I Want to Hold Your Hand Read Free

just endured.
    With her parents, grandfather, nine siblings and a litany of aunts, uncles and cousins living nearby there was always something going on around her. But at the end of the day, Hannah was alone in the big house where she’d once been happily married. She was thirty-five years old and had been a widow for one-fifth of her life, longer than she’d been married as of this upcoming seventh anniversary of Caleb’s death.
    It was probably time to start living again.
    “Try it now,” he said.
    Hannah turned the key and heard the welcome sound of her engine turning over. “Thank you so much.”
    “No problem.” He removed the jumper cables and let her hood drop before bending down to grab his coat off the ground.
    Hannah watched his every move, noting the way his navy blue work pants stretched across his taut backside as he bent over. The visual made her skin tingle with awareness—the kind of awareness she hadn’t experienced in a very long time, the kind of awareness that still had the power to frighten her. She opened the window.
    He paused outside her door on his way to the truck. “Drive safely and call me if you have any more trouble.”
    “I will. Send me the bill.”
    “Don’t be silly. There’s no bill, Hannah.”
    “Thank you for helping me.”
    He paused as if there was something else he wanted to say besides, “No problem.”
    He’d started to walk away when Hannah called out to him. “Nolan.”
    Turning back, he raised a brow. “Yeah?”
    She forced herself to say the words. “I’d like to spend some time together. Like you said. If that’s okay.”
    Judging by the flabbergasted look on his face, that was the last thing he’d expected her to say. “You would? Really?”
    Hannah nodded. “I’ll call you.”
    “I’ll be waiting.”

CHAPTER 2

Okay, I’ve decided . . . Caleb Guthrie is a bully. He pulls my braids on the playground every day and then runs away. All the boys laugh when he does it. I just want to punch him.
—From the diary of Hannah Abbott, age twelve
    N olan went on with his day as if the most momentous thing in the known universe—or at least his known universe—hadn’t just transpired in Hannah Guthrie’s driveway. Thank God for dead batteries , he thought as he returned to the garage and got busy dealing with the cars customers had dropped off for repairs that morning.
    He went through the rote motions of changing oil, replacing a timing belt and fielding calls from customers while trying not to think about Hannah and the hope she’d given him earlier. Since the night they’d danced and kissed, he’d berated himself at least a thousand times for moving too quickly, and then to hear that she’d liked kissing him and hadn’t wanted to stop . . .
    Holy hell , how was he supposed to function knowing that? And how was he supposed to cope with the overwhelming guilt that came with his feelings for Hannah? He carried that guilt with him all the time.
    Caleb Guthrie had been one of the best friends Nolan had ever had, and the pain of his loss was something Caleb’s unruly tribe of friends still carried with them all these years later. Caleb had been the sun around which the planets orbited. He’d been their fearless leader, and they were lost without him in so many ways.
    After living the life of an army brat with his officer father, Caleb arrived in Vermont at the start of seventh grade when his father finally buckled to pressure from his family and retired as a full colonel. The kids from tiny Butler, Vermont, hadn’t known what to make of Caleb, who had friends all over the world. They were his “Sultans,” as Caleb called them. He’d named his group of friends after the Dire Straits song “Sultans of Swing,” his dad’s favorite song, and he collected Sultans everywhere he lived.
    Becoming one of Caleb’s Sultans was a high honor, one none of them took lightly. It involved a foolish initiation ritual made up entirely by Caleb, who picked