Fix It Up: Torus Intercession Book Three, page 25
“What’s that?”
“I just wrote a song,” he told me excitedly, smoothing his hand up over my knee, parting my thighs so he could slide between them.
“How do you feel about that?” I asked him.
His hand slipped under my knee and down my thigh. “Could you come upstairs so I can talk to you alone?”
“Yeah, of course,” I answered, smiling at him.
“Nick,” Tatum said, and he turned to her, forcing a smile. “I could go in the kitchen and give you some privacy,” she offered.
“Oh,” Nick said, giving her a real smile then, “thank you.”
Once she left the room, he moved so he was facing me and then bent forward and kissed me, pressing me into the couch.
Pushing him back, I chuckled against his mouth. “Not your house, honey,” I reminded him, smiling. “You can’t come downstairs and attack me in the living room.”
“No, I know,” he agreed, sucking in a breath. “And that wasn’t—I’m just so happy and, it’s because of you, Loc, and I…I was scared.”
“What were you scared of?” I asked, trying to figure out what the threat could be.
“That I couldn’t write anymore,” he confessed. “I was telling everyone but you that I could do it whenever I wanted, and you, because I couldn’t lie to you, I wasn’t saying anything at all.”
“Oh.”
“I was so scared that I didn’t have it in me to write anymore. Like maybe talking about things and letting go of what hurt would take other things away too.”
“Like the pain was where your creativity came from?”
He nodded.
“And now what?”
His smile was warm as he stared at my mouth. “Now I know that the music isn’t going anywhere. It’s part of me, just like you.”
“The music is you, unlike me,” I corrected. “Whether I’m here or not, you’ll still be you.”
His gaze lifted and locked with mine. “I know,” he agreed. “I don’t need you to keep me on the straight and narrow or remind me who I am.”
I sighed deeply because he sounded so good, so healthy, and I’d helped him get there.
“I realize I don’t need you,” he said, leaning in close again.
It hurt to hear, and I could own that. There was something primal about being needed, about being the savior, about riding to the rescue that gave me a high I was guessing was as good as any drug. But seeing him able to stand on his own feet, that too was amazing. Nick was good now, and I could walk away and truly not worry. He would be all right when I left him. I’d been worrying about that since the day I first walked into his home.
“Loc.”
I realized I had left him there, in the present, and drifted forward to the future, one where I was gone, and his voice, husky and low, called me back to the now.
“Got your bags all packed in your head.”
It was true; it was useless to try and deny it.
He nodded and closed the space between us down to a sliver, his lips hovering over mine. “Here’s the rest of it, though, before you get a cab for the airport and leave me here.”
“Listen, I was upset last night, but we sorted that all out. I’m not gonna leave until we get back to––”
“I want you, Locryn Barnes,” he husked, and I heard the shaky breath he took. “It’s not a need, because it’s not basic; it’s big and wide and covers from right here, right now, to as far into the future as I can see.”
“Nick––”
“You and your heart…I’m keeping,” he murmured before he kissed me.
It was strange, because all his kisses were claiming and possessive, but this one felt different. It felt solid and weighted and…normal. As though this was how I’d always be kissed because I belonged to him, and him to me. When he eased back, his expression wasn’t heated, the kiss wasn’t sensual, more matter-of-fact, and he was squinting at me almost like he was irritated.
“What?” I groused at him.
“Yeah, you know what,” he grumbled, sitting up, leaning over to take a sip of his coffee. “I’m done being threatened.”
“Who’s threatening you?” I asked, trying to sit up, but my angle was awkward with how he was wedged between my legs, his right hand, the one not holding his coffee cup, stroking over my thigh.
“You,” he said flatly. “If you insist on going back to Chicago, that’s fine, but like I told you before, I’m going along, so good luck doing your whole fixer thing with me and my entourage and the paparazzi right there with you. I’m sure you’ll get a lot done.”
I shook my head.
“Oh yes, and if you just stop for a second, you’ll know this was a done deal the second you hugged me on that Saturday.”
“What’re you––”
“You comforted me,” he said with a sigh. “You took me in your arms and said you were there to help me and that you were on my side. I have never felt safer in my whole life than I did at that moment.”
“Yeah, but––”
“And it’s not gratitude, and I’m not making more of it than it was; it’s nothing other than you being the only one who could get through to me.”
