Don't Let Go(44)

I nodded. “I thought you hated that place.”
The Brass Ass was an antique-slash-resale shop on the other side of town. They were annoying. They had a brass donkey on the lawn.
“I do,” she said. “I like the barn better, but the rocker can’t help where it ended up.”
The barn was an actual old barn turned into a junk business the next block up and run by the Barneses. Old Tin Barnes. Too cute for me, but Ruthie had an antique fetish. And Copper Falls was proud of its discards.
“Okay,” I said, palming my keys. “Brass Ass. Rocking chair. Is there more than one? Do I need a guide?”
“Nope, just the one,” she said. Her eyes searched mine, though, always seeing too much. “I can go rip some ass, I’m telling you,” she said.
I smiled. I wasn’t feeling it, and I knew she knew that, but I smiled anyway. “No ass ripping necessary. It’s all fine.”
“Didn’t look fine.”
“Appearances are deceiving,” I said, walking toward the door. “If you really want to rip somebody, though, go cut Johnny Mack’s tires or something.”
“Really?”
I gave her a look over my shoulder. “No.”
“Whatever you said to him, by the way,” she said as my hand landed on the door handle, “he looked ready to lose it.”
I stopped, knowing the “him” wasn’t Johnny Mack, and stared out the window to the trees behind the gazebo.

? ? ?

It took me a few minutes to get on the highway and drive the few exits down to the Katyville Public Library, the same highway that took me everywhere. Including two trips to the hospital to give birth. The radio crooned a love ballad, and I stabbed at the button with my finger. The next station’s DJ made a comment about an hour of eighties music, and I snapped the power off, rubbing a temple to ease the dull headache coming on.
It wasn’t worth my sanity.
When I pulled into the library’s parking lot, I avoided the side area that was closer to the building but so cramped that it was difficult to get your car out unscathed. Choosing the longer walk with a heavy box, I pulled in and parked.
Just as I was tugging the box from the backseat and fighting a snag against the door, all my senses took note of a dark blue truck with shiny chrome trim pulling in next to me.
“Seriously?”
I didn’t think I could take another Noah encounter just yet. It was going to go badly. Furious at the turn of my day, and trying to stomp back all the sensations that kept attacking me every time he made an appearance, I yanked one last time to free the box of books.
And it came out. Knocking me off balance as the box toppled and all the books scattered on the pavement around me.
I will not cry. I heard the door open and shut, and I pulled anger from every cell in my body to help overcome feeling like a weak klutz. I braced myself for his voice, but what I got was significantly lighter.
“Jules?” It was Shayna. “Oh, my Lord, let me help you.”
I looked up in surprise as she hurried to kneel beside me and pluck the books up as the wind rifled their pages. Shayna driving Noah’s truck around—like a couple. They are a couple, I chided myself.
I was struck with relief, gratefulness, and then guilt as I remembered her fiancé’s hands in my hair earlier, wiping my tears and coming so damn close to kissing me. I doubted she’d be on her hands and knees in a skirt helping me if she knew about that.
“Thank you,” I said, tossing an armful into the box, no longer caring if they were straight. “God, it’s been a day.”
She blew out a breath and shook her head, little pieces of hair blowing into her face. “I know, I’m so sorry.”
Oh. No. She had no idea. Johnny Mack’s insults were a distant buzz in the back of my head, spurring my headache on. That had been bad, but what had my heart pumping pain into it was Noah.
“I couldn’t believe—” she continued. “I mean, I know you said something about him the other night, but that was just—uncalled for.”
I nodded, choosing not to let my emotions be pulled back in again. “You’ll find that he doesn’t have a filter, Shayna, he just says whatever is there.” I forced out a chuckle. “You’d think I’d be immune to it by now.”
I felt the pause.
“You and he were close once, weren’t you?” she asked, grabbing one more wayward paperback hiding behind my tire.
My first reaction was to lie and make some off-the-cuff remark about how no one could ever be close to Johnny Mack Ryan. But something about Shayna made me feel that I could be honest. In some things. Things that didn’t involve me wanting to undress Noah and lick him.
“A million years ago,” I said on a laugh, scooping my hair out of my face. “Before—” I said, glancing her direction. “Well—before. He used to make cookies for all Noah’s friends when we were young, and they had the good backyard with all the trees, so it was kind of the place to be.”
We rose at the same time, and I saw the questions in her face before she asked them.
“And when you were together?”
I nodded and smiled over the pinprick to my midsection. “It was good until it wasn’t. Why?”
She blinked a couple of times, appearing to ponder that. “Because if he’d always been mean, he wouldn’t have the power to hurt you.”
I chuckled and looked at the pavement. “Very true.” I shifted the box of books onto my hip and started walking, wishing for a subject change as she fell into step beside me. “So what brings you over here?”