Don't Let Go (19 page)

But being about to break up—again—that was a whole new head spin.

“No, I should just go,” she said, looking back toward the parking lot, her eyes looking troubled again. Probably that woman code slapping her in the face.

“Come on,” I said, guiding her in. I pointed at a group of couches and chairs in a far corner. “Let me go turn these in and I’ll meet you over there.”

“Mom, what are you doing here?” said a voice behind me.

I wheeled around and handed Becca the heavy box. “Hey, Bec, help me out a second.”

“This is your daughter?” Shayna asked, swiping quickly at her eyes.

I smiled. “Yes, this is Becca.” I put my arm around her neck and squeezed her in a hug that I hoped she was smiling for and not looking tortured. “Bec, this is Shayna Baird. She’s—” How to explain? Becca didn’t even know Noah. “She’s Johnny Mack’s son’s fiancée.”

Shayna chuckled and shook Becca’s free hand, and I was proud of myself for not choking on the word.

“Nice to meet you,” Becca said, very polite. “I didn’t know Johnny Mack had a son. Thought it was just Linny.”

I saw Shayna’s eyes dart to me for a split second and then she did her practiced smile. “He’s like the prodigal son returning.”

Becca laughed and then gestured at the box on her hip. “Reason?”

“Bring that up to the counter for me, please,” I said. “Those are donations from the store. Why are you here, by the way?”

“Lizzy had a book on hold for a project and I said I’d meet her here before we go to the mall,” she said, just as the blonde and perpetually cute Lizzy walked up.

“You’re going to the mall?”

“I texted you all this.” At my questioning look, she rolled her eyes. “Okay, I was going to text you all this. I forgot.”

“Who’s going?” I asked, still fixated on the image of her hooking up with the mystery Mark.

“Me and Lizzy,” she said slowly, with the tinge of last night’s argument still blanketing her as well. “There’s a shoe sale at Epic, can I have some money?”

“No!” I said. “You just got three new pairs of shoes and a pair of boots at Christmas.”

“Then I’ll buy some boots for you and we can share,” she said, cheesy smile in place as she looked hopeful.

“Right, like I’m gonna want to wear your boots,” I said. I pulled three twenties from an inner pocket of my purse. “Consider it toward your birthday.”

“Hey, Ms. White,” Lizzy said with a sweet smile.

“Hi, Lizzy, good to see you,” I said. “Shop smart, Becca.”

“Sixty dollars? That’s all?” she said, eyeing the bills with dismay.

I scoffed. “If you need more than that for shoes, it’s not a sale, Bec. Make it work.”

“Don’t argue,” Lizzy whispered.

“Fine,” she said, hugging me briefly. “Oh, by the way, they invited me over for a big barbecue thing later, that okay?”

Of course they did.

“That’s fine,” I said as she turned to make a beeline for the counter with my box. “And be careful leaving the parking lot since you parked—”

“In the pit of hell, I know,” she said, waving as she kept walking. “I will.”

I took a deep breath, watching them walk away, Becca’s dark shiny lopsided hair swinging over a baggy hoodie jacket and jeans she could have painted on.

“Can’t wait,” Shayna said with a smirk.

I chuckled and shook my head. “Yeah. Luckily they start out sweet and unable to talk so you can fall in love with them before you get that.” I pointed in her direction. Shayna laughed out loud, some happiness coming back into her face. “Let me go get the receipt for this and I’ll meet you over there.”

When I rejoined her in the corner, she had her game face back on, and I wondered if she’d had a chance to dial it back and change her mind. I would if it were me.

“She’s beautiful, Jules. Stunning, actually.”

That warmed my heart. “Thank you,” I said, sinking onto a couch sideways to face her. I had the oddest sense of a repeat performance since I’d just talked to Becca the same way the night before. Hopefully the outcome would be better. “She has the potential—if she keeps her mouth closed.”

“I can imagine it isn’t easy being a single mom,” she said, leaning an elbow on the back of the couch.

“It’s not, but Hayden helps. When she lets him,” I added. “She’s making us both crazy right now.”

“I remember feeling so under my dad’s thumb,” Shayna said. “I’d do anything just to give him a shock. One time I came home with a nose ring and a dog collar necklace.”

