I needed normal. Like, in a big way.
I needed to just come to work, do my job, go home, argue with Becca, go to bed, and do it all over again the next day. Well, Becca’s piece of that pie was still covered, but not in a comfortable way. And what wasn’t in the pie, but basically the whipped cream on the side—no pun intended—was Patrick. Or someone like Patrick. Someone to feed that adult side of me that didn’t require major maintenance or deep feelings.
Unfortunately, I’d probably burned that bridge, and I felt bad about that. Not for me, but for him. He was a good guy and treated me like a queen. He even had started to pick up on things—little things that were important to me. Like a boyfriend might do. Which put him back in that maintenance category that probably needed trimming back. Just maybe not in the manner I’d trimmed it.
And now, with the current change in tide, I wouldn’t have been satisfied with the side of whipped cream anymore, anyway. I wanted more pie. The original pie.
I was screwed.
Ruthie kept eyeing me for the next hour as I pulled extra copies of older titles from the shelves and loaded them into a box for donation to the library. My mother used to make a big event of that, advertising for people to come drop off their used books, making little stickers to attach to the insides of the books that said Donated with love and sparkles from Book Enchantment.
I just couldn’t get into all that. Ruthie would if I gave her half a chance, but I didn’t have the patience. I needed to stay busy and not hover and obsess over Becca’s life, and not think about mine at all. Anything was better than what wanted to invade my thoughts.
“Hey, did you turn in an idea for the store decoration?” I asked, completely not caring whatsoever. And she knew that.
“Yes, ma’am,” she said with a wink.
“And?”
“And I’m on it,” she said, haughty little head tilt in play. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Works for me,” I said, already not worrying about it.
“Are you okay?” she asked when I tossed the box on a chair. She stopped me and made me look at her. “Seriously?”
I swallowed and nodded. “Yes.” Then I shook my head. “No. But it’s okay.”
“I worry about you,” she said, her dark eyes soft.
A small smile relaxed my face muscles. “I know. I’m good, I promise. I’m gonna go—” I pointed at the box and lost my train of thought as I gestured toward the door.
“To the library?” she asked, squeezing my arm.
“That would be it.”
“Yeah, you’re good, all right,” she said with an eyebrow cocked. Conceding, she let out a sigh. “Headed over there right now?”
I grabbed my purse and balanced the box on one hip. “Good a time as any.”
“Because there’s an awesome old rocking chair over at The Brass Ass I want you to look at when you get a chance.”
I blinked. “A rocking chair.”
“For Story Time,” she said. “It’s beat up, but Frank can restore it and make it look really cool.”
I nodded. “I thought you hated that place.”
The Brass Ass was an antique-slash-resale shop on the other side of town. They were annoying. They had a brass donkey on the lawn.
“I do,” she said. “I like the barn better, but the rocker can’t help where it ended up.”
The barn was an actual old barn turned into a junk business the next block up and run by the Barneses. Old Tin Barnes. Too cute for me, but Ruthie had an antique fetish. And Copper Falls was proud of its discards.
“Okay,” I said, palming my keys. “Brass Ass. Rocking chair. Is there more than one? Do I need a guide?”
“Nope, just the one,” she said. Her eyes searched mine, though, always seeing too much. “I can go rip some ass, I’m telling you,” she said.
I smiled. I wasn’t feeling it, and I knew she knew that, but I smiled anyway. “No ass ripping necessary. It’s all fine.”
“Didn’t look fine.”
“Appearances are deceiving,” I said, walking toward the door. “If you really want to rip somebody, though, go cut Johnny Mack’s tires or something.”
“Really?”
I gave her a look over my shoulder. “No.”
“Whatever you said to him, by the way,” she said as my hand landed on the door handle, “he looked ready to lose it.”
I stopped, knowing the “him” wasn’t Johnny Mack, and stared out the window to the trees behind the gazebo.
• • •
It took me a few minutes to get on the highway and drive the few exits down to the Katyville Public Library, the same highway that took me everywhere. Including two trips to the hospital to give birth. The radio crooned a love ballad, and I stabbed at the button with my finger. The next station’s DJ made a comment about an hour of eighties music, and I snapped the power off, rubbing a temple to ease the dull headache coming on.
