Don't Let Go

Morning? Really? I opened my mouth to say something back, but nothing came out, so I licked my lips and fidgeted with my robe like a crazy woman.

 

“Too early?” he asked, as if that were a normal thing to say to me as well.

 

A laugh-scoff-snort thing fell out of my mouth, which I chalked up to rounding out the perfect start to the day. I coughed and cleared my throat.

 

“No, I’m—just getting ready for work.” I stepped back so he could come in and held on to the door for dear life as I glared at Harley for just sitting there on the couch like a diva. Some guard dog. She should have had his leg chewed off by now. “Come in. There’s still coffee if you want some.” Oh, what the living hell was I babbling about?

 

Noah stepped in hesitantly, as if maybe he hadn’t thought things out that far. Maybe he expected me to slam the door or not be home or God only knows what. He gave me a sideways glance as he passed me, and I caught a subtle whiff of soap and shaving cream. I stared at the door as I closed it, as if it had betrayed me too, and then I turned on my heel and put myself in motion.

 

I walked straight past him to the open kitchen, trying not to really look at him. I knew he’d follow. He knew the way around my mother’s house. My house.

 

Harley’s curiosity finally got the better of her and she followed on his heels, making him turn around to check out the beast stalking him.

 

“Hey there, killer,” he said, holding out a hand for her to smell him, and then scratching her ears. “Are you nice?”

 

“That’s Harley,” I said. “I’m afraid growing up with two women has made her a big wuss.” I took a deep breath. “Coffee?” I asked again, opening a cabinet.

 

When he didn’t answer, I turned around, and felt my heart slam against my chest. He was standing on the other side of the big island from me, where I’d seen him so many times before. Except he was a man now. With something in his eyes that resembled lost.

 

“What?” I asked, though not much of the word came out.

 

Noah shook his head and his expression cleared a little. “Just weird being back here, I guess. In this kitchen.” He gestured with a small hand flick. “Seeing you here.”

 

“I know the feeling,” I said softly, turning back to grab a mug whether he wanted one or not.

 

“Linny told me you were living here again,” he said. “Sorry to hear about your mom.”

 

My hands shook as I poured the hot black liquid and turned to set his mug on the counter.

 

“Thanks,” I managed to push out. “Sugar and creamer are right there,” I said with a gesture.

 

“Black’s fine,” he said.

 

I nodded and headed into the living room for my cup. Shit, Jules, breathe. I planned to come back, but he followed me. Shit. The kitchen felt more stable. We could stand up in there. Have the island between us. The living room was cozy and said please sit and stay a while. Granted, I did have to go to work—in an hour and a half. Shit.

 

I licked my lips again and sat back down where I was earlier. Feet curled beneath me. Two pillows on my lap for security. I felt every centimeter of my nakedness under the robe and wished for more clothing, but it was big enough for him not to know that. I just thanked God for giving me the wisdom to get ready early and not be sitting here with wet hair or raccoon eyes. And then I mentally kicked myself for caring. He didn’t. I wondered if his woman knew he was paying me a visit. Or if she even knew who I was.

 

Noah took his time in the room, his eyes not missing a thing. That was different. The old Noah was open and carefree. This one was wary and overtly observant, taking in the changes as well as the familiar. I saw him take note of the photos of Becca on nearly every surface. Of the abstract art on the walls, and then stop in front of one that I wished he wouldn’t.

 

He had matured into an amazing-looking man, I noticed, not wanting to. Everything about his body was solid and powerful, like he took root wherever he stood. He looked comfortable in his own skin, like he could rock a tux as easily as the jeans and soft leather jacket and boots he currently had on. Not that I was picturing that at all.

 

“These are yours,” he said without turning.

 

I took a deep breath. “Yes.”

 

He nodded, still staring at the canvas. “I can tell. Do you sell them?” he asked, turning his head.

 

I chuckled. “No. Gave some away, but I’ve never tried to sell anything.”

 

His eyes narrowed. “Why not? You have a gift.”

 

The back of my neck prickled at the old topic. “Life doesn’t always care what our gifts are. I have Mom’s store to deal with.” My store. My store.

