Don't Let Go (12 page)

“I mean since he’s back,” he said, his eyes boring into mine.

“Who’s back?” Ruthie said, even though she instantly looked around, knowing exactly who the
who
was.

“It’s okay, Hayden,” I said, trying to make light of it. “We’re all grown-ups now.”

“Really?” he said with a smile that didn’t make it all the way up. “That’s why you go numb every time you see him?” He thumbed at the dance floor behind him. “You nearly landed on your face.”

“Let it rest, please?” I said softly. “Are you here by yourself?”

He looked at me one more moment, then shook his head. “With some buddies from work.”

I patted his arm. “Well, go hook back up with them. Trash your ex-wife for thinking she could still dance.”

When he finally left after ordering a beer, I sat down heavily. “Shit.”

“So, where is he?” Ruthie asked.

“Fucking everywhere,” I said, lifting my hair and fanning my neck. I pointed across the dance floor. “He’s on the other side.” I shut my eyes tight against the memory of his heated expression. What the hell was that about?

“I assume he has his woman with him?” she asked.

I gave her a look and gazed off in their general direction. I couldn’t see them through the wall of bodies between us, but knowing he was there made my skin tingle.

“Yes, and if I had to guess, I’d say she’s probably pretty ticked off right now,” I said, scooping up a loaded chip.

“Why?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know, he just looked so—”
What? Lost? Pissed?
“She caught him watching us.”

Ruthie’s eyebrows raised a little over her glass. “Watching you—dance?”

I opened my mouth, then closed it. “It sort of got a little cozy for one little second there.”

She set her glass down with a
thunk
. “With
Hayden
?”

“Don’t judge,” I said, grimacing. “It wasn’t anything like that, just—there for about two seconds, things probably looked a little blurry. It was stupid and we both laughed it off.”

“And Noah saw the blurry?”

“I’m assuming so,” I said, rubbing my temples. “By the murderous look on his face, I’d assume something—” I stopped and blew out a frustrated breath. “Why would he be bothered with that?”

“Maybe he wasn’t?” Ruthie offered, holding up a chip. “Maybe he and Preppy Girl Barbie had a fight and he’s pissed at her.”

I pointed at her. “They most likely did have an altercation earlier today.” I gave the quickie version of the gas station debacle earlier.

“Well, there you go,” she said. “If he was having murderous thoughts about you, that was probably why. So since he’s actually trained to do that, you might want to steer clear,” she said, giving me a cute smile and a head tilt.

I scrunched my nose at her in response and grabbed a jalapeño popper. “I can’t believe I’m eating this crap.”

“Neither can I,” she said. “You’ve been binging all week. Are you pregnant?”

I stopped mid-bite. “Do you even know how not funny that is?”

She giggled. “Sorry.”

I excused myself to go get some water at the bar. Everything from my shoulders up felt like it might ignite if I rubbed two hairs together. I wasn’t sure if it was stress, anxiety, or just an unfortunate hot flash, but I was pretty sure I could conjure up fire if I really put some thought into it. Plus, the margarita was getting too sweet for me, and our waitress seemed to only remember alcohol.

“In a glass or a bottle?” the bartender asked.

I glanced down at the giant bin of ice and fantasized about plunging my head into it.

“Glass with extra ice, please,” I said.

I felt him before anything else. Before sight or smell or words could come into play. I felt the pull of Noah Ryan at my right before he ever even spoke.

“Quite the little dancer you’ve become,” he said, the deep familiar voice unsettling me as it did every single time I’d heard it. He caught the bartender’s eye and held up his empty beer bottle and one finger. “And a Sprite with ice, please.” She smiled like her life depended on it, completely ditching my glass of ice to get his needs taken care of.

I smiled into the mirror behind the bar, finding it safer to look at him that way than the five inches between us.

“Not really,” I said. “Haven’t done that in years.”

“Where’d you learn that?”

I thumbed behind me as if that would clear things up. “Hayden, actually.”

Noah glanced behind us and looked at me, making me look him in the eye. “Hayden,” he echoed. My stomach went to war as a tiny flicker of humor passed through his blue eyes. “Is he another
not-a-someone
?”

