Don't Let Go (17 page)

He didn’t, and the barrage of questions trailed behind me all the way to the break room, the swinging door bouncing in his wake. I whirled on him, adrenaline sending a new wave of hot tears over the edge.

“You’re not allowed back here,” I said, my voice shaking with anger.

“Deal with it,” he said, looking at me with exasperation. “What happened over there that’s got you so upset? Surely, Shayna didn’t—”

I laughed, a bitter sound I didn’t even recognize. “Are you kidding me? Shayna is like the nicest person on the planet. I didn’t think it was even possible to be that good.”

A tiny look of relief passed over his face. “What, then?” he demanded.

I scoffed, remembering the horrid words and trying to shove the burning sob down that wanted to split me in half.

She throws one kid away and never thinks of him again . . .

It won. A noise of pain escaped my throat, and I hissed in a breath to quell it.

“Ask your father,” I spit out, turning away.

I headed for the fridge, wanting to stick my head in the freezer, but the grip on my upper arm stopped me.

“I asked you,” he said roughly as he spun me around.

We both inhaled sharply as we landed together and found ourselves nearly nose to nose. I blinked tears free, bringing Noah’s face into perfect focus. His quickened breath felt warm on my face, and all the hard lines of his expression dissolved when he searched my eyes.

“Shit, Jules,” he said under his breath, so softly it was nearly inaudible.

One of his hands went to my face as if on autopilot, and I shut my eyes tight as the warmth of his hand against my cheek and hair nearly broke me. I could smell him, feel him, and I didn’t dare open my eyes to look at him. He’d see it.

“Noah, don’t,” I whispered through broken breaths. I reached up to pull his hand away, but then the other side of my head was cradled as well, and all my strength melted away. My grip on his hand stayed where it was, and I could feel the slight tremble. Or was that me?

I didn’t open my eyes until I felt his thumbs move across my cheeks, wiping away tears, and it hit me in the chest like a wrecking ball. He looked like someone had beaten the crap out of him from the inside. His eyelids were heavy, like a man who hadn’t slept in days. The turmoil radiating off of him was palpable.

 That, plus the feel of his hands in my hair, the closeness of his body, so close I could feel him breathe, it was almost too much. His eyes went to my mouth, and for a second it was like ropes were pulling us together. I could nearly taste him.

“What did he do?” Noah asked finally, halting the forward motion, his voice hoarse and strained.

I shook my head as much as I could inside his hold. I wasn’t going to pit him against his father, and I didn’t want another fight. “It’s my battle with him,” I said. “It has been for years. He just—” I stopped to pull it together as the burn jabbed at me again. “Crossed the line today.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to be.”

Everything in me wanted to wind my arms around him and pull him the rest of the way in, to feel his lips come down on mine, but I shoved that thought away. That was from a lifetime ago. The old us. Before a baby and parents and an ocean and two decades separated all that we were. I grasped his hands instead to pull away gently and backed up a half step, still holding on.

“We can’t help who our parents are,” I said.

A look that felt like an eternity passed between us, full of so many things I couldn’t read and yet couldn’t look away from. Then he slowly pulled his hands from mine, running them over his face and up through his hair as he walked around the tiny break room.

The moment was broken, but something had shifted. The walls that weren’t really walls but more of a respectful barrier had gone wiggly. From last night’s moment on the back patio to just seconds earlier, the push-pull thing between us had taken on a life of its own.

My feet had taken root in the cheap carpet when he touched me, but I refused to stand there like a stunned statue. I refused to let Noah see what he could still do to me. Forcing myself into motion, I made it to the fridge, swiping the tears from my too-warm face on the way. With shaking hands I grabbed two waters and held one out to him, thinking he might need the cold as much as I did.

He stopped by the sink and took it from me, leaning back against the counter and draining half of it in two swallows. He took a deep breath and crossed his arms, letting his gaze fall on me again like there were a thousand questions to ask. There weren’t. He looked like he felt safer over there, but the room wasn’t big enough for me to share that opinion. The mere six feet separating us seemed like two, and it was as if all the air had been sucked from the room.

