Don't Let Go
Chapter 20

Noah’s gone.
 
The last time I heard those words they were coming from Ruthie, as she had burst into my bedroom breathlessly. She didn’t have a car yet and had run all the way from the diner. She flopped across my bed where I was curled up in hiding, and heaved like she’d been chased by rabid dogs.
 
I remember how my hand had gone straight to my belly at the sound of his name, it still being soft and mushy and not quite shrinking yet. Drawings littered the floor—my practice drawings for what would be the painting.
 
“He’s gone—like really gone,” she had said. “Moved to his Uncle Gerard’s in San Antonio and joined the Navy! Linny was crying about it.”
 
Linny didn’t cry back then. That made it real.
 
Everything went sideways after that.
 
Shayna standing in my living room looking like she’d just done a running of the bulls and lost, telling me those same words, made my throat close up.
 
“What do you mean, he’s gone?” I said, the words falling off my tongue like someone else was saying them. Echoing like déjà vu.
 
She held her hands over her face and sank onto the arm of the nearest couch. Near the rug. Too near the rug. It was sick that that was what spurred me into motion, but I rushed forward and guided her around to sit on the couch. Where neither of us could see the place where I’d nearly banged the father of her child. Although technically he was the father of my child, too.
 
“He left,” she said tearfully. “Sometime last night.”
 
“Last night?” I repeated. “No, he was with Seth last night.”
 
Why would he leave? His son was here, she was here, his baby was here. I’m here.
 
“After that,” she said, sobs making her breaths come in jerky little gasps. “When he finally came home. During the night sometime after we—I thought he’d gone to sleep.”
 
“Why finally?” I asked, knowing I sounded too interested but unable to stop. “What do you mean, finally?”
 
“I had to tell him,” she said. “I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
 
“Tell him what?” I asked.
 
“As soon as he left the house to get Seth, I knew,” she said. “I couldn’t wait. I called and called. Was going to tell him to come home early, but he wouldn’t pick up.”
 
“Love Shack.”
 
She was talking like a zombie. Like I wasn’t in the room and she was just unloading her burdens to the air. And it was a little bit freaky. Shayna was the most calm and together person I knew besides Ruthie. Or at least as much as I could tell in the week I’d known her. And she was unraveling in front of me.
 
“I knew it was a horrible time, but I just couldn’t—” Her voice trailed off.
 
“Couldn’t what, Shayna?” I asked, my patience waning. Becca was still swimming around the front of my mind, and my ice was already thin these days. It didn’t take much.
 
“I couldn’t keep up the lie anymore,” she said, whispering the words. “Not after seeing him and his son together. I had to—had to come clean.”
 
My skin tingled. She had my full attention now. I couldn’t ask another question, I just waited. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know anymore.
 
“The guy I told you about?” she said, looking at me for the first time since she’d arrived, her eyes red-rimmed and swollen. “That stalked me?”
 
“Yeah?”
 
“His name was Thomas,” she said in a whisper, as if someone might hear. “The baby is his.”
 
 
 
• • •
 
 
 
You reach a point where you think there can be no more surprises.
 
Shayna’s words pinged off the walls like they had nowhere to land. I shook my head.
 
“Don’t say that,” I said, my voice gone husky.
 
“It’s the truth,” she cried, her whole body crumpling.
 
The baby wasn’t Noah’s. Holy shit, that information should have been liberating. Those obligations that were anchoring him—fading away. But it wasn’t like that. It was—oh, dear God, that baby wasn’t Noah’s. And all I could think about was him hearing her say those words and the horror he had to have felt of seeing another child yanked away.
 
I hadn’t realized I’d sat until I found myself springing to my feet.
 
“Wh—why?” I asked, pacing and swiping at the tears that came unbidden. Oh, my God, Noah had to be devastated. And gone. “Where did he go, Shayna?”
 
“I don’t know,” she said.
 
“Did he take his truck?”
 
“No.”
 
Okay. That was good. He couldn’t leave the country on foot, at least. I wheeled around.
 
“Why would you do this?”
 
“I didn’t,” she said imploringly. “Not on purpose. We were already back together when I found out I was pregnant.” She shut her eyes and held her palms against her temples. “I thought it was his—God, I wanted it to be his. He—he was so happy.”
 
I could picture his joy. Hearing that news again. And not being seventeen and still in high school.
 
“He got down on one knee and proposed,” she said, looking down in front of her like he was there. “I wanted it, Jules. I wanted the fantasy.”
 