It was the strangest thing, but I felt something changing at that very second. On that couch, in that ordinary room, with his golden-brown eyes on me, I suddenly felt like I wanted to go home, but home wasn’t where it had been. It was like my North Star had moved, and now home was with him. It could be in Chicago or in California, the where hardly mattered; it was the who that meant something.
“I’m sorry it took a bit to figure out that it was you all along.”
And I knew it too, the same thing, because I’d shared all those pieces of myself with him that no one else had ever seen, that no one else would have ever even guessed at.
“I love you,” he croaked out, and it was scary to say, especially when he wasn’t sure what reception his words would get. “So much, like, it’s crazy. I didn’t think I could, or would, because how can you love anyone if you don’t trust them?”
I stared into his eyes.
“But then came you, and boom—trust. You’re a safety net over my life; you stand between me and the world, not because it’s your job but because you love me right back.”
I exhaled deeply and opened the door to the reality that I was up to my eyeballs in love with Nick Madison.
“Don’t you,” he prodded me, grinning slowly, “Loc?”
There were a million arguments to be made to stay away from him.
“Love,” he rumbled.
He was young, his life was in flux, he needed time to find out who he really was before trying to add a lover into the mix.
“Baby,” he crooned, his eyes narrowing to slits as he stared at me. “I know who I am, and I know who I want. Have faith and jump.”
He had beaten his demons, and I respected that. He had worked hard, both physically and mentally, and I was proud of him. And now, from a place of strength, from a place of knowing himself, who he was as both a man and an artist, he chose me. Impossible to not fall for a man who was everything I ever wanted.
“You’re gonna get sick of me,” I told him. “Everybody does.”
“That’s because you do everything hard,” he said, chuckling, climbing over me, bending my knees, folding me in half so he could reach my lips and kiss me. “And for most people,” he said, leaning back, lifting his mouth from mine, “it’s too much. You’re too intense, too focused, too passionate. You hold back because you know if you trust someone with your whole heart that you’re going to be disappointed because no one ever stays. No one sticks around through how hard you love them.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“But not me, Loc,” he stated, kissing me again before pulling back. “I want it all. I want every drop of passion in you, and I’m not afraid to be loved as hard as you can, because it’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
The worst part of him saying all the right things was that I knew he meant them. They came from his heart. He loved me, and I knew that like I knew my own name, because it was there, on his face, in his eyes, every time I turned and looked at him. He’d see me and straighten up, like he was lifting toward the sun, and his face would infuse with light.
Christ.
“I want to wake up every morning and know I’m loved, and you’re the only one that will do,” he declared, and I heard the longing in his voice, the yearning, the pleading. “It was done the first day you hugged me.”
I stared at his face, into his eyes, and saw his brows lift slowly, and the goofiest grin I’d ever seen on the man. “I need to find a job. I’m not going to be some kind of freeloader in your life.”
“I know,” he gasped, his voice cracking as he started to shake. “I know.”
“And if it doesn’t work, I’ll return this ring and––”
“I called the store in Rome, and they put me in touch with the designer. He’s making me one, a smaller one, that can go on my left ring finger so the two of them, yours and mine, match.”
I scowled at him.
“They can’t be sized or changed, so that one is yours.”
My grunt was loud. “I see, so you get a brand-new one, and I’m stuck with––”
“My future,” he rasped, and there were tears as he kissed me, grinding his mouth down over mine, and I could feel his trembling joy.
I kissed him back, rolling him over, pressing him down onto the couch under me, and his moan was utterly decadent and submissive. When I lifted up, his eyes were wet, and I wiped away his tears.
“You’re mine?”
“Was there ever any question?”
“Yes,” he huffed out.
“Well, there’s not now.”
“The ring will be ready next week. I want to get married next to the creek at your mother’s house, with Sawyer and his wife, with Gwen and Efrem, and my band, and Rico, and whoever you want.”
“Okay,” I whispered, kissing under his ear.
“Okay,” he echoed, and then he kissed me again and wrapped his arms around my neck so tight that there was no way I could get away.
Not that I wanted to. Not anymore.
Sixteen
An hour later there was a knock at the front door, and when Gwen answered it, she was probably surprised to find people from the local bank there. Nick had scheduled them to come out to the house and speak to her and Efrem, a surprise he’d planned. We went to the kitchen to join them, and the three men had papers spread out in front of Nick’s aunt and uncle. The two people in question appeared shell-shocked.
