”

“Yeah. Donations are still coming in pretty steady. Everybody’s cool and in the Christmas spirit.”

“Hi, Nolan,” Gia said.

“Hey, G.”

He shifted his eyes to Iris and smiled, trying to say something just for her with that smile. He didn’t know what he was trying to tell her, though. Not to feel weird about the other night? That he wasn’t sorry that they’d kissed? Or was he trying to apologize to her for kissing her?

The cart was empty, and Isaac came around from the far side of the van. “Time for another load.”

“I’ll go for it,” Iris offered.

Isaac cocked an eyebrow at her. “You sure? Gets pretty heavy.”

“I’ll help her,” Nolan offered before he’d thought it through. “Everything’s rolling smooth up front. I can take a few minutes and grab a load.”

Isaac gave him a smirk and pushed the empty cart at Nolan. That smirk said that Len had a big f*cking mouth. Jesus, he hoped nobody had said anything to Show.

Nolan turned and pushed the cart toward the street. Iris trotted to keep up with him. When he realized that he was walking faster than she could normally, he slowed down.

At a relatively private point, along the side of the building and sheltered by a parked pickup, Iris pulled on his coat and stopped. He stopped, too, and turned to her.

“I just want to say that nothing needs to get weird about the other night. Don’t worry that I’m being all girly or anything and waiting for you to do it again or thinking it meant anything. It was nice, but wasn’t a big deal.”

He should have been relieved, and he guessed part of him was, but another part of him was a little hurt. Maybe it was just all that shit that being around Bart’s kids had dredged up. But honestly, these days, shit seemed always to be dredged up in his head.

“It wasn’t?”

Her eyes—they were pretty, a soft, sky blue, and she always wore a lot of dark liner around them, so they seemed to glow a little—narrowed at his question. “Was it a big deal to you?”

The obvious right answer was ‘no.’ Everything was simpler if that kiss had meant nothing. And it probably had. If it had meant anything, it had been too much about Ani to make him anything other than a complete shit. Iris was not Ani. She was nothing like Ani, and it was hardly fair to her for him to be thinking of his dead girlfriend while he was with her. If he was trying to fill an unfillable space because for some bizarre reason she had made him think of Ani, then he was both nuts and an *.