“You knew—”
 
“No, I didn’t,” she breathed. “Oh, I should have. I know that. But I wanted to forget about Thomas and his psycho mind games.” Sobs racked her body again. “I believed in me and Noah. I bought into the thought of our little family.”
 
I remembered believing in that once, too. So did Noah.
 
“Then I had my second appointment, and—” Shayna closed her eyes again, pushing new tears forward. “When they said how far along I was, I wanted to die. All I could think of was how could I take it all back now?”
 
“Pretty much like you did last night, I expect,” I said.
 
“And he was crushed!”
 
“Yes, Shayna,” I said, wanting to throttle her cute little neck. “He moved across the planet for this. For you. To raise his child around family. Told everyone he knows. Again,” I added, feeling sick.
 
“I thought it would work,” she said, the sobs stealing her breath. “He would love me again. We would be happy.” She took a deep breath and wiped at her face. “Then we came here.”
 
I shook my head. “Don’t do that. You can’t blame the town for this going south. You had to know it would come back somehow.”
 
Shayna met my eyes. “I’m not blaming anything. I’m just saying this was the beginning of the end, coming here.” She laughed bitterly. “We came here for a future together, but there is no future here. There’s only past.”
 
I looked down, knowing instinctively what that meant, and I couldn’t argue with it. She reached for my hand.
 
“I’m not dogging you for that,” she said softly. “I’m just saying—it is what it is. I thought that what we had was enough until we came here. I mean—he holds people at arm’s length, he always has. I assumed that’s just the way he was, but—then we came here. And there was a difference. He looks at me and sees the sweet love affair we’ve had. He looks at you and sees an entire life he’s missed.” She looked away. “You are everything to him, and I don’t think he even knew that until he saw you.” Her eyes fluttered. “He will never look at me that way, Jules. I could give him ten babies and it wouldn’t change anything.”
 
“I’m sorry,” I said, rooted to the floor. And I meant that. Regardless of what she’d done, no woman deserved to have to fight a losing battle for their own man.
 
“I know,” she said. “And I wanted to hate you,” she said on a teary chuckle. “I tried to. But God help me, I ended up really liking you.”
 
“I know the feeling,” I said, squeezing her hand back. Trouble crossed her features again, and it was time to move forward. “Shayna, what did he say?”
 
“Nothing,” she mouthed.
 
Oh, holy hell, that was bad.
 
“Did you tell him who it was?”
 
“He knew,” Shayna said. “And I don’t think it was even about that. All that mattered was that it wasn’t Noah.”
 
Emotion choked me, and my chest felt like someone was squeezing it. “Did he get mad?” I managed. “Cry? Yell?” Anything besides the stare of the dead that I’m sure she got a load of.
 
She closed her eyes for a few seconds. “He just—went away. Like he was still in the room, but only on a technicality.”
 
“And then he left?”
 
She shook her head. “He turned on the TV.”
 
“Oh, jeez.”
 
“He does that when he needs to zone out about something or unwind, so I let him be,” Shayna said. “I went to bed. Johnny Mack was already in his room. When I woke up at four this morning, he was gone.” She grabbed my hand again. “His phone is off and I’ve been looking for him since sunup. I didn’t know where else to go.”
 
I met her eyes and remembered her question when she’d arrived.
 
“You thought he’d come here.”
 
Her puffy eyes blinked and looked down. “I looked everywhere else first, but honestly I thought he’d be here.”
 
I shook my head and looked at my door. “If he’s feeling betrayed by women right now, I would be the last person he’d want to talk to.” I got up. “He’s not gonna walk forever. It’s chilly out there.”
 
“Please help me look for him,” she said.
 
“Shayna, I have to go to work. Ruthie can’t run my store indefinitely.”
 
Which was a lie. She could run it better than I ever could and was probably doing twice the sales already. But I did need to actually make a full day. Something I hadn’t done since Noah landed. And I would. Right after one little stop.
 
“Go home,” I said, holding out a hand. “When he wants to be found, he will be. I’m sure he has some steam to work off.”
 
 
 
• • •
 
 
 
My thoughts were racing as I parked in front of the store. There was no reason to hide around the corner anymore. Hell, he was the one hiding now.
 
My head said to walk straight to my door, go in, do my job, give Ruthie a very deserved earful to catch her up, and wait on the sidelines to hear how Shayna and Noah’s dilemma played out. That was my place, as her friend, as his friend, not to jump all up in the middle of things. It wasn’t for me to worry over where he disappeared to in the middle of the night. Or what their fights were about. Or whether or not he was in pain and feeling like he’d been sucker-punched in the gut. Again.
 
