Don't Let Go(80)

Amazing what could change in a week.
I slowed as I approached him, watching the droplets soak into the wood of the bench while they rolled off his leather jacket. That was fitting and matched his stony expression. Nothing reaching him. Nothing touching him. And my heart twisted in my chest. I wanted to cradle him in my arms and take the hurt away. Show him how to feel again.
Problem was, some of that hurt was on me. Shayna had just reactivated it.
He didn’t move when I sat beside him, and I realized it was exactly how we’d sat many years earlier. On another rainy day. I felt my phone buzz in my jacket pocket, but it could wait.
“I’m not good company right now, Jules,” he said.
“Well, good thing I didn’t come here to hang out then, huh?” His hand moved over his face and then his hair. “Shayna’s looking for you. Been out here all night?”
“No, I just—landed here eventually.” He let out a heavy sigh. “This is where things used to make sense.”
“I know.”
The silence felt loud as we watched the rain hit the water in front of us. How many times had we sat there just like that in our younger years? It was a happy place then.
I chanced a look at his profile, and he’d gone hard again. He hadn’t shaved and it made him look tired and fierce at the same time. Walls and chains went up and made his eyes cold blue stones in a face locked down tight. Untouchable and unbreakable. I had a feeling he’d made good use of that in his career.
The wet cold was doing a job on me, I could feel the shivers coming on and I pulled my jacket tighter.
“You should go, Jules, it’s cold,” he said, his voice tired.
“Coming with me?”
“No.”
“Then I’m good,” I said. I had no clue what I was doing, but suddenly I knew I wasn’t leaving him.
He sighed and wiped rain from his face. “This doesn’t involve you,” he said.
Yeah, that kind of stung and gave me a twitch, but I shook it off with the raindrops. “Doesn’t really matter what it involves, does it? I’m here supporting a friend.”
“Which friend?”
“What?”
“You here to plead Shayna’s case?” he said, still staring ahead.
I frowned. “No. But she wasn’t an evil troll in this either. Her heart was in the right place. She wanted to raise this child with you.”
He shook his head. “I have to figure out what I’m going to do.” His voice was toneless, emotionless.
“As in?”
“As in what the hell am I doing here?” he said. “I was an idiot for coming back to Copper Falls. I swore I never would.”
There was that twitch again. “Good to see this doesn’t involve me,” I said, unable to keep the snark out of my voice.
He inhaled slowly through his nose, as if trying to maintain control. “I told you I wasn’t good company right now,” he said tightly. “I’m not going to say the right things, so please just—”
“Go. Yeah, I know,” I said. “I heard you. I don’t care.” My phone went off again but I ignored it.
He shot me a sideways look, but at least it was a look. “Whatever,” he said, defeat in his tone.
“Look, I know this sucks, and I know it probably brings it all back—”
“You don’t know what it does,” he snapped.
“Then talk to me, damn it!” I yelled. “You said things made sense here. Then make sense of it. Tell me.”
“I don’t need to talk. I’m fine,” he said through his teeth.
“Oh, yeah, this is model behavior for fine,” I said. “Sitting out in the cold rain glaring at the river.”
“And what’s your excuse?” he shot back.
I love you.
The words drifted across my brain in neon purple and red letters before I could even register them and argue. Oh, no. No, no, no. My skin lit up with a million tiny fires. No, I couldn’t go there, but I had. And he saw it.
The look he gave me hit me to the core, pinning me down. I couldn’t move, couldn’t look away, was stuck there helplessly with rain bouncing off my nose and my mouth working and no sound coming out. I tried to suck back the emotion, to do his glaze-over trick, but it wasn’t working.
Then he did the miraculous. He blinked and looked away, releasing me from the spell, but also looking thrown and off balance. And slightly less robotic. Dear God, I’d found the switch. But at what cost.
His jaw muscles worked double time, and he probably wanted to snap my neck, but at least he looked more human as he did it. I realized that I was most likely far outside my element, but what the hell. Breaking rules and boundaries—wasn’t that what everyone was always after me to do?
“My first instinct was to get on the next plane back to Italy,” he said finally. My stomach burned at the words, but I kept my mouth shut. “Back to the life I know. Or to make some calls—I could have any government job I wanted. Anywhere.” He rubbed at his eyes. “And anywhere would be easier than here.”
My chest felt like a gorilla took residence there. “So, you’re leaving?”
Noah shook his head minutely. “I don’t know what I’m doing. All I know right now is that the last time I was and will ever be a father, I was sitting on this bench. All three of us were here.”
Tears burned the backs of my eyes, but it didn’t matter anymore. They’d just mix with the rain.
He looked at me. “That’s why you painted it.”
“At the time, it was just a way to preserve something my mother couldn’t take away,” I said. “She didn’t know about this.” My chin trembled. “This was ours.”