“Here’s the thing,” Nick apprised them, taking a breath, looking pained. “I don’t know when I’m going to be back here.”
“What?” Gwen asked. “Sugar, we just got you back. I want to see you for Thanksgiving and Christmas and––”
“No,” he told her. “And that’s not to say that you’re not invited to our house, and I hope you come for the wedding that you’re going to be invited to, but I know you have a whole matriarch-of-the-family thing going on here, and I don’t want to disrupt that. If, however, you’re ever up for a vacation over the holidays, or any time at all, you just give me a call and you’re welcome to stay.”
The two of them were staring at him blankly, and he smiled kindly in return.
“But for right now, I’m not sure when I’ll see you again once I leave, so I wanted to thank you both for being so kind to me and opening your home to the madness that was yesterday and that will surely be again today, and for sitting with the film crew, and just being so wonderful, and—”
“We didn’t do it for thanks or—” Efrem began.
“No, I know,” Nick assured him. “Both of you think of me as part of your family, which I do as well, now, but still…if I can do something for you, I want to, and this,” he said, gesturing at the men in suits from the bank, “is something I can do.”
“What have you done?” Efrem asked breathlessly.
Nick turned to the assistant bank manager, who had made the trip up to the farm.
“Mr. and Mrs. Shelton,” the man sitting in the middle intoned, “Mr. Madison has paid off the mortgage on the farm, as well as purchased the parcel from the Duttons that you were in negotiations for, so now, as you wanted, your property extends to the river.”
Both Gwen and Efrem turned to Nick, and on their faces was absolute shock and awe. As I looked at them, I realized that that would be the part I would enjoy about having money, making dreams come true in an instant for people I cared about.
“It’s too much,” Gwen whispered after taking several breaths, clutching her heart as her mouth fell open.
“Nick, you—” Efrem gasped and stood, gripping the edge of the table. “You can’t just—it’s more than we could ever accept and…Nick.”
This was fun, and when Nick glanced at me, I waggled my eyebrows at him. The delight on his face was instant.
“Just sign, please,” Nick told them. “You’ll make me very happy, and really, it’s more for me anyway. This way I don’t have to feel guilty if you don’t see me again ’til next September.”
They just stared at him.
“It’s a payoff,” I told them, winking. “Let him off the hook, willya?”
They signed after that, because really, when someone gave you a gift of a lifetime, it made no sense to stand there and question your good fortune.
Efrem and Gwen were both smart people, so they didn’t make an announcement, and they decided not to even tell their kids until after Nick left. No one wanted the rock star to suddenly be inundated with requests for money. It was the right thing to do.
Nick had to do some taping with the Netflix crew, and they wanted him outside, walking in the meadow, bathed in sunlight, and it only got more frou-frou and artsy from there.
A couple hours later, I was on the porch, sitting with Efrem, contemplating calling my mother to tell her the news about me and Nick, even though, I was certain, she already knew, when I heard a familiar rumble and my head snapped up.
“Oh,” Efrem said, chuckling. “You’re one of those?”
“Sorry?” I asked distractedly, watching the bike go by.
“You’ve got it just as bad as Ferris.”
I was listening, or trying to. It was hard to focus when I got another look at the stunning motorcycle that had been driven by the front of the house moments ago and then vanished down the road to the right, only to suddenly reappear and turn into the yard across the street.
“Shall we?” Efrem offered with a grin.
I got up so fast that the porch swing I was on, flew back, hit the side of the house, and would have smacked the hell out of me if I hadn’t stepped out of the way.
“That’s a yes,” he teased me, giving me a tip of his head.
Keeping stride with Efrem, we walked across the street, and I was treated to the stunning sight of the bike up close.
“Efrem,” the man greeted Nick’s uncle cheerfully, and when we were close enough, the two men shook hands.
“Ferris,” Efrem replied, returning the warmth in the tone, clearly the two men were friends. “This is Locryn Barnes,” he said in introduction. “Loc, this is Ferris Beachem, the owner of that which you covet.”
Mr. Beachem snorted, and when I offered him my hand, he shook it firmly. “Do you covet my girl, son?”
“Yessir,” I assured him wholeheartedly, squatting down so I could take in the full majesty of the bike. “I certainly do.”
“And do you know what she is?”