It wasn’t worth my sanity.
When I pulled into the library’s parking lot, I avoided the side area that was closer to the building but so cramped that it was difficult to get your car out unscathed. Choosing the longer walk with a heavy box, I pulled in and parked.
Just as I was tugging the box from the backseat and fighting a snag against the door, all my senses took note of a dark blue truck with shiny chrome trim pulling in next to me.
“Seriously?”
I didn’t think I could take another Noah encounter just yet. It was going to go badly. Furious at the turn of my day, and trying to stomp back all the sensations that kept attacking me every time he made an appearance, I yanked one last time to free the box of books.
And it came out. Knocking me off balance as the box toppled and all the books scattered on the pavement around me.
I will not cry. I heard the door open and shut, and I pulled anger from every cell in my body to help overcome feeling like a weak klutz. I braced myself for his voice, but what I got was significantly lighter.
“Jules?” It was Shayna. “Oh, my Lord, let me help you.”
I looked up in surprise as she hurried to kneel beside me and pluck the books up as the wind rifled their pages. Shayna driving Noah’s truck around—like a couple. They are a couple, I chided myself.
I was struck with relief, gratefulness, and then guilt as I remembered her fiancé’s hands in my hair earlier, wiping my tears and coming so damn close to kissing me. I doubted she’d be on her hands and knees in a skirt helping me if she knew about that.
“Thank you,” I said, tossing an armful into the box, no longer caring if they were straight. “God, it’s been a day.”
She blew out a breath and shook her head, little pieces of hair blowing into her face. “I know, I’m so sorry.”
Oh. No. She had no idea. Johnny Mack’s insults were a distant buzz in the back of my head, spurring my headache on. That had been bad, but what had my heart pumping pain into it was Noah.
“I couldn’t believe—” she continued. “I mean, I know you said something about him the other night, but that was just—uncalled for.”
I nodded, choosing not to let my emotions be pulled back in again. “You’ll find that he doesn’t have a filter, Shayna, he just says whatever is there.” I forced out a chuckle. “You’d think I’d be immune to it by now.”
I felt the pause.
“You and he were close once, weren’t you?” she asked, grabbing one more wayward paperback hiding behind my tire.
My first reaction was to lie and make some off-the-cuff remark about how no one could ever be close to Johnny Mack Ryan. But something about Shayna made me feel that I could be honest. In some things. Things that didn’t involve me wanting to undress Noah and lick him.
“A million years ago,” I said on a laugh, scooping my hair out of my face. “Before—” I said, glancing her direction. “Well—before. He used to make cookies for all Noah’s friends when we were young, and they had the good backyard with all the trees, so it was kind of the place to be.”
We rose at the same time, and I saw the questions in her face before she asked them.
“And when you were together?”
I nodded and smiled over the pinprick to my midsection. “It was good until it wasn’t. Why?”
She blinked a couple of times, appearing to ponder that. “Because if he’d always been mean, he wouldn’t have the power to hurt you.”
I chuckled and looked at the pavement. “Very true.” I shifted the box of books onto my hip and started walking, wishing for a subject change as she fell into step beside me. “So what brings you over here?”
She laughed lightly and grinned a little sheepishly. “I wanted a book.”
I raised an eyebrow. “I know a closer commute.”
Her laugh grew melodic. “I know, I’m so crazy. But I didn’t know if it would be awkward—me coming over there.”
I scoffed. “I take everyone’s money equally,” I said, making her snicker again.
“Well, I’ll keep that in mind,” she said. “Now if Noah would just relax.”
My stomach clenched and I gripped the box tighter. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, he’s so paranoid we’re going to end up in the same room or something,” she said. “Like we’re gonna compare notes.”
I laughed, but it was an uncomfortable laugh, and I felt he might be right. Just talking about him with her was giving me the willies.
“And he’s been so moody the last two days. Today when he got to the diner he was somewhere else completely, not listening to anyone, so I dropped him at home and told him to have a beer and tell me how to find the library,” she said. She held up her palms as if to justify. “He’d do that a lot when he was working, so it’s not new to me. Everything was classified and everything ate him up until it was done. But, my God, we’re just sitting here in this sleepy little town, what could be so damn stressful?”
