Don't Let Go (21 page)

She had ruined my life.

We pulled into the driveway, and I stared at the house I now despised with everything in my being.

Noah’s phone sang “Love Shack” and he hit the button to silence it.

“Shayna?” I asked, and he nodded. “You can call her back.”

He texted something quickly. “Told her I’ll call her back later.”

“I should have brought you home,” I said, not recognizing the hollow sound of my words, my voice.

Noah shook his head and handed me the keys. “I’m not leaving you here alone,” he said, his tone leaving no room for argument. “I’ll walk the two blocks later if I have to.”

My phone buzzed from my purse and I dug it out to see Becca asking to spend the night with Lizzy. Not a shocker. And probably a good idea, considering my mood.

“I’m not good company right now,” I said, eyeing the house as if my mother were standing on the porch.

Ignoring me, he got out and walked around to my side, where I still sat, and opened my door. “Come on.”

I swung my legs out and stood, letting him shut the door behind me as I walked up to a place that didn’t feel like mine anymore. Not that it ever really had, but I was at least making headway. Now none of that mattered. My mother still lived there. Working me like a puppet, just as Noah had said.

I unlocked the door, hearing and feeling him behind me, and heard the
ka-thunk
of Harley jumping off the couch.

“Hey, my Harley girl,” I said as she wiggled over to me, swinging her giant tail. I felt love and relief seep back through for just a second as her unconditional love melted my heart a little. I knelt and buried my face in her neck. “You and the girl child are the only things that make this home,” I mumbled.

Standing as Harley then made her way to Noah to get bonus points, I kicked off my shoes and looked around the room at all I had done to try and make it our home. It was lipstick on a pig, as Nana Mae would say. Nothing changed the guts of the thing. I narrowed my eyes as I scanned the room with a different perspective.

Somewhere in these guts were photos of Seth. Hidden away because I couldn’t handle it. I clenched my teeth together at the anger those words fired up in me. Photos and
correspondence
, whatever the hell that could be. But how? We’d gone through every possible drawer and file, both at the house and at the bookstore, when she died. And then many of the older pieces of furniture had been put to the street in favor of ours. I couldn’t imagine what I could have missed—

My eyes landed on the bookshelf. Or rather, my mother’s corner of it. The section I never really touched, but pretty much just jammed together to make room for my own things.

Walking slowly to it, I stared, adrenaline boiling my blood as I remembered my mother lying in a hospital bed telling Becca and me that she loved us and never mentioning one word about
“Oh, by the way, there’s something kind of important you might want to find.”

“That bitch,” I whispered.

“Jules,” Noah said.

“No, Noah,” I said, hearing the shake in my voice as the irony spread through my system like poison. “My mother sent my son away, cutting all contact for me but holding on to it for herself.” I turned to face him, my whole head feeling like the top of a volcano. “For herself. She still had a grandchild, but I couldn’t be a moth—” My words gave way as my chest pushed the air from my lungs. “She gave it to your dad to send to you on the other side of the world, but couldn’t share it with her own daughter, right here in the same house.”

He just met my gaze and didn’t say anything. There was nothing to say.

“She knew his name,” I said, the rage bringing tears back to my throat. “For years I’ve wondered how your dad could hate me so much, and now I have to wonder how my own mother could have so little fucking faith in me.”

Noah moved toward me but I turned around. Turned to stare at her books and her beloved atlases and precious antique glassware. All collecting dust because I never did more than hit it with a feather duster. I never liked being around it. I always assumed that was due to so many unresolved, unfinished issues with my mother. Or my own guilt over the resentment I felt. Whatever the reasons, I left her things alone.

I pulled a book out, flipped through it, and set it on the floor. Pulled out another one and did the same. Again and again, thick atlases and small books. I moved the glassware to other shelves, and Noah silently picked up the books and began making stacks as I pulled faster and faster, not caring about what they were. Harley sniffed each one tentatively and would then look up at me with her little forehead creased like she wanted to understand the game but wasn’t catching on.

I kept tossing and Noah kept organizing, and if he didn’t know what I was doing, he didn’t say. And although I originally didn’t want him there, I found myself glad to not be alone.