“I do,” I breathed out, seriously awestruck. “She’s a 1999 Indian Chief Deluxe in what looks like mint condition.”
“Oh,” he said, his face breaking into a wide smile. “The man knows his bikes. Don’t drool on the paint, you hear?”
“No sir,” I said, rising after several minutes to meet his amused gaze. “Thank you for letting me see her up close.”
He nodded. “How long you been riding?”
“Twenty years,” I replied. “Got my first Kawasaki when I was fifteen. I worked all summer to get the money for it, and then I had to find parts.”
“Which one was it?” He was interested, I could tell.
“A 1975 Kawasaki H2 Mach IV,” I said proudly. “My four-gallon tank did not get me very far. I can’t tell you how many times I ended up pushing that bike.”
“But you loved it,” he said like he was sure I had.
“Of course,” I scoffed, “it was fast.”
“And what do you have now?”
“A Triumph Bonneville T120.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“Mine is,” I assured him, grinning. “And the heated garage I keep her in stays warmer than my apartment.”
“That’s because you have your priorities in order.”
“Yessir.”
He glanced at Efrem. “I like him.”
“Yes,” Efrem agreed, nodding. “So do I.”
“Well then,” Mr. Beachem, said gesturing at the bike. “G’head.”
I stood there like an idiot because I seriously thought he was screwing with me.
“No? You don’t want to take her for a spin before my buyer gets here?”
“You’re selling your bike?” I was horrified.
“No,” he told me, his face breaking into a wide smile. “I fix ’em up. Occasionally, I build from scratch, other times I find a frame and build on top of that, and then there’s times, like this one, where I do a lot of paintin’ and polishin’ and findin’ genuine parts to replace the trash that was passed off as such.”
“Well, you’ve done an amazing job. I’m sure your buyer will be ecstatic.”
“Thank you kindly,” he conceded, and then shrugged. “I won’t force you to take her for a ride, but I promise you it’s pretty damn smooth.”
“I would love to,” I almost whimpered, having missed riding my own bike all summer long. “May I have a passenger?”
“Certainly, you’ve got time.”
Seeing Nick in the distance down by the chestnut trees, on his way back to the house with the film crew after their scenic walkabout, I drove to where he was and waited on the side of the road, pleased that when he saw me, he ran.
“I just wrote a song,” he told me excitedly, smoothing his hand up over my knee, parting my thighs so he could slide between them.
“How do you feel about that?” I asked him.
His hand slipped under my knee and down my thigh. “Could you come upstairs so I can talk to you alone?”
“Yeah, of course,” I answered, smiling at him.
“Nick,” Tatum said, and he turned to her, forcing a smile. “I could go in the kitchen and give you some privacy,” she offered.
“Oh,” Nick said, giving her a real smile then, “thank you.”
Once she left the room, he moved so he was facing me and then bent forward and kissed me, pressing me into the couch.
Pushing him back, I chuckled against his mouth. “Not your house, honey,” I reminded him, smiling. “You can’t come downstairs and attack me in the living room.”
“No, I know,” he agreed, sucking in a breath. “And that wasn’t—I’m just so happy and, it’s because of you, Loc, and I…I was scared.”
“What were you scared of?” I asked, trying to figure out what the threat could be.
“That I couldn’t write anymore,” he confessed. “I was telling everyone but you that I could do it whenever I wanted, and you, because I couldn’t lie to you, I wasn’t saying anything at all.”
“Oh.”
“I was so scared that I didn’t have it in me to write anymore. Like maybe talking about things and letting go of what hurt would take other things away too.”
“Like the pain was where your creativity came from?”
He nodded.
“And now what?”
His smile was warm as he stared at my mouth. “Now I know that the music isn’t going anywhere. It’s part of me, just like you.”
“The music is you, unlike me,” I corrected. “Whether I’m here or not, you’ll still be you.”
His gaze lifted and locked with mine. “I know,” he agreed. “I don’t need you to keep me on the straight and narrow or remind me who I am.”
I sighed deeply because he sounded so good, so healthy, and I’d helped him get there.
“I realize I don’t need you,” he said, leaning in close again.
It hurt to hear, and I could own that. There was something primal about being needed, about being the savior, about riding to the rescue that gave me a high I was guessing was as good as any drug. But seeing him able to stand on his own feet, that too was amazing. Nick was good now, and I could walk away and truly not worry. He would be all right when I left him. I’d been worrying about that since the day I first walked into his home.