My mouth opened and closed, and I turned to focus on the doors ahead, spotting Becca’s little blue Chevy parked on the side. Where all the cars were jammed together. A new irk joined all the rest in my brain as I thought about her not telling me she was going anywhere, parking where I’d specifically told her was a guaranteed fender bender, and Noah’s apparent mood change after our encounter. I felt a sweat breaking out.
“Well, coming home is probably an adjustment,” I said, turning to face her before we went in. “He’s about to be a dad—and a husband.” And I said that with not a bit of stutter.
The light left her face. “Yeah.”
I was taken off guard by that and wasn’t sure how to respond. It wasn’t like we were best friends or anything tight enough to dig around. She wasn’t Ruthie. I couldn’t threaten to take her mixer away if she didn’t spill the goods.
I bit my lower lip. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she repeated, distracted. She twisted her fingers together and averted her eyes. “Can I ask you a question?”
Oh, shit.
“Okay,” I said, not actually feeling okay about it. Her face said it wasn’t going to be okay. It wasn’t going to be something innocent like who cut my hair or where I got my necklace.
Her eyes met mine, blinking fast. “Do you think things really happen for a reason? Like—you know—every purpose under Heaven and all that?”
Wasn’t what I expected. “Um, yeah, I guess so.” My mind reeled, looking for the reasons behind that question. “I’ve always kind of had to believe that, it got me through some rough times.”
“That’s what I mean,” she said, her pretty face going serious. “I worry about stuff like that. My mom’s always been one for ‘Give it to God, things happen like they’re supposed to,’ and all that, but—”
She stopped, and I was intrigued.
“But what?” I asked.
“What if I’m not making the right choice?” she asked, her voice fading at the end and the color in her cheeks fading with it.
I blinked and pushed down the feeling of impending shock that wanted to land on me before I even knew what she really meant.
“About what, Shayna?” I asked.
She licked her lips and her eyes misted. “About marrying Noah.”
• • •
It felt as if all the air in my lungs was sucked out with a vacuum cleaner.
Oh, my God.
I stared at her, trying not to look shocked or disturbed or confused as hell. I must have pulled one heck of a bluff if she was able to admit any reservations about her relationship with Noah to me. It went against all brands of woman code to show weakness with your man’s ex. Then again, I realized, she was new to town and alone except for Noah, and I was probably the closest thing she had to a friend in Copper Falls. That just proved how truly twisted up the situation was.
“That’s just nerves,” I said on a whisper.
“I don’t know,” she answered with a forced smile as she dabbed at her eyes.
“You’ve got double-duty hormones going crazy, too, so don’t let your mind mess with you like that,” I said, wondering where the words were coming from. “And my ex-husband’s floor show probably didn’t—”
“We were about to break up again when I got pregnant,” she blurted, two heavy tears breaking free from her eyes. She instantly sucked in a deep breath and blew it out slowly like the words had been strangling her. All the color came rushing back to her cheeks.
And probably to mine, as well.
“Ag—” I stopped and cleared my throat. “Again?”
“Jesus,” she breathed, covering her face with her hands. “What is this, true confessions day?”
My box suddenly felt like it grew in poundage, and I shifted it on my hip. “Let’s—go inside, Shayna,” I said, pulling the door open. “We can go sit down.”
I needed the seconds to pull my head together as well. Okay, pregnancy before marriage happened all the time; that was no shocker. It had been the same with me, and Noah was trying to make sure he did it right this time. That explained his revisit of so much of our history, too. It probably felt like déjà vu.
But being about to break up—again—that was a whole new head spin.
“No, I should just go,” she said, looking back toward the parking lot, her eyes looking troubled again. Probably that woman code slapping her in the face.
“Come on,” I said, guiding her in. I pointed at a group of couches and chairs in a far corner. “Let me go turn these in and I’ll meet you over there.”
“Mom, what are you doing here?” said a voice behind me.
I wheeled around and handed Becca the heavy box. “Hey, Bec, help me out a second.”
“This is your daughter?” Shayna asked, swiping quickly at her eyes.