 

He looked at me a few seconds longer, as if processing that, and then turned back to the painting. When he finally sank onto the sofa across from me, his gaze landed on me like it had in the diner the day before. Heavy and purposeful. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of making me look away, so I lifted my chin, gripped my mug and focused on the heat searing my palm. That was good. Pain was distracting.

 

The only sound was that of the nearby clock on the table, and the screaming tension between us seemed to amplify it. He seemed to be weighing out his words, so before the agony of silence stretched out any further, I decided to cut to the point.

 

“How’ve you been, Noah?” I asked, my voice wavering on his name. It sounded so odd to say it out loud. To be talking to him after so many years. Even Ruthie and I rarely brought the subject up.

 

“I’m good,” he said. “It’s nice to be home.”

 

Home. “What drove that decision?” I asked, wondering where the words were coming from, because it certainly wasn’t me. There was nothing in me capable of thinking out coherent questions at that point.

 

His gaze dropped to his cup. “Just been on my mind since I retired—”

 

“Congratulations—on that, by the way,” I said.

 

He met my eyes again with a small smile that sent a tingle to my stomach. Damn it. I made a mental note not to bring about any more smiles. I didn’t need to see him that way. Think of him that way.

 

Harley rounded the corner of the sofa he was sitting on and hurtled her big body up there with him, to his surprise—and mine. He laughed and rubbed her neck as she rested her head on his leg. Traitor, I said in my mind, trying to shoot her mental ice daggers. She turned her face so that she couldn’t see me.

 

“Thanks,” he said. “And Dad’s getting old. Linny’s not gonna be able to do everything by herself when he can’t work in the diner anymore.”

 

“You’re gonna cook?” I asked.

 

He looked at me with something akin to playfulness, and I cursed myself again.

 

“I’m a damn good cook.”

 

I held my palms up in my version of playing back, but I was beginning to sweat under that robe. “Hey, you want to come back here to be a short-order cook, knock yourself out.”

 

He gave a small silent chuckle that didn’t really reach the rest of his face and shook his head almost imperceptibly. “I—have other irons in the fire, too.”

 

“Oh?” I asked. “What’s that?”

 

He paused. “Private security.”

 

“Ah.” Made sense. His background was perfect for that. Secret soldiers that morph out of water are a good choice for security. But I was running out of nods and agreements and small-talk questions. It was going to come around full circle shortly, and I decided to make it now. “Why’d you come over here, Noah?”

 

The question barely made it out of my mouth. In fact, the last words were little more than a whisper, but he knew what I said. The intense look came back. The one that felt like lead, making the room feel lighter in comparison. Instead of answering, he picked up a framed photograph from the side table next to him. One with a smiling Becca and smaller Harley posing in the backyard.

 

“Your daughter?” he asked, not looking up from the photo.

 

I felt my chin tremble and an unnamed old emptiness ached within me. “Yes.”

 

“She’s beautiful,” he said. “Looks a lot like you at that age.” His eyes made a slow trip to meet mine, and the weight of emotion in them pushed the air from the room. “Shayna’s pregnant,” he said. The words were slow and careful, as if he’d practiced saying them. “And I didn’t want you to hear that from anyone else.”

 

 

 

• • •

 

 

 

My ears rang with the words, and I felt myself nodding as if he’d just told me he’d bought a new Crock-Pot. Pregnant. Noah and his new woman. Going to have a baby. That—that was perfectly fine.

 

“Con—” I stopped to clear my throat of the rocks that apparently settled there. “Congratulations. That’s—wow, that’s—really cool.”

 

He looked at me for far too long, as if waiting for me to quit babbling and nodding and get to my meltdown. I wasn’t going to have a meltdown. I was a grown-up. And he had every right to have another child. I had. And it would have probably ripped his heart out if he’d been around to see me pregnant again, and married, raising a baby, so my chest threatening to cave in was completely justified.

 

I focused on the way his fingers worked methodically on Harley’s neck, massaging, making her eyelids get heavier and heavier. She was calm. I could be calm too.