“Loc.”
I realized I had left him there, in the present, and drifted forward to the future, one where I was gone, and his voice, husky and low, called me back to the now.
“Got your bags all packed in your head.”
It was true; it was useless to try and deny it.
He nodded and closed the space between us down to a sliver, his lips hovering over mine. “Here’s the rest of it, though, before you get a cab for the airport and leave me here.”
“Listen, I was upset last night, but we sorted that all out. I’m not gonna leave until we get back to––”
“I want you, Locryn Barnes,” he husked, and I heard the shaky breath he took. “It’s not a need, because it’s not basic; it’s big and wide and covers from right here, right now, to as far into the future as I can see.”
“Nick––”
“You and your heart…I’m keeping,” he murmured before he kissed me.
It was strange, because all his kisses were claiming and possessive, but this one felt different. It felt solid and weighted and…normal. As though this was how I’d always be kissed because I belonged to him, and him to me. When he eased back, his expression wasn’t heated, the kiss wasn’t sensual, more matter-of-fact, and he was squinting at me almost like he was irritated.
“What?” I groused at him.
“Yeah, you know what,” he grumbled, sitting up, leaning over to take a sip of his coffee. “I’m done being threatened.”
“Who’s threatening you?” I asked, trying to sit up, but my angle was awkward with how he was wedged between my legs, his right hand, the one not holding his coffee cup, stroking over my thigh.
“You,” he said flatly. “If you insist on going back to Chicago, that’s fine, but like I told you before, I’m going along, so good luck doing your whole fixer thing with me and my entourage and the paparazzi right there with you. I’m sure you’ll get a lot done.”
I shook my head.
“Oh yes, and if you just stop for a second, you’ll know this was a done deal the second you hugged me on that Saturday.”
“What’re you––”
“You comforted me,” he said with a sigh. “You took me in your arms and said you were there to help me and that you were on my side. I have never felt safer in my whole life than I did at that moment.”
“Yeah, but––”
“And it’s not gratitude, and I’m not making more of it than it was; it’s nothing other than you being the only one who could get through to me.”
It was the strangest thing, but I felt something changing at that very second. On that couch, in that ordinary room, with his golden-brown eyes on me, I suddenly felt like I wanted to go home, but home wasn’t where it had been. It was like my North Star had moved, and now home was with him. It could be in Chicago or in California, the where hardly mattered; it was the who that meant something.
“I’m sorry it took a bit to figure out that it was you all along.”
And I knew it too, the same thing, because I’d shared all those pieces of myself with him that no one else had ever seen, that no one else would have ever even guessed at.
“I love you,” he croaked out, and it was scary to say, especially when he wasn’t sure what reception his words would get. “So much, like, it’s crazy. I didn’t think I could, or would, because how can you love anyone if you don’t trust them?”
I stared into his eyes.
“But then came you, and boom—trust. You’re a safety net over my life; you stand between me and the world, not because it’s your job but because you love me right back.”
I exhaled deeply and opened the door to the reality that I was up to my eyeballs in love with Nick Madison.
“Don’t you,” he prodded me, grinning slowly, “Loc?”
There were a million arguments to be made to stay away from him.
“Love,” he rumbled.
He was young, his life was in flux, he needed time to find out who he really was before trying to add a lover into the mix.
“Baby,” he crooned, his eyes narrowing to slits as he stared at me. “I know who I am, and I know who I want. Have faith and jump.”
He had beaten his demons, and I respected that. He had worked hard, both physically and mentally, and I was proud of him. And now, from a place of strength, from a place of knowing himself, who he was as both a man and an artist, he chose me. Impossible to not fall for a man who was everything I ever wanted.
“You’re gonna get sick of me,” I told him. “Everybody does.”
“That’s because you do everything hard,” he said, chuckling, climbing over me, bending my knees, folding me in half so he could reach my lips and kiss me. “And for most people,” he said, leaning back, lifting his mouth from mine, “it’s too much. You’re too intense, too focused, too passionate. You hold back because you know if you trust someone with your whole heart that you’re going to be disappointed because no one ever stays. No one sticks around through how hard you love them.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“But not me, Loc,” he stated, kissing me again before pulling back. “I want it all. I want every drop of passion in you, and I’m not afraid to be loved as hard as you can, because it’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
The worst part of him saying all the right things was that I knew he meant them. They came from his heart. He loved me, and I knew that like I knew my own name, because it was there, on his face, in his eyes, every time I turned and looked at him. He’d see me and straighten up, like he was lifting toward the sun, and his face would infuse with light.