I smiled. “Yes, this is Becca.” I put my arm around her neck and squeezed her in a hug that I hoped she was smiling for and not looking tortured. “Bec, this is Shayna Baird. She’s—” How to explain? Becca didn’t even know Noah. “She’s Johnny Mack’s son’s fiancée.”
Shayna chuckled and shook Becca’s free hand, and I was proud of myself for not choking on the word.
“Nice to meet you,” Becca said, very polite. “I didn’t know Johnny Mack had a son. Thought it was just Linny.”
I saw Shayna’s eyes dart to me for a split second and then she did her practiced smile. “He’s like the prodigal son returning.”
Becca laughed and then gestured at the box on her hip. “Reason?”
“Bring that up to the counter for me, please,” I said. “Those are donations from the store. Why are you here, by the way?”
“Lizzy had a book on hold for a project and I said I’d meet her here before we go to the mall,” she said, just as the blonde and perpetually cute Lizzy walked up.
“You’re going to the mall?”
“I texted you all this.” At my questioning look, she rolled her eyes. “Okay, I was going to text you all this. I forgot.”
“Who’s going?” I asked, still fixated on the image of her hooking up with the mystery Mark.
“Me and Lizzy,” she said slowly, with the tinge of last night’s argument still blanketing her as well. “There’s a shoe sale at Epic, can I have some money?”
“No!” I said. “You just got three new pairs of shoes and a pair of boots at Christmas.”
“Then I’ll buy some boots for you and we can share,” she said, cheesy smile in place as she looked hopeful.
“Right, like I’m gonna want to wear your boots,” I said. I pulled three twenties from an inner pocket of my purse. “Consider it toward your birthday.”
“Hey, Ms. White,” Lizzy said with a sweet smile.
“Hi, Lizzy, good to see you,” I said. “Shop smart, Becca.”
“Sixty dollars? That’s all?” she said, eyeing the bills with dismay.
I scoffed. “If you need more than that for shoes, it’s not a sale, Bec. Make it work.”
“Don’t argue,” Lizzy whispered.
“Fine,” she said, hugging me briefly. “Oh, by the way, they invited me over for a big barbecue thing later, that okay?”
Of course they did.
“That’s fine,” I said as she turned to make a beeline for the counter with my box. “And be careful leaving the parking lot since you parked—”
“In the pit of hell, I know,” she said, waving as she kept walking. “I will.”
I took a deep breath, watching them walk away, Becca’s dark shiny lopsided hair swinging over a baggy hoodie jacket and jeans she could have painted on.
“Can’t wait,” Shayna said with a smirk.
I chuckled and shook my head. “Yeah. Luckily they start out sweet and unable to talk so you can fall in love with them before you get that.” I pointed in her direction. Shayna laughed out loud, some happiness coming back into her face. “Let me go get the receipt for this and I’ll meet you over there.”
When I rejoined her in the corner, she had her game face back on, and I wondered if she’d had a chance to dial it back and change her mind. I would if it were me.
“She’s beautiful, Jules. Stunning, actually.”
That warmed my heart. “Thank you,” I said, sinking onto a couch sideways to face her. I had the oddest sense of a repeat performance since I’d just talked to Becca the same way the night before. Hopefully the outcome would be better. “She has the potential—if she keeps her mouth closed.”
“I can imagine it isn’t easy being a single mom,” she said, leaning an elbow on the back of the couch.
“It’s not, but Hayden helps. When she lets him,” I added. “She’s making us both crazy right now.”
“I remember feeling so under my dad’s thumb,” Shayna said. “I’d do anything just to give him a shock. One time I came home with a nose ring and a dog collar necklace.”
“Holy shit.”
She snickered. “I know, it was hideous, but I was just trying to spread myself out a little. Once he let up, I wasn’t interested in the weird stuff anymore.” She hesitated a beat and tilted her head. “Your daughter doesn’t know, does she? About Noah and—everything?”
Everything. I shook my head. “There hasn’t been a reason for her to know. It was all before her time.”
“And the longer time goes on, it’s harder to do,” she said, her voice going softer at the end. Guilt settled in my belly, but there was something else there in her tone. Something that maybe wasn’t about me.
Shayna picked at a perfect fingernail that didn’t need picking, but I knew it was so she wouldn’t have to look me in the eye as the real conversation came up to queue.
“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.”