Don't Let Go(6)

“So who was the fancy woman?” I asked, unable to resist the jab and needing to distract myself from Johnny Mack’s issues. “Dating lawyers now?” I asked with a grin.
Hayden turned to meet me dead-on, his hazel eyes twinkling. “Who was the crustacean? Dating bikers now?”
A full-on belly laugh started low and worked its way up, making me realize just how much I’d missed laughing like that. In spite of our differences, Hayden could always make me laugh. And this particular time of year, with the damp cold creeping in and the crispness in the mornings making the sad in me rise to the surface, I needed to feel that release.
“Touché.”
I raised the roll to my lips and the remaining chuckle froze in my throat as the door opened and in walked a couple. The small brunette woman was all in red and beautiful enough to make anyone notice, but it was the man.
A man I’d last seen as a seventeen-year-old boy. Unless you counted last night’s dream. My skin went cold and tingly and my head felt like I’d been sucking helium. I felt the roll leave my fingers.
“Mom?” I heard Becca say. “Mom, what’s the matter?”
“Jules?” Hayden’s voice said in my ear.
But it was the eyes that traveled the room, looking nostalgic but wary as they took in every detail until they landed on me and stuck. I felt their weight. And went back to the last time we’d locked eyes.
The day I gave our baby away.
“Noah.”

? ? ?

Twenty-six years. A lifetime ago. And yet in that moment, with Noah Ryan standing fifteen feet away from me, I was suddenly the seventeen-year-old pregnant senior, holding his hand in the hallway and trying to get through the day. The swollen, hormonal girl at the Copper Falls Halloween picnic, leaving yet another fight with my mom to go meet up with my boyfriend and talk about visions of marriage. The waddling, back-gripping girl at Christmas, and the conflicted young woman at the cursed Winter Carnival, arguing with her fiancé by the river, going into labor and rushing to the hospital through tears. And then an empty girl, giving some very lucky couple a beautiful treasure, while the boy she loved left crying. Left town, left the country, left her completely.
For twenty-six years.
“There he is,” sang Johnny Mack from the kitchen in a voice that was more upbeat than I’d heard maybe ever. The old man came around that counter with his duck-headed cane, barely needing it as he held his arms open. “There’s my boy!”
He wasn’t a boy anymore. Gone was the lanky frame, and in its place was solidity and muscle. His dark hair was cropped short, with a smattering of something lighter. His face was more filled out, as was his whole body. And the black pullover shirt he wore loosely over jeans showed all of it. Dear God, the military had been good to him.
Johnny Mack Ryan’s face broke into a grin as he embraced Noah, and Linny came running from the restroom.
“Jesus Christ, Noah!” she said, tears in her voice. “What the hell?” She nearly knocked her father over to get to him, and he laughed as she wrapped her arms around his neck. “You worm! Not telling us you’re coming?”
“Dad knew,” Noah said, and the sound of his voice after all those years sent ripples over my skin. I gripped my napkin like it could keep me together. “He wanted to surprise you.”
She let go of Noah and shoved at her dad as he laughed a wheezy laugh I hadn’t heard in decades. “You—ornery old goat!”
I realized I was still staring when Noah’s gaze found me again. Something there hit me like a cannonball to the chest, and I forced my eyes back down to the half-eaten roll on my plate, listening to myself breathe. Hayden’s voice reminded me that there were still people at my table.
“Julianna.”
He only called me my full name when he wanted to get my full attention, so evidently he’d been talking to me for a while.
“Yes?” I said, a little too loudly, my voice cracking. At the pause, I looked his way.
“That’s him?” he asked.
Under all the turmoil whizzing through my head, I felt his true questions, saw them in his eyes. But I wasn’t going to go there in front of Becca. I just nodded, not trusting my voice with all my insides turned to Jell-O, and then hating myself for acting stupid over a man from two decades in my past.
I felt Becca’s gaze on me and chose to look past it. I intended to check out the fastest path to the door. I didn’t care about the food, I’d get it from Linny later. I just needed to leave before my nerves got the better of me.
“Dad met Shayna when he came to Italy,” Noah was saying, pulling my eyes back his way. “But, Linny, I want you to meet her.” He reached back where the stunning woman was standing slightly behind him and gently pulled her forward, his hand on the small of her back. “This is my sister, Linny, babe.” The woman smiled warmly and extended her hand as Linny’s large ones swallowed it. “Linny, this is my fiancée, Shayna.”
Fiancée. My blood burned as the word bounced around. Oh, I was such an infant. Who cared if he was engaged, or married, or shacking up. People ran into old boyfriends and girlfriends all the time. The difference was that usually you saw them living life in the meantime. The last time I saw Noah—I was his fiancée.
I reached into my bag and pulled two twenties blindly from it, handing them to Becca. Knowing it was probably thirty dollars too much and not caring. She could call it a score.
“Go ahead and eat, baby. Visit with your dad.”
“What?” she said, looking genuinely disappointed and breaking what I could feel of my heart. “Where are you going? We don’t even have our food yet.”