It didn’t take long.

Two thick volumes on astronomy stuck together as I tried to pull one out. Rather grossed out, thinking something nasty had bonded them together over time, I tried to pry them apart to no avail.

“What the hell?” I said, garnering Noah’s attention.

“What’s the matter?”

“These are stuck, they’re—” I stopped short when I picked them up with two hands and felt the movement within. I stared at the books in my hand, looking closer at the seam between them. Bound with super glue.

My Nana Mae’s words about my mother’s teenage rebellion sung softly in my ear.
“. . . carving out old books to hide things like letters from boys—and her daddy’s cigarettes.”

“Oh, my God,” I whispered, fighting against the burn that wanted to take me under.

Chapter 13

“Jules, what is it?” Noah asked, coming to stand beside me, his hand resting on the shelf as he looked down.

I opened the hard cardboard cover, and there it was. My past, my big never-talk-about-it secret. All the things I was never trusted to handle.

A large cavern had been carved into the two books, leaving only an inch of paper around the edges. In the hole were photographs and letters, and something that appeared to be bank statements.

“Son of a bitch,” Noah breathed.

I put a trembling hand inside and pulled out a handful of photos. One fell free and I knelt to pick it up. My breath caught as I saw it wasn’t one that was in Noah’s collection. It was of a man and woman, smiling, holding an infant.

My infant.

A noise escaped my throat and the book box and other photos slipped from my hand. Noah dropped to one knee when I melted into a sitting position.

“What?”

I held out the picture, one hand over my mouth as if that would hold all the crazy in, and I heard him swear under his breath.

“That had to be—”

“Right after,” I finished.

The image swam before my eyes and I kept blinking it clear, needing to see the people that raised my child. That taught him to say Mommy and Daddy and how to ride a bike. That kissed his hurts and hugged him through his successes, and made him a man.

“Fuck,” Noah said, rising in one movement and walking away a few steps, running fingers over his eyes. His breathing was louder, and I looked up to see him go stand in front of my painting, bracing one hand on the wall. “I’ve never seen them before,” he said, his voice low.

“Well, I guess my mother didn’t quite share everything, huh?” I said, tears coming freely once I finally let them have their way.

He drew in a long, labored breath and blew it out slowly, running another hand over his face before he turned back around. When he came back he slid his back down the wall and sat facing me. I sat cross-legged in my black leggings and wraparound black skirt, not caring. After a long look he picked up the box and positioned it between us. We each pulled things out and explored, reading letters written in longhand from Seth’s—mother. We touched crayon drawings and read his first poem. We looked over more snapshots of Seth and another boy, presumably a brother? Noah hadn’t seen those either, and we looked until there was nothing left.

I leaned over onto my elbows with my face in my hands.

“I’m sorry, Noah,” I said into them.

He was only a foot away and pulled my hands from my face. “For what?”

“This should have been our family,” I said, though very little sound went with the words. I was so tired, so wrung out, that even crying was too much effort. “My mother took that away and I let her do it.” My chin trembled, although I felt dried up. “We could have been a family.”

Noah’s eyes looked exhausted too, like he just wanted to sleep. He sat against the wall in his sweats and T-shirt with one knee up and the other leg sprawled out.

“Come here,” he said, putting his knee down.

The look on his face told me not to argue. I scooted up so that my cross-legged position had my knees resting on top of his. It was kind of intimate, and him still holding my hands didn’t help.

“You have a family, Jules,” he said, his voice soft but his expression still haunted by all that we’d seen. “Everything happens the way it’s supposed to happen.” He squeezed my hands tighter. “You had Becca. Seth’s parents got to raise a great kid they wouldn’t have otherwise.”

“And you?”

A stricken look passed over his face before he glazed it over, burying it forever. “I got to—make the world a safer place for them.”

The stab to my heart was physical, and I winced.

“I used to think about you when I was out in the field,” he said. “You and Seth.” He looked down at our hands. “I’d imagine what he was doing. What you were doing—” At my look of doubt, he added, “Yes, even though I was angry, I still thought about you.”