“Why are you still here, in this store?” he asked finally, holding up his hands quickly. “And don’t take that wrong or get mad at me. It’s just a question.”

Just a question.
I was learning that nothing was that simple with him now. I wanted to ask him why
he
was still here in this store. Like, instead of next door with his woman.

“Why did you come back to Copper Falls?” I asked.

He narrowed his eyes and paused for a second. “Family.”

 “Ditto,” I said, tilting my head like Ruthie would. Like she would likely come in and do any minute after watching Noah follow me back there. “I’m here because my mother wanted me to take this on.”

He shook his head. “It’s different.”

“How?” I said, laughing. “Because it’s me and not you?”

“No, because I came back on my own,” he said quietly. “No one wrote up a map and a guidebook and demanded I follow it.”

I felt my jaw muscles tighten, my shoulders following close behind. That was good. Angry and closed off was better than emotional and wanting to dive under his clothes.

“Once upon a time, you were my best friend, Noah,” I said, keeping my voice low and nearly quiver-free. He blinked and pulled in a long breath, telling me I’d hit a nerve. “But you’ve been gone a long time. I don’t pretend to still know you like I used to. So don’t judge my life like you’ve been here to see it.”

There was another of those pensive looks of his, and I had to look away to keep from getting pinned to the floor again. I drained the last of my water and tossed the bottle in the trash, finger-combing my hair back. I needed to stay in that mode. No more damn tears, especially not in front of him.

“I’m not judging you, Jules,” he said. “Or I’m not meaning to come across that way.”

“Well, you’re failing, then.”

 He pushed off the counter and came to stand in front of me again, crossing his arms for a sense of distance. Or possibly to keep from touching me. “No disrespect to your mom, but she and I never saw eye to eye.”

“Really?”

“Really,” he said, his voice harder, rising to my bait. “She worked you like a puppet back then, and—” He breathed in and out as if weighing his words. “I guess I always hoped you’d get out from under her one day.”

I felt my chin tremble, but it wasn’t from sadness, it was from my blood boiling.

“She died,” I said through my teeth. “I’m not under
anyone
.”

He shook his head just slightly, his eyes boring into mine. “Twenty-six years and you’re still here doing her bidding. Running a store you wanted no part of, giving up on what made you—”

“How dare you,” I seethed, pushing forward, not caring how close that put me. “You come back here after all this time and dare to tell me where
I’ve
gone wrong. You told me last night that I didn’t know the life you’d lived, well right back at you, babe.” My voice quivered with anger this time, and I didn’t care. “Everything I’ve done since you left has been on me. Every choice, every path I’ve chosen has been alone. Even when I was married, I was alone in my own head. You think you had to go overseas to be alone with your pain?” I poked him in the chest. “I was in a whole damn town full of people and was completely by myself.”

He grabbed my hand when I poked him, eyes flaring. I got the feeling that people didn’t dare do that to him. Well, then he shouldn’t have come back, because I didn’t give a rat’s ass at that moment about his aggression or pride or who he was in that other world.

“What happened to art school?” he pushed.

“Jesus, why do you care?” I breathed. “And why do you remember that?”

He used my hand to pull me in to him, jaw muscles twitching. He looked intimidating, but I was too torqued to let him mess with my head like that. I held my chin up higher and glared right back at him, pushing back the turmoil I felt in my own core at being held tightly against him. That didn’t matter.

“I remember everything,” he whispered through his teeth.

“Well, if you were so damned concerned about where I’d land,” I said, pulling my hand free and pushing at him. It only pushed me back, instead. “Then what kept you on the other side of the world?”

The thin white scar above his lip twitched. My heart sped up as I realized what the new thing was about him that made me so crazy. The softer he looked and spoke, the higher his engine cranked, so that talking up close and personal felt like a lightning show.

“Maybe I couldn’t stand to see everything ripped apart,” he said. “It was easier to start over.”

“Easier,” I repeated, smiling. “How convenient for you.”

His blue eyes went dark. “Don’t go there.”