I couldn’t help the smirk that tugged at my lips at his memory of my description of Patrick. I chuckled.

“No, he’s more like a used-to-be-someone.” The woman behind the bar came back with his beer and filled a glass with ice that wasn’t for me. “Hayden’s my ex-husband.”

Noah’s left cheek twitched. “
Ex
-husband?”

“Yes.” I drummed my fingers on the bar, wishing she’d hurry up with my glass of ice water.

“You dance like that with your ex?” Noah asked.

Like that.
I grimaced as I cursed the fact that he kept catching me with my pants down. Someone squeezed in at the bar on the other side of him, nudging him sideways into me. I felt the heat of his arm through his shirt and my gauzy one, and my mouth went even drier.

“It—wasn’t what you think,” I said, pointing to my glass emphatically as the woman came back with the sparkly Sprite. Hearing my words, I realized I’d said something very similar about Patrick. Wanting to change the subject, I said, “I’m sorry, by the way, about today at the pump. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to know.”

He shook his head. “It’s okay, it was my fault.”

“Hope you didn’t get in too much trouble,” I said, cutting another glance his way.

His face tightened a little and he handed the lady a ten and held up a hand to let her know to keep the change. “It’s all good, Jules.”

The woman grabbed my glass and stared at it as if she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do with it. “Ice please,” I said, reminding her. She jumped into motion, smiling at Noah, scooping one scoop of ice into the glass. “Extra?” I reiterated, and she huffed out a breath as if that just put her over the top.

He could have walked on, but he didn’t. He waited to walk with me. Why did he do that? I wanted to pour that whole glass on my head as I walked back to the table with Noah behind me. The look must have registered, because Ruthie clamped her lips together like she was ready to either laugh or beat him up. I reached for my chair to pull it out more but it moved out of my hand as Noah pulled it out for me. I paused and met Ruthie’s eyes, wishing he’d just go bring Shayna her damn Sprite and stay on the other side of the room.

“Ruthie,” he said as I sat and he passed behind me.

She smiled up at him with a smart-assed head tilt. “Noah.” She nodded at the glass and beer he held expertly in one hand. “No waitress on your side?”

His eyes flashed with the urge to spar with her. He picked up her drink and took a swallow straight from the glass, licking the salt from his lips as she shot him ice daggers with her glare.

“Nope.”

He set down the glass with an almost-smile and walked around the outskirts of the dance floor till he disappeared behind all the groping bodies.

“God, he’s such an ass,” Ruthie said, grabbing a napkin to wipe his cooties off her glass. “It’s like he’s still seventeen years old in an old man’s body.”

I chuckled in spite of myself, chewing on ice to cool off. “You think he looks like an old man?”

She gave me a look. “Hell, no, he looks like he was carved from stone. Which is amazing considering he left here looking like a pole.”

“I guess the Navy finds things that weren’t there before,” I said. “He was supposedly a badass.”

“Well, you just be careful,” she said, seriousness back in her tone.

I frowned, trying to pull her meaning. “Of—?”

“Noah.”

I started to protest, but then I took a deep breath and looked around. I knew what she was saying. “There’s nothing to worry about, Ruthie. We’re all adults now.” Hadn’t I just said that to Hayden? “And he’s settling in here with Shayna.” The words were rancid on my tongue.

“Mmm, yeah, I can see how settled he is,” she said, sarcasm lacing her tone. “And I’m willing to bet she can see it, too.”

Chapter 8

We’d had Patrick, Hayden, and Noah so far, and I felt better knowing there was no one else to crash our party. I was fresh out of exes—not that Patrick was an ex, although he probably qualified now. Ruthie’s husband was hours into zombies and I couldn’t see him dropping by the Grille.

Ruthie and I had gone out on the floor for a line dance I no more knew how to do than that last chip on my plate did. What I thought was a brilliant strategy of staying in the middle so that Noah wouldn’t see me didn’t really pan out. There weren’t enough of us out there for anyone to hide, and he zeroed in on me like white on rice.

Not as heavily as before. Just with his eyes, on and off, as he chatted with Shayna. Then he’d look away and give her his full attention. Of course, I might not have noticed it so much if I weren’t looking at him.

