I remembered being Becca’s age. All too well. I even remembered thinking how enlightened and cool I’d be if the subject ever came up with my own kid. I was a moron.
And all I could do with my decidedly uncool self was sit there and listen to my heart thumping in my ears. The music hovered in the background somewhere as I visualized Becca pregnant with her crooked hair, or taking an infant up to her room to feed it and losing it in the hovel that was her bed.
“Jules?”
My name broke through, and I felt Ruthie’s hand on mine.
“Jules, are you okay?”
“She’s having sex?” I said, my voice sounding scratchy.
“I don’t think so,” Ruthie said. “Not yet.”
“Not yet,” I echoed, covering my face. As I dropped my hands and met her eyes again, a different switch flipped. “Hang on, how do you know this?” I said, sitting straighter.
Ruthie tugged her bottom lip between her teeth, a telltale sign with me that she was uncomfortable. My head spun with the possible conversations.
“She stopped at the store today after school,” Ruthie began. “After you left. And we got to talking while I was cleaning up.”
Today. The day she flew in the door and got ready in a flash. Left with a group of girls. Wasn’t it girls? She just said a group. Shit.
“Okay.” The alcohol suddenly sat like acid in my stomach. The giant platter of loaded nachos and jalapeño poppers we’d decided to share arrived, and I grabbed one almost before it even landed on the table. I knew that feeling of curiosity and adrenaline and lust. And I knew where it could lead her if she wasn’t clearheaded about it. “She’s got a boyfriend? I didn’t even know she was seeing anybody.”
It occurred to me as I shoved a second one into my mouth that it was my second time that week to have nachos. And then it occurred to me that having such a meaningless thought at such a crucial revelation might mean I was losing it.
Ruthie eyed me as I pushed another chip loaded with shredded chicken, dripping cheese, and steaming beans in my mouth before she spoke.
“Anyway—she started talking about this boy she met—”
“Met?” I said, ceasing the chewing. “She’s just met someone and she’s already having this conversation?”
Ruthie smiled as you would to a frustrated child. “Calm down, Jules. This is why she came to me and not you.”
And that was just the icy dousing I needed to jolt me into silence. I bit my lip to fight back the burn that started in my chest and crept upward. That was the crux of it. Becca had gone to Ruthie to talk about the most intimate of things. Something I couldn’t have gone to my mother with either. I blinked and swallowed hard as that reality pushed the burn up into my eyes.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“I’m sorry,” Ruthie said, grabbing my hand again, but I shook my head.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Go on, I’ll be good.”
She took a long swallow of her drink and glanced over to where Patrick was standing at the bar, chatting up the bartender.
“She met a boy, his name is Mark.”
“Mark,” I echoed. “From school?”
“I didn’t ask, but I assume so,” Ruthie said. “His dad is one of Patrick’s crew.”
My ears rang with the information. I’d seen Patrick with his crew before, most of them much rougher-looking than he was. A young version of that?
“And he’s pressuring Becca for sex?” I asked, hearing my voice go up a little higher and louder than normal. At precisely the wrong time.
“What?”
The deep voice was behind me and louder than mine ever dreamed of being, and everything in me cringed. I turned just as Hayden stepped up to our table, looking at me all wild-eyed. With one look I knew he was at least three or four beers into a good buzz, but unfortunately still very coherent.
“No, no, no, no,” Ruthie said, waving hands at both of us before something blew up. “Nobody’s pressuring anybody for anything. Shit,” she added, dropping her head for a moment. “This is out of hand. She was just asking questions is all.”
“Who’s the dad?” I asked.
“What dad?” Hayden asked. “And what the hell is going on with Becca? Why’s she asking questions about sex?”
“You know, this was a private conversation,” Ruthie said, glaring up at him.
“Not anymore it’s not,” he said.
I held my head together with my palms. “Hayden, it’s okay that she’s curious, that’s normal.”
It just wasn’t okay that she didn’t come to me with that curiosity. That she was going so far as to ask about birth control. That wasn’t okay. But I wasn’t fueling that flame in front of Hayden.
“I heard you say that someone was pressuring her—”
“I was just—” I stopped and took a deep breath. “It was my misunderstanding, okay? I was flying off the handle just like you are now.” I turned back to Ruthie, who looked as if she’d rather chew a brick. “Who’s the dad?”
“I think she said his last name was Wallace,” Ruthie said quietly.
“Why does it matter who the dad is?” Hayden said.
“Back in a minute,” I said to Ruthie as I got up to join Patrick at the bar before he could rejoin us. I was frazzled enough without Hayden getting in the mix. At the look on her face for being left with him, I made a mental note to buy her another margarita.