Shit.
 
I let my steps veer down the sidewalk to the left and let the sound and smells envelope me as I entered the diner. A quick glance around didn’t produce Noah but did give me Linny.
 
“Hey,” I said, approaching the counter as she went back behind it. “Is Noah here?” I asked quietly, my eyes automatically darting for signs of Johnny Mack. I knew from experience that he could be ready to pounce at any time, his recent mood improvement notwithstanding.
 
“No, and Dad’s in the back, so relax,” she said with a smirk. “Never seen him so happy, though. That Seth is a godsend. Did you have a good day with him yesterday?”
 
I smiled, and for a second everything in me warmed. “I did. He’s—he’s better than all my dreams made him out to be.”
 
Her eyes got a little misty. “I’m so glad. Noah seemed happy, too. I think he really needed this.
 
“Have you seen him this morning?” I asked.
 
Linny blinked and shook her head, narrowing her eyes a bit. “You okay, honey?”
 
“Yeah, I’m good,” I said. Probably a little too enthusiastically.
 
Linny put down a stack of menus she was carrying. “Jules, I know all this has had to be pretty crazy.” Her eyes went soft in her round face. “And by that, I don’t just mean Seth.”
 
I took a deep breath and let it out. “I know.”
 
“You and I never really talked about it,” she said. “It seemed like you wanted it that way, so I guess over the years—”
 
“It got easier to just pretend,” I said. “I know.”
 
“What a couple of stupid women we were,” she said.
 
I laughed. “You’re right. We need to remedy that.”
 
Linny tilted her head. “So in the spirit of that, how are you, now that the prodigal son has returned?”
 
There was that feeling again. Like an invisible vacuum was sucking the air from my lungs. All I could do was smile and hope it was believable.
 
“Every day is a new day.”
 
Linny chuckled. “If I see my moody brother, I’ll tell him you were looking for him—or no?”
 
I opened my mouth to say yes, then closed it. “Just tell him to go home,” I said. “Shayna is looking for him.”
 
 
 
• • •
 
 
 
Go to work. Those were the words I had for myself as I walked back outside. Where it started to drizzle. Just walk, I told myself. It’s right there—the door is right there. Ruthie will be so proud.
 
It wasn’t my business to worry about Noah. To think about his feelings or how hurt and angry he might be. We had an arrangement. Or I did.
 
And this is the thought that steeled me as I walked. Right off the curb, across the street, past the gazebo, and onto the path leading into the park. Where I knew with almost absolute certainty, if he was still in town and hadn’t hitched a ride back to Italy, that he would be.
 
The drizzle upped to a really steady sprinkle, and I cursed as I wrapped my jacket tighter and apologized to my hair. At least I’d had the good sense to wear jeans and loafers, but too much more wetness and I’d be jonesing for my boots. Not to mention an umbrella.
 
And then there he was.
 
I recalled Noah’s first day back in town when I’d come upon this very same sight. Him sitting on our bench, staring off in the distance and lost in his own thoughts. I’d been paralyzed with shock and flashbacks and had crept away like a mouse.
 
Amazing what could change in a week.
 
I slowed as I approached him, watching the droplets soak into the wood of the bench while they rolled off his leather jacket. That was fitting and matched his stony expression. Nothing reaching him. Nothing touching him. And my heart twisted in my chest. I wanted to cradle him in my arms and take the hurt away. Show him how to feel again.
 
Problem was, some of that hurt was on me. Shayna had just reactivated it.
 
He didn’t move when I sat beside him, and I realized it was exactly how we’d sat many years earlier. On another rainy day. I felt my phone buzz in my jacket pocket, but it could wait.
 
“I’m not good company right now, Jules,” he said.
 
“Well, good thing I didn’t come here to hang out then, huh?” His hand moved over his face and then his hair. “Shayna’s looking for you. Been out here all night?”
 
“No, I just—landed here eventually.” He let out a heavy sigh. “This is where things used to make sense.”
 
“I know.”
 
The silence felt loud as we watched the rain hit the water in front of us. How many times had we sat there just like that in our younger years? It was a happy place then.
 
I chanced a look at his profile, and he’d gone hard again. He hadn’t shaved and it made him look tired and fierce at the same time. Walls and chains went up and made his eyes cold blue stones in a face locked down tight. Untouchable and unbreakable. I had a feeling he’d made good use of that in his career.
 
The wet cold was doing a job on me, I could feel the shivers coming on and I pulled my jacket tighter.
 
“You should go, Jules, it’s cold,” he said, his voice tired.
 
“Coming with me?”
 