 

“So you’re okay?” he asked, pulling my attention back to his face.

 

I scoffed. “Of course. How old is she?” As that fell out of my mouth, I realized how it sounded. “I mean, in relation to you,” I added quickly. “I mean, I only saw her for a second, but she looks really young. But—maybe that’s how they make them in Italy.” I laughed and was dimly aware that I sounded insane.

 

Noah chuckled, his eyes staying serious and focused on me. I knew without a doubt that I already hated that new trick of his. It was unnerving.

 

“She’s from Virginia,” he said.

 

“Oh,” I said. “I assumed—”

 

“She’s a military brat,” he said. “They were stationed overseas for several years when she was young, and Italy was her favorite place. After college, she went back.”

 

Well, of course. Doesn’t everyone?

 

“And she’s thirty,” he added. “In case you need to card her.”

 

I smirked. “Cute.”

 

He shrugged, a crooked grin working on one side of his mouth. “What can I say?”

 

Warmth went from the center of my chest to all extremities on that grin, and I promptly got to my feet and set my mug on the side table.

 

“Well, it sounds like everything’s going your way, Noah. I’m happy for you.”

 

I wanted him to go. I needed him to go. Before I could really sink my thoughts into what he’d told me, and before my mouth overloaded my brain. Because it was about to. I could feel it all up in my throat. He gently moved Harley’s head and rose as well, bringing him a little closer than I anticipated, and I backed up a step and crossed my arms as those eyes looked straight through to the core of me.

 

“It’s really good to see you, Jules,” he said softly. “You look good.”

 

I bit my bottom lip and dug a thumbnail into my arm. Dear God, he looked good, too. Even better up close. That voice that went with the eyes—and the body, even buffed out and different, was still the same. But my thoughts wouldn’t stop shoving their way to the surface.

 

“Why this month?” I blurted out, wishing for duct tape over my mouth. “Why now? You could have picked any other time of the year to come back home. March, April—July, even.”

 

For a moment, the comfort left his eyes, and I saw the stricken, hurt boy I’d seen him as last. My stomach tightened at the memory. He glanced over his shoulder at the painting and then back to me, and I had the irrational urge to wrap my arms around him and comfort him.

 

“Yes, I could have,” he said, the words barely more than a whisper. “But I didn’t.”

 

I thought of him sitting alone on the bench the night before and wondered if his perfect fiancée in red knew about it. Knew about us, knew the history she was moving into.

 

“I—” Movement to my left caught my attention, and I turned to see Patrick coming down the stairs in jeans and no shoes, buttoning his shirt. “Patrick!” I said, a nervous laugh escaping my throat as I realized I’d completely forgotten he was there. Oh, holy shit.

 

He stopped mid-step on the stairway when he saw us, an unsure smile on his face as he looked from me to Noah and back again. Harley jumped from the couch and met him halfway, big tail swinging, clearly thinking it was a party. I was able to register that Noah looked as if he’d been slapped, right before my brain went on panic mode.

 

“Patrick,” I said, backing up farther and mentally pulling myself back together. “This is Noah—Ryan. The—” I gestured with my hand as both men raised eyebrows at me. “The diner—?” I continued, praying for the rambling to stop. “That’s Noah’s dad. We grew up together. Me and Noah, not his dad.”

 

Patrick narrowed his eyes at me and my psychotic rant and chuckled as he made it down the stairs and across the room to shake Noah’s hand.

 

“Nice to meet you, man,” he said as they did the manly grip thing. “Patrick Keaton.”

 

Noah’s face had shut down. I had no way of reading what he was thinking. “Likewise.”

 

“Noah just retired from the Navy,” I added, feeling for some inane reason that I needed to fill space. “And Patrick runs a construction contracting company.”

 

Noah nodded and patted Patrick on the shoulder as he walked around him. “Again, good to meet you. Y’all have a good day,” he said, setting his mug on the nearest table and making a beeline for the door.