“Hey, beautiful,” Patrick said as I reached his side.
“Do you have someone working for you named Wallace?” I asked.
Patrick’s eyebrows raised just a fraction. “Um—yeah. David Wallace?”
“Lives in Copper Falls?”
The eyebrows lowered to a frown. “No, none of my men do. But I think a couple of them have ex-wives around here. Why?”
“Does he have a son named Mark?” I asked, feeling very much like a prosecutor and yet unable to stop shooting off the questions.
Patrick turned to face me fully. “I have no idea, Jules. We don’t sit around comparing photos. What’s going on?”
“My daughter wants to have sex with a boy named Mark and said his dad works with you,” I blurted out, realizing somewhere in the places where logic lived that I wasn’t anywhere close.
The eyebrows shot back up and he cleared his throat. “Oh. Well, I guess he probably does then.” When I continued to stare at him, he gave me a questioning look. “Sorry?”
There was a pen lying on the bar, and I picked it up and started clicking it. “So what’s this guy like?”
Patrick narrowed his eyes. “Babe, I’m sorry you’re having to deal with this, but what does his dad have to do with it?”
“They learn it from somewhere.”
He chuckled and winked randomly at the woman behind the bar as she handed him a to-go box of something that smelled wonderful. “They learn it from somewhere? Because he couldn’t just be a normal horny teenage boy, right?” He squeezed my hand and took the pen I was furiously clicking, setting it back down. “Come on, Jules.”
“Well, look what he sees,” I said, refusing to be placated. “Y’all pick up women wherever you land. If he sees him screwing around all the time—”
“I’m gonna stop you right there,” Patrick said, the jovial expression leaving his face. “Despite what you obviously think of me and my guys, we aren’t traveling fuck magnets.”
“I didn’t mean it like—”
“Oh, I think you meant it exactly like that,” he said, pushing off the bar with a fired-up coldness I’d never seen before. “Let me tell you something. We have a job to do. We work hard, eat crap food, sleep in cheap motels, and move on to the next job. What my guys do on their few off hours is not my business, and what their kids may do damn well isn’t.”
“Patrick—”
“Look in your own house before you start pointing fingers, Jules,” he said, turning to leave. “I didn’t screw around with you all by myself.”
“What?” I exclaimed, a little louder than I intended. “I wasn’t talking about you.”
“I am. Maybe your kid is the one watching.”
At that, he left. I watched his back as he wound his way around the tables and pushed the front door open.
“Want something, hon?” the bartender lady asked me, pulling my attention back.
I blinked and held my hands against my stomach, feeling the stab to the gut that Patrick had just left there.
“Um, can I get two more margaritas on the rocks to that table?” I asked, pointing to where Ruthie sat looking irritated and Hayden stood hovering like a hawk.
I made my way back, feeling heavy and wrong and stupid. Was Becca paying closer attention to my actions rather than my words? She knew what we were doing, she’d said it out loud. The one time in my life that I’d allowed myself outside my own rule book was with Patrick, and that’s when she decides to pay attention?
Ruthie just met my gaze with that universal silent communication all best friends have. She saw Patrick leave, she saw my face, my deflated composure. She knew how I felt. That was enough while we had an audience. Hayden, on the other hand, was still up on level four somewhere.
“Your boyfriend leave?” he said, a twitch to his jaw telling me that the word bothered him.
I knew that even after our years apart he still cared about me. He’d always loved me more than I did him, and as unfair as that was, I’d married him anyway. Back then, I was damaged goods. Mourning the loss of a child that no one but Ruthie ever spoke of with me, and still carrying a torch for the love of my life. A love that had left me to mourn alone. To worry about him, cry for him, curse him, and sometimes hate him. It took Hayden two years to win me over completely, and although I never felt that all-consuming passion again, I assumed that was my fate.
He was cute and witty and smart and could always make me laugh when laughing didn’t come naturally to me anymore. Hayden found me in my darkest place and showed me the light again. That was enough. His controlling nature and lack of an off switch when he drank made it not enough.
I ignored his question and palmed my glass, sucking up what was left of my margarita and watching the dance floor. I needed the cold and the tangy citrus to cool my blood.
“I have the right to know what’s going on with her, Jules,” Hayden said, leaning into my line of vision.
As an upbeat country song filled the room, I met his eyes. “Let’s dance.”
He backed up a step. “What?”
“You heard me,” I said, hearing Ruthie snicker to my right. I grabbed his hand. “Let’s see if we still remember how to do this.”