An old friend of Ruthie’s stopped her on the way back to our table, and I kept going. The relative aloneness at the table was nice—in a way. I could regroup and adjust. I saw a few people I could go say hello to, but I didn’t want to. My mind still reeled from the news about Becca, and the few times I saw Hayden he looked more and more irritated. My guess was that his liquid cure-all wasn’t working. Becca texted me twice with updates, one being a picture of the whole group of them. Two were boys, and I zoomed the photo up, studying them and sending them subliminal warnings. All I could think of was history repeating itself. It was not going to be a pleasant conversation with her, and every angle I thought up ended in a screaming fight.

A slow song came on, and as I glanced around to make sure Hayden wasn’t gunning for me, I got an eyeful of Noah and Shayna on the dance floor instead. Wrapped in each other’s arms, her head tilted back to smile up at him lovingly.

I was hit with a gut kick and a burn that set my whole chest on fire. I looked away and gulped down my third glass of water, refusing to watch that.
Look away, idiot. He’s not yours to get possessive over.

“Shit,” I muttered, turning back in spite of myself. They were laughing about something, and he tucked a stray piece of perfect hair behind her ear. “Okay,” I said, bolting to my feet, needing something to do.

I walked to the bar, my skin feeling like it had taken on a life of its own.

“Can I order food here?” I asked.

“Sure,” the lady said. “Do you need a menu?”

I shook my head. “Dessert—what’s the best you have?”

“The blackberry cobbler,” she said.

“That’ll work,” I said, nearly bouncing on my toes. I couldn’t be still. “Two of them, with ice cream.”

I showed her what table and made my way slowly back to it, taking in the view and understanding with a start what Noah’s expression had been about when he saw Hayden and me. Not that it made a bit of sense. We had nothing to be jealous about and no rights to each other—but at that one second I wanted Ruthie to come sit on me before I ended up yanking a pregnant woman out of his arms. I wrapped my arms around my middle as if that would ease the burn, but all that did was make me feel the trembling more. What the hell.

“Stop watching,” Ruthie’s voice said to my right as she perched back on her chair.

I jumped, startled, and twisted around to face her, feeling like an errant child. I grabbed a coaster and fanned myself with it.

“This is ridiculous,” I said, emotional laughter bubbling up that threatened to turn to tears. “What is this? I’m forty-three years old, not fourteen. Why am I reacting like an adolescent?”

“Because that’s where you left off,” she said. “You two never got to see each other as adults. Or with other people.”

I blew out a slow breath. “Well, this sucks.”

“We can go, Jules,” she said, chuckling. “We don’t have to stay here so you torture yourself all night.”

I shook my head. “No. You said not to let him run me away, and I’m not.” I held up my chin and smiled at her. “Besides, she’s pregnant, she’ll want to go home soon.”

Ruthie laughed. “Good point.”

“By the way, we have dessert coming.”

Noah being back in town was going to turn me into a hippopotamus.

An hour later when they were still there, my resolve began to wane. And as I left the ladies’ room for the fourth time after fifty glasses of water and three margaritas, another slam to the midsection hit me. Yes, Noah and Shayna were on the dance floor again, but they already had been. I was getting immune to that.

It was the song that started playing.

“Oh, holy hell.”

• • •

I was never one to go wiggy over a song with an old flame. Hayden and I had a song, and I quietly recognized it every time I heard it and that was that. I even kind of remembered that Noah and I had an actual song we’d danced to at a high school dance once, but that one never really registered with me.

The day our baby was born was crazy. It was drizzling and cold and confusing. We’d just had an argument at the park and when my water broke we lost our minds. The scrambling we did to get to the car in what then became a downpour was insane. To this day I remember thinking the sky was crying for us. For the decision I hadn’t completely made yet.

“Damn it, Linny’s tank is on fumes,” Noah said, pounding the steering wheel. “I meant to get gas before I picked you up.”

“We have time—I think,” I stuttered, trying to remember what I’d read in the book I’d checked out from the library. “No contractions yet.”

Noah’s right hand went to my belly, my rain-soaked T-shirt stretched across it. “I’ll get you there safe, Little Bit,” he said, his affectionate name for it making my eyes burn for the fortieth time that day. “We just need to get some gas first.”