“Holy shit.”

She snickered. “I know, it was hideous, but I was just trying to spread myself out a little. Once he let up, I wasn’t interested in the weird stuff anymore.” She hesitated a beat and tilted her head. “Your daughter doesn’t know, does she? About Noah and—everything?”

Everything.
I shook my head. “There hasn’t been a reason for her to know. It was all before her time.”

“And the longer time goes on, it’s harder to do,” she said, her voice going softer at the end. Guilt settled in my belly, but there was something else there in her tone. Something that maybe wasn’t about me.

Shayna picked at a perfect fingernail that didn’t need picking, but I knew it was so she wouldn’t have to look me in the eye as the real conversation came up to queue.

“It was really good in the beginning with me and Noah,” she said, and I dug my not-so-perfect fingernails into my palm. “Of course, it always is. And it was for a long time. I think it was after I moved in with him that things started going south.”

I remembered the same thing with Hayden. “Moving in changes a lot of couples,” I offered, feeling a little like a therapist on a clock. “Nothing to hide behind anymore.”

“Exactly,” she said. “He’d—I don’t know—he’d get in these moods.”

“Moods?”

“He wasn’t active in the field anymore, but he was still in top secret clearance and the man leaves nothing at the office,” she said. “Every funk that went down there with any of the teams would be all over him for days, and when that was over there would be nightmares.”

“Reliving,” I said.

“Yes.” She scooped her hair back and let it fall. “But all that was okay.” She looked up and met my gaze. “I was in love. I would put up with anything.”

I swallowed hard and nodded. “So what happened?”

She looked back at her fingers. “He couldn’t commit. Couldn’t say the words. I wasn’t in it for a casual roommate, I wanted the whole show. Love, marriage, family. So we broke up and I left.”

“Understandable.”

“Oh, but I was miserable,” she said on a chuckle. “I couldn’t stand it without him. I started going out with anyone who would ask me just to stay busy. I had no filter, it was—bad. One guy wouldn’t give up when I called it off, and started stalking me.”

“Oh, my God!”

“Yeah, I was so stupid,” she said. “If I would have been thinking right, I wouldn’t have started up with him in the first place.”

“So, what happened?” I asked.

“Noah heard about it from a cop friend of ours that I’d reported it to, and he tracked the guy down.” At my apparent questioning look, she added, “It’s different in Italy, Jules. A lot of things go beyond the police.”

I blinked. “Are you saying—”

“I’m saying I have no idea,” she said quietly. “Noah has connections everywhere, Jules, and in that world a phone call solves a problem in a second.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what happened and I knew not to ask, but the guy never showed up at my door again.”

I rubbed my arms as the goose bumps traveled up and down. It was a side of Noah I never knew about. The dark side he learned on the other side of the world and kept hidden behind those very guarded eyes.

“We ended up deciding to give it another shot after that,” she said, looking off at nothing in particular, something worrying her expression. “He retired, so I moved back in, thinking things might be different. We tried, but—”

She shook her head, still looking off, and I felt her pain.

“And then you found out you were pregnant,” I said, keeping my voice soft.

She nodded. “He was so happy,” she said on a whisper, tears filling her eyes. “I know he loves me, but it never felt like it was enough. He was always so haunted by not knowing his son, I think it’s honestly the only thing that could ever fill that hole in his heart.”

My chest felt like it would cave in with her words, and I swallowed hard against the burn that wanted out.

She blinked her tears free and swiped at her cheeks, then rested a hand against her stomach. “I felt like this baby could be our saving grace,” she said. “Like everything happens for a reason.”

Oh, God, she believed that. That holding him with a child would work. I shut my eyes against the sick irony of it all. He left one woman for giving a family away and was trapped with another woman to keep one.

“I just want to give him that,” she said, wiping her cheeks free and trying to blink back the rest. “That zoned-out look he gets when he looks at all those pictures. I want him to have what he missed.”

I was still breathing through all that she’d told me when something didn’t sound right. I went back a few beats and dug till—

“What pictures?” I asked.

“Of his son,” she said, as if that were clear.

It wasn’t.

I narrowed my eyes and smiled, sure that I had misunderstood. “What pictures are you talking about?”