“What are you doing?” I heard him say behind me as I pulled him along.
I wheeled around to face him. “Trying to let off a little steam, Hayden. Trying not to be my mother.” The burn hit the backs of my eyes and I blinked back the impending flood. “She went to Ruthie with this. Instead of me,” I said, trying to control the quiver that laced my words.
Hayden’s eyes panned my face and went soft. He’d lived with me long enough to know where my head was.
“When’s the last time you two-stepped?” he said finally.
“With you.”
He rolled his eyes and smiled that smile that always made women look twice, making me chuckle to myself.
“Lord, you’ve got some rust to work out,” he said.
“Well, get on it then,” I whispered, making him laugh as he pushed me out onto the dance floor.
Time fell backward a little as he rested his right hand against my neck to guide me, and my feet remembered what to do. The song was quick, upbeat, and we fell into our easy rhythm almost immediately, sliding in and out and around the other couples that were taking it a little more conservative.
“Like riding a bike,” Hayden said over the music. When I laughed, Hayden dared me with his eyes. “Ready to kick it up a notch?”
It was easy to have fun with him, he had that way of somehow knowing what I needed and making sure I got it. Even though I knew we both had Becca spinning around in our heads, he focused on spinning me. He pushed me away, keeping hold of my hand, and I turned in a circle alone and then around him, all the while making tracks around the floor. He whirled me back into his arms, grinning.
“Not bad, lady,” he said.
“Let’s spin,” I said, grinning back.
We got our footing, and he winked down at me as his hand gripped the back of my neck tighter and we started spinning around the floor to the last part of the song. The other couples on the dance floor moved a little to the side to give us space, and as the song came to an end, clapped and hooted for us. I saw Ruthie stand up from our table and whistle.
“Wow,” I said, feeling the heat from the rush and the spotlight rise up to my face. “That’s been a while.”
Hayden hugged me lightly, and as a slow country song came on, squeezed my hand. “One more?”
I hesitated, knowing how sexy and intimate a two-step waltz could be. Especially knowing how sexy he could make it. It might have been several years, but I wasn’t losing my memory just yet. Not that I was afraid I’d suddenly jump into bed with him or anything, but I also liked keeping the lines clean between us.
“Come on,” he said. “For old time’s sake.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Old time’s sake, huh?”
But as Tim McGraw crooned “Please Remember Me,” Hayden smiled and took that as a yes, pulling me close and moving us around the floor. I didn’t fight it. It was familiar, and I guess something in me needed that normalcy, as bizarre as that was. Slow dancing with your ex-husband probably shouldn’t be normal, especially that way, with the combination of bodies moving slowly together in a close rhythm and legs going in between each other.
The lights on the floor had turned low, with little spotlights shining on the tables that flanked the dance floor, making those people glow a little.
He pulled me tight against him as we did a slow spin, his fingers going up into my hair and my face pressed into his chest, filling my senses with the same cologne he’d worn since I bought it for him on our two-year anniversary.
Something in my head rang out with warning bells, that I was maybe enjoying this too much and my clean lines were fogging up a bit. So when the spin was done, I pulled back a little and smiled up at him, noting the fog in his eyes as well.
He’d had me with a slow dance when we first met, and I was damned if I was going to follow up with it now. He pushed me out to do a turn, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I saw it in his face too. The need for distance, accompanied by a grin that said he knew he’d gotten to me in that one moment.
I smirked at him. “Shut up.”
He laughed and spun me around carelessly, and as I came around laughing, another pair of eyes sank into me from the edge of the dance floor.
The song crooned about remembering, and everything in those eyes remembered. My feet faltered as Noah stood there, dressed in all black like some stealth god, leaned against his table, arms crossed over his chest, with every possible nuance of hurt, anger, and defiance playing over his features. Even in the near darkness, it emanated off him like a glow stick.
Hayden followed my gaze and pulled me with him, my lungs filling with air as I realized I’d stopped breathing. How long had he been there? And where was—
As we made another turn, I saw her. Sitting at the table, watching him. As he watched me. His face was stony, his body taut with raw power. Like he was spring-loaded.
“Focus,” came Hayden’s voice just above my ear.
I stumbled and got my feet back on track. “Sorry.”
We made it around the floor one more time, but he managed to avoid passing them again, moving among other couples instead. I did notice that Noah had sat down, though, and I breathed a little easier.
“You okay?” Hayden said when the song ended and we walked slowly back to my table. The seriousness had crept back on him.
“I’m fine,” I said, my voice husky. I cleared my throat and grabbed my new margarita that awaited me on the table. “Thank you, Hayden, that was fun.”