“No.”
 
“Then I’m good,” I said. I had no clue what I was doing, but suddenly I knew I wasn’t leaving him.
 
He sighed and wiped rain from his face. “This doesn’t involve you,” he said.
 
Yeah, that kind of stung and gave me a twitch, but I shook it off with the raindrops. “Doesn’t really matter what it involves, does it? I’m here supporting a friend.”
 
“Which friend?”
 
“What?”
 
“You here to plead Shayna’s case?” he said, still staring ahead.
 
I frowned. “No. But she wasn’t an evil troll in this either. Her heart was in the right place. She wanted to raise this child with you.”
 
He shook his head. “I have to figure out what I’m going to do.” His voice was toneless, emotionless.
 
“As in?”
 
“As in what the hell am I doing here?” he said. “I was an idiot for coming back to Copper Falls. I swore I never would.”
 
There was that twitch again. “Good to see this doesn’t involve me,” I said, unable to keep the snark out of my voice.
 
He inhaled slowly through his nose, as if trying to maintain control. “I told you I wasn’t good company right now,” he said tightly. “I’m not going to say the right things, so please just—”
 
“Go. Yeah, I know,” I said. “I heard you. I don’t care.” My phone went off again but I ignored it.
 
He shot me a sideways look, but at least it was a look. “Whatever,” he said, defeat in his tone.
 
“Look, I know this sucks, and I know it probably brings it all back—”
 
“You don’t know what it does,” he snapped.
 
“Then talk to me, damn it!” I yelled. “You said things made sense here. Then make sense of it. Tell me.”
 
“I don’t need to talk. I’m fine,” he said through his teeth.
 
“Oh, yeah, this is model behavior for fine,” I said. “Sitting out in the cold rain glaring at the river.”
 
“And what’s your excuse?” he shot back.
 
I love you.
 
The words drifted across my brain in neon purple and red letters before I could even register them and argue. Oh, no. No, no, no. My skin lit up with a million tiny fires. No, I couldn’t go there, but I had. And he saw it.
 
The look he gave me hit me to the core, pinning me down. I couldn’t move, couldn’t look away, was stuck there helplessly with rain bouncing off my nose and my mouth working and no sound coming out. I tried to suck back the emotion, to do his glaze-over trick, but it wasn’t working.
 
Then he did the miraculous. He blinked and looked away, releasing me from the spell, but also looking thrown and off balance. And slightly less robotic. Dear God, I’d found the switch. But at what cost.
 
His jaw muscles worked double time, and he probably wanted to snap my neck, but at least he looked more human as he did it. I realized that I was most likely far outside my element, but what the hell. Breaking rules and boundaries—wasn’t that what everyone was always after me to do?
 
“My first instinct was to get on the next plane back to Italy,” he said finally. My stomach burned at the words, but I kept my mouth shut. “Back to the life I know. Or to make some calls—I could have any government job I wanted. Anywhere.” He rubbed at his eyes. “And anywhere would be easier than here.”
 
My chest felt like a gorilla took residence there. “So, you’re leaving?”
 
Noah shook his head minutely. “I don’t know what I’m doing. All I know right now is that the last time I was and will ever be a father, I was sitting on this bench. All three of us were here.”
 
Tears burned the backs of my eyes, but it didn’t matter anymore. They’d just mix with the rain.
 
He looked at me. “That’s why you painted it.”
 
“At the time, it was just a way to preserve something my mother couldn’t take away,” I said. “She didn’t know about this.” My chin trembled. “This was ours.”
 
“It’s not meant to be for me,” he said, more to himself than to me. “The only shot I had is a grown man now—”
 
I got up and knelt in front of him, raking my wet hair back and leaning on his knees. It was physical and a risky gamble, but one he’d taken when I was crumbling out behind a bar.
 
“And that grown man is still your son,” I said. “You are his father. Maybe you don’t ever get the child part of the deal, but you get to know him.”
 
His eyes softened. “I know.”
 
“That’s a miracle.”
 
He nodded. “I know that, too.”
 
“And whether you want to hear it or not,” I continued. “Someone raised our son and loved him. You could do the same for this one.”
 
“It’s not the same situation.”
 
“I know it’s not,” I said. “I know you feel betrayed, but—” I pictured the words like on a chalkboard. Just read it, Jules. “You have a woman who loves you, who’s willing to follow you to the ends of the earth just to be with you. Crazy town, crazy father-in-law, secret children and ex-girlfriends all lurking everywhere.”
 
