Donna Hayes
Antonella Cranston
We were back to square one, more or less.
CHAPTER 40
NOLAN
Erin Kealoha was precisely the type of person who made Alexa uncomfortable. Talkative, exuberant, tactile… The moment she arrived, she pulled Alexa into a hug, and Nolan stiffened along with his girl as she turned her head to the side and grimaced. Rusty—the hockey player turned chauffeur—offered a handshake.
“Good to meet you,” Nolan said.
“You too, buddy. Uh, Erin? You need to let her go.”
“What? Oh, the hug. You don’t like being hugged? I guess I should have thought of that, what with you being a hermit and everything.” She looked around. “Cool library, but why is everything so dusty?”
“I’m not a hermit.”
“But you live on the internet.”
“I’m a digital nomad. That’s different.”
“Did you ever see that movie with the robot and the AI supercomputer that tried to protect humanity by killing a bunch of people? That’s what I thought you were. The supercomputer, I mean, not the robot. Not that I thought you killed anyone.” She hesitated a second. “Probably? But Zach swore you were, like, a real person, so… Anyways, I thought you’d be taller.”
“Babe…” Rusty warned.
“Not really tall. But Zach said you were short, and I’m not exactly a giant myself, so I figured we’d be about the same size.”
Alexa was grinding her teeth, and Nolan wished he had a straitjacket. Or a gag. Or both. Ari had warned him that Erin could be a lot, but now he fully understood why Alexa had put off meeting her in person for so long. And Nolan? He wanted to lock himself in a room and hibernate until all of this was over.
For the third time, he felt his life unravelling.
The curse that had followed him since childhood was striking again, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.
But this time, things felt different. Not the wild freefall he’d experienced after his dad got arrested and again in Blackstone House, but more of a bungee jump. He was reaching the bottom of the elastic, and it was fifty-fifty whether the rope snapped or bounced him back up again.
The weirdest part? None of the other people who’d taken up residence in his home—Alexa, Jerry, Storm, Ari, Marcel, André, and now Erin and Rusty—seemed to consider this situation anything out of the ordinary.
Ari skidded in. “Sorry, sorry. Erin, let her go.”
Alexa finally managed to extricate herself. “Now that you’ve finished commenting on my height, do you think you could get some work done?”
“Shoes, right? I’m looking for shoes?”
Ari wrapped an arm around Erin’s shoulders and half guided, half pushed her out of the library. “Alexa got us access to a database that might help.”
Jerry had described Rusty as “a straight-up guy, surprisingly normal,” and he moved to follow Ari and Erin, then paused.
“So, you need a hand with any chores? I can stay till tomorrow, but then I have to get back to Fresno for training.”
Nolan opened his mouth to suggest Rusty ask Ari, but Alexa got in first, pointing at one of the remaining stacks of boxes.
“Those need to go somewhere else.”
“Sure,” Rusty said agreeably. “Where?”
“I literally don’t care. I just don’t like them in my eyeline.”