The scar in his eyebrow twitched as he frowned. I wanted to smooth it, touch his face more than anything in the world right then.

“You two were what kept me human,” he said in a whisper. “When what I was doing—” He stopped and his whole face tightened and his eyes went dark. “Wasn’t very human.”

He cleared his throat and forced his expression to clear.

“I’d think about the moment he was born,” he said. “Your face.”

“Oh, Lord,” I said.

He smiled and moved a lock of my hair out of my face, temporarily stopping my heart. “It was beautiful.” He held my hand up between us and held tighter. “You had my hand in a vise, begging me not to let go. I promised I wouldn’t,” he said, the smile in his eyes fading.

“And then you did,” I said under my breath.

He inhaled slow and deep, nailing me with that thousand-mile stare of his. “And then I did.” He looked physically pained by that admission. “I’m sorry I left you alone, Jules. I swore to be by your side and then I left you to carry this by yourself.”

I gave him a small smile. “Everything happens as it’s supposed to happen,” I said, and one side of his lips spread into a smile that turned my insides to a churning ball of energy.

I lost my resolve not to touch him with that smile, and I moved my hand softly over his cheek. Noah sucked in a breath and closed his eyes when I touched him. My breath quickened at the new rush of adrenaline that shot through me, and the look of surrender that heated his eyes when he opened them sent a new burst of nerves buzzing through my belly.

Both his hands came up to my face. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Sorry?” I breathed, confused and spinning.

Pulling me to him as he leaned in, he nodded. “I can’t hold this in anymore.”

Noah’s mouth landed on mine with a sweet hunger that made my bones feel as though they left me entirely. Energy pulsed through me like lightning at the feel of his mouth, the taste of him, his hands twisting into my hair. It was like I’d been starving for him and one taste triggered everything. My hands went up into his short hair, pulling his head in deeper and bringing a low rumbled growl from his chest that set me on fire. I couldn’t get close enough.

As if he felt the same need, he pulled me into his lap, my legs straddling him as he shoved my skirt up so that I’d fit against him better. Our foreheads pressed together and the tears that filled his eyes stung my core. Suddenly my lungs, my eyes, my throat—everything burned with the emotion of needing him so badly I couldn’t breathe. His arms moved up my back and pulled me so impossibly tight that when I wrapped my arms around his head and he buried his face in my neck, we clung to each other as if our lives depended on it.

I felt his hot tears on my skin, and it brought all the injustice of the years we lost to the surface. Nothing felt more right than being intertwined so tightly we were one, rocking slowly, desperately clinging to each other.

The only thing that pulled me from that embrace was my need for his mouth. I was shaking when I held his face in my hands and saw the rawness in his eyes. I landed back on his lips, exploring his mouth, tasting the salt from our tears.

He dug his fingers into my back as his mouth trailed down to my neck, sending tingles to all the important places. His hands moved from my thighs slowly back up to my hair, lighting up every inch that they passed.

“Oh, God, Noah,” I part whispered, part moaned, as I felt him hard against me and moved my hands over his shoulders, his back, his head again. I couldn’t get enough. “I can’t stop touching you,” I breathed.

“I know the feeling,” he said, shoving my sweater jacket off my shoulders and landing there with his mouth, tasting his way up my neck. Reflexively, my thighs squeezed and I arched against him, making him moan against my skin and dig his fingers into my hair. His kisses went lower, playing at the swell of my tank top neckline while holding me firmly against him, driving me mad.

A tiny voice in the back of my mind was screaming to be heard, telling me to stop. Telling me that it was a bad idea. Telling me that my heart couldn’t take another Noah heartbreak.

But the rest of me was louder. Every cell of my being went on full alert as his hands moved over my body and I felt his need matching mine. I held his face against my chest and moved against him as his breathing grew ragged and he grabbed my ass and rode it with me. He let go and slid his hands up over my breasts to my face, searching my eyes as we both breathed as if we were racing. As if sensing the runaway freight train we’d climbed on was about to jump the tracks. The intensity hit me to the bone, filling me with a need that burned my eyes.