I finished with a smirk, trying to lighten things up, but the smolder in his eyes as he leaned forward only made my skin heat up. On the upside, he was looking at me. Fully looking at me.
 
On the downside, he was fully looking at me.
 
“Your ex is still in love with you, too,” he said, his face only inches from mine. “That enough for you?”
 
As all my breath left me, I was wishing for that glaze-over to come back. Maybe it wasn’t so bad. Definitely had a purpose. My phone buzzed for a third time. Someone really wanted me, something might be on fire somewhere, but I let it go.
 
Closing his eyes as if completely worn out, he leaned his forehead against mine. Every nerve ending in my body came to attention, and I could hear my breathing, feel my blood move.
 
“Feel that, Jules?” he said softly. “That rush? That draw? The electricity?”
 
What I felt was the breath from his words on my lips, and my extremities going numb as thunder rumbled in the distance. Protecting the heart again. Oh, if only something could.
 
“Electricity is dangerous,” I whispered, even as my lips moved upward all on their own. I couldn’t stop.
 
“Jules,” he breathed against my mouth.
 
“I’m sorry,” I said against his.
 
“I’m not.”
 
Heat burned my eyes as his mouth claimed mine, hungry, taking, pulling all he could from me as fast as I could give it. My body flipped on switches everywhere as the taste of him filled my senses again. Rain pounded harder, soaking us to the skin, but all I could feel were his hands fisting in my hair and the feel of his neck and face and head under my fingers. His whiskers were rough and scraping, but I pulled him in closer, tighter, needing to give as much as he needed to take.
 
Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled louder, closer. Thoughts flashed with it. We couldn’t do this. We couldn’t do this. He wasn’t free. And he might run again. And yet those words in my head had been real, and he’d seen it and they were there, reeling me in. My need for him balled up in my belly like a fireball, pushing its way up until I was trembling with it. Shaking as I held him and made love to his mouth, kissing him with all the passion I had, trying to give him the love I couldn’t say out loud.
 
But it wasn’t just me. As another round of thunder crashed around us, I realized he was shaky too. He pulled away from me with hot angry tears in his eyes and a growl in his throat.
 
“Fuck, how do you do this to me, Jules?” he said, angry frustration making his voice husky. “I don’t break like this. How do you always break me?”
 
I took his face in my hands again before I lost the ground I’d gained. “It doesn’t make you less, Noah,” I said, my voice trembling, my eyes burning. “It’s okay to hurt, to feel, to be angry. At me, at Shayna, your dad, my mom—whatever.”
 
“Getting mad doesn’t solve anything.”
 
“Sure it does!” I said. “It lets it out and makes you feel a hell of a lot better, and it’s better than run—” I stopped myself, knowing it could go very south very quickly. “It’s better than leaving.”
 
Even the wind blowing the rain sideways into our faces didn’t hide the deep-rooted stare he gave me.
 
“You were going to say running.”
 
Damn special ops people picked up on everything. “Whatever fits, babe,” I whispered. “But you have to figure out what’s right for you.” Damn it, his mouth was right there and I had the overwhelming urge to kiss him again. Before I’d never get to again. I dragged my gaze to his eyes instead, which wasn’t much better. “Just do me a favor,” I added.
 
“What?”
 
I swallowed hard against the words I couldn’t ignore. “Don’t leave without saying good-bye this time.”
 
He looked like I’d just punched his dog. My phone buzzed again, and I grabbed it for something to do so I could look away before I started to cry again. I hunched over it to protect it from the downpour, and saw it was Hayden. Great. At least he didn’t have his own ringtone. The other missed calls were from him as well, which put my nerves on alert.
 
“Hang on,” I said. “He doesn’t call me unless—Hello?”
 
“Where are you?” Hayden demanded through the phone.
 
I flinched as if he’d yelled in my face. “What the hell?”
 
Noah started to pull his hand away from mine, and I grabbed it, meeting his eyes. I didn’t want to let go. To lose that contact. It was as if he’d teleport back to some other part of the world if I did.
 
“I’m at the bookstore, where are you?” Hayden said.
 
“I’m—nearby,” I said. Across the street in the park, in the rain, making out with Noah. “Why are you at the store?”
 
“To find you because you wouldn’t answer your phone,” he said. “Is there a reason Becca’s out of school today? Exam exemptions or something?”
 
Doom that reminded me of my real life settled into my skin. Real life that didn’t include romance or man drama or old flames, but was more centered on homework and bad plumbing and utility bills. And Becca skipping school.
 
“Why?” I asked.
 
“Because I just saw her on the back of a motorcycle with some guy going down the highway.”