Christ.
“I want to wake up every morning and know I’m loved, and you’re the only one that will do,” he declared, and I heard the longing in his voice, the yearning, the pleading. “It was done the first day you hugged me.”
I stared at his face, into his eyes, and saw his brows lift slowly, and the goofiest grin I’d ever seen on the man. “I need to find a job. I’m not going to be some kind of freeloader in your life.”
“I know,” he gasped, his voice cracking as he started to shake. “I know.”
“And if it doesn’t work, I’ll return this ring and––”
“I called the store in Rome, and they put me in touch with the designer. He’s making me one, a smaller one, that can go on my left ring finger so the two of them, yours and mine, match.”
I scowled at him.
“They can’t be sized or changed, so that one is yours.”
My grunt was loud. “I see, so you get a brand-new one, and I’m stuck with––”
“My future,” he rasped, and there were tears as he kissed me, grinding his mouth down over mine, and I could feel his trembling joy.
I kissed him back, rolling him over, pressing him down onto the couch under me, and his moan was utterly decadent and submissive. When I lifted up, his eyes were wet, and I wiped away his tears.
“You’re mine?”
“Was there ever any question?”
“Yes,” he huffed out.
“Well, there’s not now.”
“The ring will be ready next week. I want to get married next to the creek at your mother’s house, with Sawyer and his wife, with Gwen and Efrem, and my band, and Rico, and whoever you want.”
“Okay,” I whispered, kissing under his ear.
“Okay,” he echoed, and then he kissed me again and wrapped his arms around my neck so tight that there was no way I could get away.
Not that I wanted to. Not anymore.
Sixteen
An hour later there was a knock at the front door, and when Gwen answered it, she was probably surprised to find people from the local bank there. Nick had scheduled them to come out to the house and speak to her and Efrem, a surprise he’d planned. We went to the kitchen to join them, and the three men had papers spread out in front of Nick’s aunt and uncle. The two people in question appeared shell-shocked.
“Here’s the thing,” Nick apprised them, taking a breath, looking pained. “I don’t know when I’m going to be back here.”
“What?” Gwen asked. “Sugar, we just got you back. I want to see you for Thanksgiving and Christmas and––”
“No,” he told her. “And that’s not to say that you’re not invited to our house, and I hope you come for the wedding that you’re going to be invited to, but I know you have a whole matriarch-of-the-family thing going on here, and I don’t want to disrupt that. If, however, you’re ever up for a vacation over the holidays, or any time at all, you just give me a call and you’re welcome to stay.”
The two of them were staring at him blankly, and he smiled kindly in return.
“But for right now, I’m not sure when I’ll see you again once I leave, so I wanted to thank you both for being so kind to me and opening your home to the madness that was yesterday and that will surely be again today, and for sitting with the film crew, and just being so wonderful, and—”
“We didn’t do it for thanks or—” Efrem began.
“No, I know,” Nick assured him. “Both of you think of me as part of your family, which I do as well, now, but still…if I can do something for you, I want to, and this,” he said, gesturing at the men in suits from the bank, “is something I can do.”
“What have you done?” Efrem asked breathlessly.
Nick turned to the assistant bank manager, who had made the trip up to the farm.
“Mr. and Mrs. Shelton,” the man sitting in the middle intoned, “Mr. Madison has paid off the mortgage on the farm, as well as purchased the parcel from the Duttons that you were in negotiations for, so now, as you wanted, your property extends to the river.”
Both Gwen and Efrem turned to Nick, and on their faces was absolute shock and awe. As I looked at them, I realized that that would be the part I would enjoy about having money, making dreams come true in an instant for people I cared about.
“It’s too much,” Gwen whispered after taking several breaths, clutching her heart as her mouth fell open.
“Nick, you—” Efrem gasped and stood, gripping the edge of the table. “You can’t just—it’s more than we could ever accept and…Nick.”
This was fun, and when Nick glanced at me, I waggled my eyebrows at him. The delight on his face was instant.
“Just sign, please,” Nick told them. “You’ll make me very happy, and really, it’s more for me anyway. This way I don’t have to feel guilty if you don’t see me again ’til next September.”