 

I followed him, my heart slamming loudly in my ears. “Um, Noah,” I said for absolutely no reason at all. Other than that things felt unfinished and I had the crazy guilty feelings of being caught cheating on someone. Which was truly nuts, considering I owed neither of them anything.

 

“Jules—” he said, turning to meet my eyes for a second. In that second, I saw the last traces of the kids we were and the intensity that had defined us. Then his expression cleared and he was the stoic adult again. “Thanks for the coffee.”

 

I watched him walk down the steps, take a pause at the bottom to glance back at the porch, and then disappear behind bushes that were in severe need of grooming.

 

“Old boyfriend?” Patrick asked, standing right behind me so close I jumped.

 

“It’s—” I blew out a breath and shut the door. “I told you, we grew up together.”

 

A laugh rumbled in his chest and I turned to face him and his beautiful eyes. The eyes that had originally seduced me at a pizza place, of all places, before they’d pulled me to a pitcher of beer, two ice cream cones, and sex on my living room floor. Everything about him was reckless and dangerous and not my game.

 

“You know what that tells me, beautiful?” he said while planting a kiss on my nose. “It says he was the first to spread those pretty—”

 

“Please don’t finish that sentence,” I said, putting two fingers against his lips.

 

He took my fingers into his mouth and nibbled them until I laughed and pulled them away. “So I’m right.”

 

“Don’t you have a site to go check on or something?” I said as he pulled me into his arms.

 

“Told you, there’s a delay,” he said. “I do have some research to do though if I can bum off your wireless.”

 

I raised an eyebrow. “You brought your laptop with you?”

 

He dropped some kisses on my lips and let go gently. “When you never get to go home, babe, everything lives in the car with you.”

 

As Patrick walked outside, I turned and walked the few steps to the nearest couch and gripped the back of it for grounding. My gaze fell on the painting across the room. The one Noah had zeroed in on like a bloodhound. A black and gray depiction of the park, the river, the bench. Our bench. A painting I’d done for my son, to mark his first Christmas, even though he’d never see it. One that even my mother had never known the inspiration for—but my only claim to a day I could never get back. I’d sat on that bench every day for weeks after Noah left, replaying the day, sketching and resketching the rough concept. Withdrawing into myself a little more. Praying he’d come back. But he didn’t. And after I finished the painting, I stopped going.

 

 

 

• • •

 

 

 

As I watched Patrick go through his quick morning routine, I realized I never thought much about his life before. I was trying desperately to now. I needed something to pull my thoughts away from Noah’s revelation, and Patrick was outstanding in that capacity. He was all about distraction.

 

And what an odd life that would be, running a contracting company. In order to stay in demand, his men had to be available to go anywhere, and so did he. He was always mobile, always on the move to the next job.

 

That worked for me.

 

Patrick was so outside my normal realm of anything, so free-spirited and daring, that having him around there in Copper Falls all the time—actually dating—would have been horrific. We would have never made it past the pizza. Well, yeah. We would have. That night was a weak moment on my part, but there definitely wouldn’t have been a second pizza.

 

I kept taking deep breaths as I got dressed, trying to find normal. It wasn’t anywhere near me.

 

“Come on, fool, get it together,” I said under my breath.

 

I pulled on a pair of worn soft jeans and my favorite soft fuzzy blue sweater. Not that it mattered that it matched my eyes perfectly or anything. Because it didn’t matter. I couldn’t care less whether Noah Ryan showed up in the vicinity of the diner or anything.

 

It was about comfort. I never wore jeans to work. I was adamant about professionalism. Not skirts like my mother always insisted on, but it was at least slacks.

 

Not today.

 

Today, moving up from my robe was a Herculean task.

 

Noah was back. He was engaged to be married. He’d come to my house. And his wife-to-be was having his baby. All this was within the same twenty-four hours. My carefully structured world was wiggling. To hell with wiggling, it was swinging around like a damn lasso.

 

I grabbed my keys from the bowl at the bottom of the stairs and then paused, remembering Patrick was still there. I leaned over to catch a glimpse of him sitting at the kitchen island with his laptop, eyebrows knitted together as he read.