“Oh, you already did,” I said, moving back to lean against the counter where he’d previously been. I gripped the edges so he wouldn’t see my trembling. “You don’t have the market on self-righteous anger, Noah. I’ve got a little of that myself. You followed me in here, and you’re welcome to leave if it’s uncomfortable now. If it’s
easier
.”

I knew I was playing with fire, even as the words fell out of my mouth. I expected to see the rage I’d seen the night before. Maybe he’d come pin me to the counter and yell at me. Maybe he’d storm out and leave and not come back. He didn’t do either of those things.

Instead, his face went stony, and he took two slow steps in my direction before stopping and shoving his hands in the pockets of his jeans. It was an odd tack, and while initially bewildering, I saw the barely restrained energy pulsing through him. What was intended to be a casual stance of nonchalance was given away by the tightness in his shoulders and arms and a tiny twitch by his right eye. He focused on my mouth instead of my eyes and looked like he was ready to either chew me up or kiss me, and that thought was the one thing that did make my knees go weak.

“I’m listening,” he said slowly, robotically. He’d flipped a switch somewhere.

“I’m done,” I whispered. I truly had nothing left. Between Noah and his dad I felt like I’d just run ten miles in the sand with boots on.

His head moved almost imperceptibly, and just as he was about to speak the door opened slightly. Ruthie stood halfway in, one eyebrow raised in question as she looked from me to Noah and back again.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

He never turned around, never took his gaze off my face, and as I met his eyes I realized it might never be okay.

“It’s fine,” I said.

She nodded slowly and backed out, not looking entirely convinced. I wasn’t either. But I was too tired to do the leaving. He needed to go.

“Noah, it’s been a shitty morning and looks to be an equally dismal afternoon,” I said, rubbing at my face. “Can you just go?”

“Tell me about after I left,” he said in a low, toneless voice.

I wanted to scream.

“No.”

I pushed off the counter and made to walk past him, choosing to leave if he wouldn’t, but he reached across my middle to stop me, holding me at my waist.

“Please.” His face was still a mask, but his eyes looked different. Haunted, maybe.

“It doesn’t change anything, Noah,” I said, taking his hand off my waist but suddenly unable to let it go. It felt right, holding his hand, his arm, like in that one second we were who we used to know. It was disconcerting, and I averted my eyes. “It doesn’t change how you feel about me. You feel like I bailed, I feel like you did, and your dad thinks I’m the Antichrist. None of it matters now.” I squeezed his hand. “I may have signed those papers, but it’s not like I wanted to. And you left me to deal with the fallout of it all by myself, with a daily dose of your father to make damn sure I paid the price.”

I let go of him and went back to the fridge for another water bottle, not offering him one this time. Not even looking at him. I couldn’t get through even the summarized version if I did. I put the icy cold bottle on the back of my neck, closing my eyes as the cold chilled down my blood.

“My parents pretended it never happened,” I said, keeping my eyes shut. “No one talked about it, no one grieved with me but Ruthie. The days went by in my house as if he never exis—” I swallowed back tears, determined not to cry again. “Even when Becca came along years later, everyone acted as if it were the first time, even my mother. She gave me pregnancy tips like I’d never been there before.”

“Did Hayden know?”

The thickness of his voice, heavy with emotion, pulled me out of my reverie and I opened my eyes. His face was tight and his eyes reddened as if he were fighting tears himself.

“Yes.” I looked away and twisted the cap off my water. “He pulled me out of a self-destructive place and I loved him for that. I always told him the truth.”

“Which explains last night.”

I let out an exhausted breath. “Not really. He’s never acted like that. I’m sorry,” I said. “He just—” I swallowed hard against the guilt that always danced there. “I learned early on not to count on anyone but myself, and I guess he had too many years of being on the losing end of that.”

I took a deep breath and held my head up as I watched his expression change. He turned and walked slowly to the door, stopping before he reached it and putting his hands on his hips like he knew he needed to keep walking but couldn’t. My chest burned with that same need to stop him.

“I’m done with this, Noah,” I said to his back quietly, thankful he wasn’t looking at me. “I really don’t want to talk about it anymore. I’ve got my own problems, and you have a second chance at fatherhood sitting right next door.”