They just stared at him.
“It’s a payoff,” I told them, winking. “Let him off the hook, willya?”
They signed after that, because really, when someone gave you a gift of a lifetime, it made no sense to stand there and question your good fortune.
Efrem and Gwen were both smart people, so they didn’t make an announcement, and they decided not to even tell their kids until after Nick left. No one wanted the rock star to suddenly be inundated with requests for money. It was the right thing to do.
Nick had to do some taping with the Netflix crew, and they wanted him outside, walking in the meadow, bathed in sunlight, and it only got more frou-frou and artsy from there.
A couple hours later, I was on the porch, sitting with Efrem, contemplating calling my mother to tell her the news about me and Nick, even though, I was certain, she already knew, when I heard a familiar rumble and my head snapped up.
“Oh,” Efrem said, chuckling. “You’re one of those?”
“Sorry?” I asked distractedly, watching the bike go by.
“You’ve got it just as bad as Ferris.”
I was listening, or trying to. It was hard to focus when I got another look at the stunning motorcycle that had been driven by the front of the house moments ago and then vanished down the road to the right, only to suddenly reappear and turn into the yard across the street.
“Shall we?” Efrem offered with a grin.
I got up so fast that the porch swing I was on, flew back, hit the side of the house, and would have smacked the hell out of me if I hadn’t stepped out of the way.
“That’s a yes,” he teased me, giving me a tip of his head.
Keeping stride with Efrem, we walked across the street, and I was treated to the stunning sight of the bike up close.
“Efrem,” the man greeted Nick’s uncle cheerfully, and when we were close enough, the two men shook hands.
“Ferris,” Efrem replied, returning the warmth in the tone, clearly the two men were friends. “This is Locryn Barnes,” he said in introduction. “Loc, this is Ferris Beachem, the owner of that which you covet.”
Mr. Beachem snorted, and when I offered him my hand, he shook it firmly. “Do you covet my girl, son?”
“Yessir,” I assured him wholeheartedly, squatting down so I could take in the full majesty of the bike. “I certainly do.”
“And do you know what she is?”
“I do,” I breathed out, seriously awestruck. “She’s a 1999 Indian Chief Deluxe in what looks like mint condition.”
“Oh,” he said, his face breaking into a wide smile. “The man knows his bikes. Don’t drool on the paint, you hear?”
“No sir,” I said, rising after several minutes to meet his amused gaze. “Thank you for letting me see her up close.”
He nodded. “How long you been riding?”
“Twenty years,” I replied. “Got my first Kawasaki when I was fifteen. I worked all summer to get the money for it, and then I had to find parts.”
“Which one was it?” He was interested, I could tell.
“A 1975 Kawasaki H2 Mach IV,” I said proudly. “My four-gallon tank did not get me very far. I can’t tell you how many times I ended up pushing that bike.”
“But you loved it,” he said like he was sure I had.
“Of course,” I scoffed, “it was fast.”
“And what do you have now?”
“A Triumph Bonneville T120.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
“Mine is,” I assured him, grinning. “And the heated garage I keep her in stays warmer than my apartment.”
“That’s because you have your priorities in order.”
“Yessir.”
He glanced at Efrem. “I like him.”
“Yes,” Efrem agreed, nodding. “So do I.”
“Well then,” Mr. Beachem, said gesturing at the bike. “G’head.”
I stood there like an idiot because I seriously thought he was screwing with me.
“No? You don’t want to take her for a spin before my buyer gets here?”
“You’re selling your bike?” I was horrified.
“No,” he told me, his face breaking into a wide smile. “I fix ’em up. Occasionally, I build from scratch, other times I find a frame and build on top of that, and then there’s times, like this one, where I do a lot of paintin’ and polishin’ and findin’ genuine parts to replace the trash that was passed off as such.”
“Well, you’ve done an amazing job. I’m sure your buyer will be ecstatic.”
“Thank you kindly,” he conceded, and then shrugged. “I won’t force you to take her for a ride, but I promise you it’s pretty damn smooth.”
“I would love to,” I almost whimpered, having missed riding my own bike all summer long. “May I have a passenger?”
“Certainly, you’ve got time.”
Seeing Nick in the distance down by the chestnut trees, on his way back to the house with the film crew after their scenic walkabout, I drove to where he was and waited on the side of the road, pleased that when he saw me, he ran.
