Don't Let Go (7 page)

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.”

Chapter 5

Tell Becca.

Hey, baby doll, you aren’t really an only child, we have a secret kid stashed somewhere. What’s he like? Don’t know. Never met him.

That’s every family’s normal conversation, right?

I wanted to step in front of the nearest bus. If there were buses in Copper Falls. As odds go, I’d have better luck with a scooter on a hell bender. In lieu of that kind of luck, I headed to work with uncharacteristic procrastination.

I could call in sick. I never did that either, so Ruthie would think I was dying, but it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to take a day off.

Yes, it would. I’d sit on my couch all day and picture Noah, and think and dwell and obsess myself into a state of doom. I needed to go, I was pretty sure we had a large order coming in, and it wasn’t fair to put all of that on Ruthie. I could step outside my boundaries and park on the other side of the store instead of close to the diner like I always had. That way, I’d avoid potential encounters.

A plan in place, I turned down Main Street, approached the bookstore, and kept right on driving.

“You are such a baby,” I muttered, making the block.

But spying the bank and knowing I needed to cash an insurance check and snag a little cash for Becca’s lunches—assuming she actually stayed at school to eat—I pulled in and justified it as productive. I blew out a breath as I tugged my purse onto my shoulder and entered the lobby. I had to shake off this crap. This was crazy. Yes, I had a bucket of shit swirling around, but so did everyone else. I wasn’t special. And this was my town. I was not going to go skulking around it like a scared bird just because my particular bucket might get stirred up.

I had to learn to live with Noah back in town, like it or not. And I had to tell my daughter things about myself that went against everything I’d ever preached to her.

And I could never eat at the diner again. Or wear red.

I rounded the corner toward the tellers and was stopped short by a huge donation display of a giant red kettle, the sign reading
Help our local families. Give at the teller window.

“Show-offs,” I said under my breath.

I started digging for my wallet as I stepped around the obnoxious kettle and right into a pair of arms and hands that I didn’t see and wasn’t ready for.

“Oh!” I exclaimed, my head shooting up. “I’m so sorr—”

My word was cut off as I looked up into Noah’s face. Again. About four inches from mine. Damn it.

“—ry,” I pushed out, as all the air left me.

Time stopped in those few seconds, and all the little nuances of his face that were new registered like files being tucked away. A tiny white scar above his upper lip. Another thin sliver of one through his left eyebrow. The little laugh lines next to his eyes. All new to me, and yet achingly familiar. The subtle scent I’d picked up from him earlier filled my senses as his eyes panned my face in the same three seconds. I wondered what he saw.

His face went neutral again as he dropped his hands from their hold on me and backed up a few inches. I could still feel the heat imprints on my upper arms.

“Sorry,” he echoed.

I should have just gone to work. This was what I got for being a big lame wuss.

I shook my head and gripped my purse strap. “No—um—I’m just—” I pointed at the teller windows so I could shut up. “Going over there.” I noticed he wasn’t, and was kind of hovering around the desks. “What are you doing?”

“Opening an account,” he said, nodding toward an empty desk. “Waiting to, anyway.”

I nodded. Of course he was. That’s what you do when you move to a new place and plan to stay. Forever. Noah and Shayna and the newest little Ryan.

“A joint one?” I blurted out, feeling suddenly like I was standing off to the side watching myself talk.

He smiled. “Not just yet.”

Not just yet.
“So don’t you have to have an address or something?”

His eyebrows drew together slightly on that. “My dad’s is fine for now. I just need to get a debit card.” He looked around the room, probably silently begging the bank lady to come back to her desk and rescue him. “We’ll start looking for our own place soon.”

“Oh, good,” I said, shaking my head at myself.
Oh, good? Who was using my mouth?

Noah met my gaze again with that infuriating locked-in non-blinking thing of his, and as much as I wanted to look away, walk away, do anything that carried me away—I couldn’t move.

“Listen, I’m sorry about just dropping by earlier,” he said, backing up yet another step. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

I shook my head. “It was fine—”

“No, seriously,” he said, the hint of a smile at his lips. “I didn’t take into account that you might have—someone there.”

He ran a hand along the back of his neck on the last words, as though they made him itchy, and I closed my eyes, wishing to die.