She frowned, like I wasn’t talking sense. “He had all those pictures his dad sent through the years framed and taking over a side table like a shrine.”

“Pict—there are pictures?” I said, feeling the words leave my mouth but not really hearing them.

Her frown deepened from confusion to concern. “Jules, why don’t you know this?”

There was an odd ringing in my ears, and my fingers felt numb, most likely from the lack of breathing on my part.

Noah had photos of our son.
Noah had photos of our son.
“I don’t know,” I said, getting to my feet. “I have to go.”

Chapter 12

I had no memory of leaving Katyville or coming down the highway. It was like I woke up in front of the diner, having gotten there on autopilot. My eyes were hot and dry, like I had used all the liquid up and I was just going to fry from within.

My heart was thundering in my chest and in my ears.
He had all those pictures his dad sent through the years framed and taking over a side table like a shrine.

How was it possible? How did his dad get them? How could he?

I could go ask the source, I thought, glaring through the diner window all decorated in shoe polish snowflakes. Linny’s contribution. And I would, but Noah was first. He never said a word about photos, and I was driven to find out why and see them for myself. It was a physical ache pulling me to Johnny Mack’s house.

Shayna was probably right on my tail, or burning up Noah’s phone, but I didn’t care. She could watch me rip Noah a new one and then follow me to the diner to get to the truth.

I skidded into Johnny Mack’s driveway and had a foot outside before the key was even turned off. I poked at the doorbell three times, then three more for good measure. I’d just started rapping on the wood with my knuckles when the door swung open.

Damn it if he couldn’t make me pull in an extra breath, even as pissed off and crazed as I was. Standing there fresh from a shower, barefoot, in gray sweatpants and an old faded Navy T-shirt, his frown turned wary as he saw my face.

“Jules, what are you—”

“Where are they?” I asked.

The frown came back. “Where are—what?”

“The pictures of him,” I spat, walking in uninvited and pushing past him and his warm aroma of soap and sexiness. “Where are they?”

“What are you talking about?” he asked, closing the door and following behind me. “Look, Shayna told me what my dad said, and I’m sorry. I talked to him about it already.”

I paced the living room I hadn’t seen in over twenty years, noting that everything was still in the exact same place. Every piece of furniture, every photograph. Even one of Noah and me at the junior prom, me holding my flowers in front of my nonexistent bump. I was surprised he left that one out. It was like stepping back in time. But there was not one new photograph of a boy. Not anywhere.

“Jules,” he said. “Did you hear me?”

I wheeled around to face him. “You had framed pictures of our son in Italy.”

Noah blinked and physically moved back a step. “Okay.”

I scoffed. “Okay?”

He held his hands up. “What do you want me to say?”

“What do I want—” My heart was pounding so hard I thought I might pass out. “Are you kidding me? Where are they?”

“They’re packed up. I don’t have a place to live yet, remember?” he said. “What the hell is going on with you?”

Why was he so calm? He wasn’t even trying to hide it or deny it.

“Noah,” I said, braving the distance and grabbing his T-shirt to get his attention. His sharp intake of breath told me I’d gotten it. “How do you have photos of him?”

He looked down into my face with the same look Shayna had given me. Like I’d lost my mind. “The same way you do.” When I just shook my head, he blew out a frustrated breath and pulled free of me. “Hang on a second.”

He disappeared down a hallway to what I knew must still be his old room and came back seconds later holding his wallet.

“Look,” he said, flipping to the photos. “It’s the same ones—”

I sucked in a breath as a face that looked like the male version of Becca when she was little, only with blue eyes, smiled back at me with no front teeth. It swam in front of me as tears reasserted themselves and came forth with a vengeance.

“Jules?” he said, his tone changed.

“Oh, my G—” I choked, taking the wallet from him and touching the photos gingerly as I turned them. “Oh, my God, my baby.”

I didn’t realize I was backing up until I met with solid wall, and once I did I started sliding down it.

“Whoa, whoa,” Noah said, jumping forward and grabbing me by the upper arms. “Hold on, come here.”

He attempted to pull me to him, but I pushed back. “Why?” I breathed, turning another and another as the boy got older.

Seth, Fifth grade
was marked on the back of one with neat blue pen.