Don't Let Go(68)

Noah explained each and every one, named grandparents and cousins and told funny stories that had been captured of him and Linny. Shayna and I sat on two separate couches and listened as Noah danced around every one but the prom picture of us. Until he did. Or Seth did, actually.
He picked it up and turned to me with a smirk that made the skin on my back tingle. He looked so much like his dad in that moment it was surreal.
“Nice hair,” he said, holding it up.
Noah laughed and I scrunched my nose. “It was the eighties, baby, what can I say?” I held a hand out for it. “Let me look at that.”
Seth walked it over to me and sat on the arm of the couch like it was entirely normal for us to look at something together. I stared up at him for as long as I dared before he could catch me and it would get awkward. Then I blinked my vision free and focused on the dusty framed picture that was starting to show some age.
A skinny Noah with a hideous tux and a head full of shaggy dark hair smiled back at me, his arms wrapped tightly around a dark-haired girl with a secretive smile. She held flowers in front of where I knew Noah’s hands rested protectively. I knew what that smile was about. We’d just found out about the baby and hadn’t told anyone yet. It was still our little secret. Before the rest of the world had a chance to weigh in. God, we looked so young, and in love.
“You were there,” I said softly, my voice barely more than a whisper. I pointed to the flowers. “Right there.”
“You were pregnant then?” Seth asked, his voice warm over me.
“We’d just found out,” Noah said, walking closer but still keeping a safe distance. “No one knew yet.”
“It was still just ours, then,” I said, not looking away from the picture. From the moment in time—probably the only one caught on film—when we were happy and in love and full of romantic ideas of what having a baby would be. “Before parents found out.” I pointed to Noah’s huge grin. “See? How happy he was? My dad hadn’t threatened to castrate him, yet.”
Noah laughed, a hearty sound that made me look up in spite of myself. An invisible hand squeezed my heart as our eyes met, but I didn’t look away this time. Memorize this moment, Jules. For this one tiny microsecond, the three of us are together again. He saw it, too. As his gaze flickered between Seth and me, the rawness came to the surface. My own eyes filled, and I finally had to look down and blink it away.
“Was this your senior year?” Seth asked.
I shook my head. “Junior.” I cleared my throat of the huskiness. “We weren’t together for—”
“I left town,” Noah said. “After—after you were born.” He sat on an ottoman across from us, and I glanced over at Shayna. She looked like an island over there by herself. “I went to stay with my uncle in San Antonio and finished school there. Signed up for the Navy, and all that.”
“Your father sent you away?” Seth asked, a frown on his face.
“No, it was my idea,” Noah said, looking down at his hands. “I had to get away. I couldn’t be here. Couldn’t just—go back to school like nothing ever happened.” He sat up taller and inhaled slowly. “Never planned on returning, but life changes things sometimes.”
“When did you come back?” Seth asked.
“Last week.”
Seth laughed. “Seriously?”
“Seriously,” I echoed as Noah looked at me so intently that I couldn’t look away or blink or anything. My fingertips went numb.
Noah looked down at his hands again, releasing me from that damn freeze-glare of his, the haunted memories still sitting on him as he mentally replayed everything. I felt Seth’s gaze on me, and my skin felt like it was a thousand degrees as he put a hand on my shoulder.
“Did you leave, too?” he asked.
“No,” I said, unable to look away from Noah’s face. “My parents let me stay home sick for three days and then—” My words stuck in my throat. And then what? What was I supposed to say?
That I stopped caring or eating or talking to anyone? That I lived on angry music and alcohol and whatever drug I could find at the moment? That I pushed away everyone and everything that resembled what normal used to be? Anything that required feeling. My friends, my art, books, life. Until Ruthie reached down deep and yanked me out of my own self-imposed hell. And then there was Hayden.
“—I managed to graduate, let’s just leave it at that,” I said, handing the picture back to Noah.
Seth was studying me, however. Damn it, he had that Noah thing.
“It wasn’t your idea to give me up, was it?”
“No,” I said, the word coming out on a heavy breath.
Noah got up and put the picture back in its place on the table, and Shayna rose to stand next to him. The picture of love and solidarity.
“My—my parents made all that happen,” I said. “My mother, mostly. She—thought it was the best thing for me.” Oh, that was a nice way to put it.
“She was a coldhearted micromanaging shrew that arranged a deal with your adopted parents to get photos of you,” Noah said, his voice even. “That she then kept hidden in a box and took that secret to her grave. Jules didn’t see them until day before yesterday.”
My mouth dropped open and Seth’s eyebrows lifted.
“Well, okay then,” I said softly. “Now you know the true guts of it.” I touched his hand. “I’m sorry, Seth.”
He squeezed it back and got up to take Noah’s place on the ottoman, facing me. “Don’t be,” he said. “I mean, yes, be sorry for what you’ve given up, I understand that. But don’t be sorry for me.” Seth smiled, a little apologetically, and it reminded me of Becca when she was in trouble. “I had good parents. A good childhood. You gave me to great people who loved me.”