 

“I have to go, you okay here?” I said. The shock of my own words tingled over me. Did I just give someone free reign of my house? What if Becca played hooky again and came home to find him there? “Um, I mean—”

 

Patrick looked up as I walked up behind him, a smirk tugging at one corner of his mouth.

 

“I’m done, beautiful. Don’t worry.”

 

“I wasn’t,” I said, attempting to cover with a savvy smile.

 

He closed up his computer and rose, brushing my lips with a soft kiss. “I know.” He winked at me. “Come on, let’s go kick this day in the ass.”

 

Nothing sounded better than that.

 

 

 

• • •

 

 

 

Knowing Ruthie would be at the store before me, lighting her ever-loving candles to get the place smelling good, I texted her that I would be late. I had a stop to make, two blocks from my house.

 

I pushed the doorbell button twice before remembering it was broken, and then knocked on the dark blood-red door as hard as my knuckles allowed. Two stamped envelopes were clipped with a clothespin to the old metal mailbox that hung by the door, with Nana Mae’s careful print written across them.

 

I heard Maddy, Nana Mae’s five-hundred-pound cat, purring at the door before her owner got there. She was the one to look at me with disdain when the door opened. Nana Mae looked at me with a surprised smile.

 

“Well, hell, Julianna, what brings you over here?” Nana Mae said, her wrinkles morphing into different patterns with her wide-spread smile. “I was going to stop by tonight on my walk. What’s the matter—the coffeepot broke?”

 

“Ha ha.”

 

“Laugh all you want, girly, you never come by this early,” she said, waving me in and nudging Maddy over with one slippered foot. She still had on her morning attire of a magenta and white floor-length velour robe, zipped up to the neck. Her long white hair wasn’t twisted up in its usual bone clips yet, but hung loose down her back. She looked older like that, more vulnerable than the cocky put-together woman she showed the world. “Don’t you have to open the store?”

 

I shrugged. “Ruthie’s there. I texted her.”

 

Nana Mae stopped mid-turn and narrowed her eyes at me. “What’s wrong? Are you sick?” She let her eyes peruse me from head to toe. “You have jeans on, Julianna.”

 

I blew out a breath and let a chuckle out with it as I shook my head.

 

“I’m fine.”

 

“You never go in late,” she said, not moving. “Is it Becca? Something happen with Becca?”

 

I laughed and linked arms with her, guiding us to the living room sofa. Maddy beat us there, sprawling across a good third of it and daring me to move her. I let Nana Mae do that. I knew she wouldn’t bite her. When she got settled, I curled up on one end with a pillow to hug like I was fifteen.

 

“Noah Ryan is home,” I said. “Came in yesterday.”

 

“Ah, hell,” she said, sagging a bit. “Well, that explains a little.”

 

“With a woman he’s engaged to,” I added. “And they’re pregnant.”

 

The hand that was stroking Maddy paused mid-hover.

 

“Holy shit,” she breathed. “Well, I’ll bet the old man is beside himself.”

 

“He was pretty happy.”

 

“You were there?” she said, resuming her Maddy love.

 

I nodded. “Becca and I had lunch—sort of—at the diner when Noah and his new Barbie doll walked in. Johnny Mack was yelling it to the crowd.”

 

That got me a look but she didn’t pursue it. I knew it was being catty, but I felt I deserved a few moments of it.

 

“So Becca—” Nana Mae began, looking down at Maddy with a frown creasing her forehead. “Sweetie, if he’s back—the way this town talks, it’s all going to stir back up again. I know you never told her, but you need to now.”

 

My mouth went dry. Another fuel to my impending nervous breakdown. “Yeah.”

 

“Better to hear it from you than from someone else,” she said, eyeing me sharply.

 

Noah’s words. Again. Everything haunting me kept coming back to Noah’s words.

 

“I wish Mom were here to take on some of it,” I said, picking at a broken thread on the seam of my jeans. “She’d make it sound right. Logical.”

 

“It was logical to her back then,” Nana Mae said softly. “You know she did what she thought was right for you.”

 

“I know,” I said.

 

“But parents make mistakes, too.”