Don't Let Go(60)

“And if I’d actually got it together years ago?” he said, sitting back in his chair. “We wouldn’t be sitting in your mother’s kitchen talking about how it’s not about you.”
I closed the fridge and walked-slash-shuffled over to him and leaned against the granite feeling really damn tired of hearing how many things my mother still owned. My kitchen, my house, my son.
“It’s my kitchen now,” I said. “And stop it. We are where we are because—we just couldn’t make it work.” I pushed off and walked to the end table, scooping up a handful of pictures in one hand and coming back to spread them out in front of him.
Hayden’s eyebrows came together as he leaned forward again, moving his coffee cup out of the way as he picked up and set down a photo or two.
“What’s this?”
“My what-ifs,” I said, bringing his gaze to mine. My breath caught in my chest as I said the words. “My son.”
His expression sharpened as he focused on me harder, looking at the photos more closely and then back at me in question.
“Holy shit, Jules. You have pictures now?”
I shook my head. “My mom did.”
His wide-eyed expression slowly moved back into a knowing frown borne of experience. He’d known my mother well. “What did she do?”
I gazed upon my little boy at various stages of his life. Stages it would have meant the world to me to be a witness to. “Arranged a trust for him—not a bad thing—but in exchange she got regular pictures and updates.” I smiled, and my face felt as if it might crack. “Which she shared with Johnny Mack under another arrangement—that I never be told.”
Hayden closed his eyes and rubbed them.
“His name is S—Seth,” I said, still having trouble with knowing that. Feeling like somehow I should have just magically sensed it, and known he was a Seth, instead of being told my own son’s identity.
“Shit,” he whispered, squeezing my hand.
“I could play that damn what-if game for the rest of my life,” I said. “With him, with you, with Becca.”
“With Noah Ryan,” he added.
I faltered in my spiel, the sound of Noah’s name putting his face right in front of me. The last expression I’d seen on his face before I’d told him good-bye yesterday. God, that was only yesterday.
“I can’t live like that anymore, Hayden,” I said, recovering. “Obsessing over how I’d do things differently—especially with Becca. All I can do is try to do it right, now.” I touched his arm. “You, too.”
He looked down at my hand and back at me.
“What’s going on with Noah?” he asked, his voice low.
God, if I could just cut that name out of everyone’s vocabulary, my insides would have it so much easier. As it was, the quiver that started at my center and worked outward at every mention of his name, every memory of his face, every relived second of being wrapped up in him yesterday just mere feet from where I currently stood had me a jittery mess.
I let go of him and walked back around to my coffee, deciding I’d had enough caffeine. “Noah and Shayna are getting married, Hayden,” I said, trying to pour the words down the drain with the cold coffee from my cup. “They have a baby on the way.”
“I didn’t ask what’s going on with them,” he said. “I’m asking about Noah and you.”
“There is no Noah and me,” I said, point-blank, turning back to him. “Never can be.”
“Your eyes say different,” Hayden said, his voice soft, and maybe a little sad.
I widened them as much as I could. “Bullshit. My eyes aren’t open enough to say anything,” I said with a smirk, tossing a dishrag at his head.
He gestured toward the pictures spread in front of him. “Becca know?”
I nodded, sighing heavily. “She does now.”
“How did that go?”
The memory of me slapping her face as she called me a liar and a hypocrite seared through me. “We’ve had better moments,” I said. “But I think it’s kind of okay now.”
There was a pause as Hayden stared at the pictures, though I had the impression that wasn’t where he was at all.
“Jules, I remember the things I said—about her, about you. I—”
“Stop,” I said, laying my hands flat on the granite. “Seriously, stop.”
His eyes flashed. “I threw you on the floor.”
“And you’re lucky I don’t kick your ass for that,” I said, trying desperately to lighten the tone. “Now quit with the pity party and either pretend it never happened or make a change.”
“What never happened?” Becca said on a yawn, shuffling into the kitchen in Mickey Mouse sleep pants and a Snoopy T-shirt, hair sticking up everywhere, looking like a ten-year-old with boobs.
“Nothing, monkey,” he said, pulling the worry inside. He poked her in the side, making her flinch and grumble something incoherent.
She blinked sleepily at him, as if it just dawned on her that his being there drinking coffee in our kitchen was out of place.
“What’s up?” she asked.
Hayden shrugged. “Just came to talk over some things with your mom.”
She looked wary, cutting a look my way. “Like?”
“Like not your business,” he said with a wink.
I knew what she was thinking—that I’d told him about the whole birth control conversation. Truth be known, he probably was heading to that topic next if he could manage to get the hell off of Noah, but I would deflect that. Becca didn’t need to know that I’d told him. Nothing would have ever been the same between them.