“I didn’t—I mean, I don’t—” I stumbled, opening my eyes again. Of all nights to call Patrick. “That wasn’t like that.” I held my chin up, refusing to show weakness.

Noah’s eyebrow shot up, carrying the tiny scar with it. “Okay,” he said on a chuckle. He stepped forward again, and I reflexively crossed my arms. Holding my crazy in. “Jules, relax. You’ve had a life. So have I. We both have someone in our lives, that’s normal.”

“He’s not a—Patrick isn’t a
someone
.” I blew out a breath, cursing myself for not just going to work. And for talking. Because making myself out to be a rent-a-whore was infinitely better than letting him think Patrick was my boyfriend. I smiled and looked at the floor, drawing in a huge breath before looking back up at him. “You know what, Noah? This is just going to take some getting used to—for both of us.”

Noah let out his own breath, a relieved expression passing over his features. I’d saddled up the white elephant in the room.

“You’re right,” he said softly.

I nodded. “So—let’s just make the best of it and go about our normal days.”

He did a head tilt that signified a shrug. “Whatever normal is.”

I smiled, and ignored the shimmy in my stomach when he smiled back and dropped his eyes to my mouth.

“So, I’m gonna head over there,” I said, pointing to the teller counter. “See you later.”

“Later,” he responded.

I told my feet to walk around him, and they brought me to my destination, where I was eternally grateful that no other customers were around. Because it took me a good minute or two to remember what I was doing and how to do it.

By the time I was done and turned around, he was seated in front of a petite blonde woman, one ankle resting on the other knee and his arm resting across the chair next to him. My knees nearly betrayed me at the beauty of him, so relaxed and confident, yet exuding raw masculinity as he chatted with this woman and smiled as she kept fingering her hair. Well, hell, of course she did. My God, he was positively edible.

I strode out with the intention of looking nonchalant and hoping not to trip over my own feet. When I looked his way and found him watching me leave, however, my throat closed up. I gave a polite smile, which he returned before turning his attention back on the blonde lady having sex with her hair.

I counted my steps back to the car. Thirty-seven. Thirty-seven steps to make it to a place where I could close and lock the door and have a nervous breakdown.

“Shit,” I said, my voice quivering on the word as I hit the lock. “Crazy,” I muttered, starting the car so the heat would blast through the vents. It wasn’t all that cold, but I needed the heat and the noise to calm my blood down. One day at a time, I told myself.

My cell buzzed.

Where are you?
From Ruthie.

Currently on a fast track to the loony bin, thanks, and you?

On my way,
I texted back. Where I would stay from now on. Either the store or my house. Safely tucked where I could see people coming.

• • •

“We need a night out.”

I was shelving newly arrived books and arranging the new releases up front on the display table, listening to Ruthie sing along with the eighties music she’d set up at a ridiculously low volume with an iPod station in the middle of the store. Away from the wall to avoid Johnny Mack’s cane. So far, so good. But the day was young.

The day might be, but I felt ancient. Like I’d lived three days before ten o’clock. Starting in the store late didn’t help me, either, as I was accustomed to arriving at eight and having all my busy work done before the store ever opened.

“Did you hear me?” Ruthie said, moving some books around in my wake.

“I heard you,” I said, stacking more titles on the table. “We have that stupid party, don’t we? The Chamber thing?”

“It’s a meeting.”

“It’s after hours and requires a change of clothing,” I said. “That’s a party.”

She made a huffing sound. “Whatever, that’s not till next week,” she said. “I’m talking like tonight.”

I sighed. “I’m just not up for that right now. I don’t need—”

“Are you crazy?” she said, picking up the books I laid out and rearranging them with plastic boxes and easels. “It’s exactly what you need. Get out and live a little.”

“I have Patrick for that,” I responded, digging back in the box and smiling at an older gentleman carrying around an old used copy of a Jackie Collins novel. You just never knew.

“Out—being the pertinent word,” Ruthie said. “Someplace not in your house.” She put down her props for a moment and pulled a hair clip from the mammoth pocket of her big black sweater. She twisted her hair up in two seconds and still managed to look adorable. “Come on, Jules, step out there with me. Eat, drink, talk to people who aren’t me or Becca. Or your boy toy.”