Don't Let Go(47)

“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.