Page 88 of So Steady

“Tabby. Paula.” He swore under his breath again.

“What? What do they say?”

She knew she should keep her voice down but she had a bad feeling, and being drip-fed bad news wasn’t helping.

“It looks like your ex called.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah and, uh…”

Noah’s face took on a strange pallor, as though his human colouring was being sucked out with a straw. He stared down at his phone as though he couldn’t believe his eyes.

“Noah?”

“We need to go,” he said, standing up. “Right now.”

One look at his eyes and she knew there was no question of staying. She’d be getting her crab to go after all. She stood up, thinking wildly of what could be wrong. “What happened? Is anyone hurt?”

“Yeah, Paula. My housemate. It’s a long fucking—look, let’s just go, okay?”

And he walked toward the register at the far end of the restaurant without another word, leaving Nicole in the dregs of what she’d thought would be a night to remember forever.

I’m pretty sure it will, a nervous Tabby told her.

Hold tight, Nix.

But for once the voice of her sisters wasn’t the slightest bit comforting.

Chapter 16

“Are you okay?”

He nodded curtly. “Yeah.”

Frustration licked its way up Nicole’s wrists. She didn’t want to be demanding, but they’d been in the car for twenty minutes. He’d smoked two cigarettes and said exactly nothing. She wanted to switch on her phone and calleveryone, but would have felt patronizing, like asking a child to read a picture book, getting impatient when they struggled with words and snatching it out of their hands so you could tellthemabout the rainbow fish. Still, she couldn’t wait forever.

“Noah,” she said in her best accountant voice. “What did the messages say?”

He shook his head. Not like he was saying no, but like he didn’t know where to start. He wasn’t speeding, but he was sitting right on the speed limit, his hand groping for his cigarettes.

“We can start small. Paula, your old housemate’s involved?”

“Yeah.”

“And Tabby and Sam met her?”

He stuck the smoke in his mouth and ignited. “Yup.”

God, she wasn’t seeing the connection on this one. “How and why is that a bad thing?”

“I don’t know how to get it out, Nikki. It’s a fuckin’ mess.”

“It’s okay.” She touched Noah’s thigh. He tensed then relaxed, or at least grew less stiff. She groped around for a change of subject. Something that would calm him down and reinforce the connection they had to one another. “You know how I didn’t like you calling me Nikki at first?”

“Yeah?”

“That’s because my mum used to call me Kitty. After she left, I made sure no one called me that anymore. I know ‘Nikki’ doesn’t exactly sound like ‘Kitty’, but it’s the same ballpark.”

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