“I mean since he’s back,” he said, his eyes boring into mine.
“Who’s back?” Ruthie said, even though she instantly looked around, knowing exactly who the who was.
“It’s okay, Hayden,” I said, trying to make light of it. “We’re all grown-ups now.”
“Really?” he said with a smile that didn’t make it all the way up. “That’s why you go numb every time you see him?” He thumbed at the dance floor behind him. “You nearly landed on your face.”
“Let it rest, please?” I said softly. “Are you here by yourself?”
He looked at me one more moment, then shook his head. “With some buddies from work.”
I patted his arm. “Well, go hook back up with them. Trash your ex-wife for thinking she could still dance.”
When he finally left after ordering a beer, I sat down heavily. “Shit.”
“So, where is he?” Ruthie asked.
“Fucking everywhere,” I said, lifting my hair and fanning my neck. I pointed across the dance floor. “He’s on the other side.” I shut my eyes tight against the memory of his heated expression. What the hell was that about?
“I assume he has his woman with him?” she asked.
I gave her a look and gazed off in their general direction. I couldn’t see them through the wall of bodies between us, but knowing he was there made my skin tingle.
“Yes, and if I had to guess, I’d say she’s probably pretty ticked off right now,” I said, scooping up a loaded chip.
“Why?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know, he just looked so—” What? Lost? Pissed? “She caught him watching us.”
Ruthie’s eyebrows raised a little over her glass. “Watching you—dance?”
I opened my mouth, then closed it. “It sort of got a little cozy for one little second there.”
She set her glass down with a thunk. “With Hayden?”
“Don’t judge,” I said, grimacing. “It wasn’t anything like that, just—there for about two seconds, things probably looked a little blurry. It was stupid and we both laughed it off.”
“And Noah saw the blurry?”
“I’m assuming so,” I said, rubbing my temples. “By the murderous look on his face, I’d assume something—” I stopped and blew out a frustrated breath. “Why would he be bothered with that?”
“Maybe he wasn’t?” Ruthie offered, holding up a chip. “Maybe he and Preppy Girl Barbie had a fight and he’s pissed at her.”
I pointed at her. “They most likely did have an altercation earlier today.” I gave the quickie version of the gas station debacle earlier.
“Well, there you go,” she said. “If he was having murderous thoughts about you, that was probably why. So since he’s actually trained to do that, you might want to steer clear,” she said, giving me a cute smile and a head tilt.
I scrunched my nose at her in response and grabbed a jalapeño popper. “I can’t believe I’m eating this crap.”
“Neither can I,” she said. “You’ve been binging all week. Are you pregnant?”
I stopped mid-bite. “Do you even know how not funny that is?”
She giggled. “Sorry.”
I excused myself to go get some water at the bar. Everything from my shoulders up felt like it might ignite if I rubbed two hairs together. I wasn’t sure if it was stress, anxiety, or just an unfortunate hot flash, but I was pretty sure I could conjure up fire if I really put some thought into it. Plus, the margarita was getting too sweet for me, and our waitress seemed to only remember alcohol.
“In a glass or a bottle?” the bartender asked.
I glanced down at the giant bin of ice and fantasized about plunging my head into it.
“Glass with extra ice, please,” I said.
I felt him before anything else. Before sight or smell or words could come into play. I felt the pull of Noah Ryan at my right before he ever even spoke.
“Quite the little dancer you’ve become,” he said, the deep familiar voice unsettling me as it did every single time I’d heard it. He caught the bartender’s eye and held up his empty beer bottle and one finger. “And a Sprite with ice, please.” She smiled like her life depended on it, completely ditching my glass of ice to get his needs taken care of.
I smiled into the mirror behind the bar, finding it safer to look at him that way than the five inches between us.
“Not really,” I said. “Haven’t done that in years.”
“Where’d you learn that?”
I thumbed behind me as if that would clear things up. “Hayden, actually.”
Noah glanced behind us and looked at me, making me look him in the eye. “Hayden,” he echoed. My stomach went to war as a tiny flicker of humor passed through his blue eyes. “Is he another not-a-someone?”
I couldn’t help the smirk that tugged at my lips at his memory of my description of Patrick. I chuckled.
“No, he’s more like a used-to-be-someone.” The woman behind the bar came back with his beer and filled a glass with ice that wasn’t for me. “Hayden’s my ex-husband.”
Noah’s left cheek twitched. “Ex-husband?”
“Yes.” I drummed my fingers on the bar, wishing she’d hurry up with my glass of ice water.
“You dance like that with your ex?” Noah asked.
Like that. I grimaced as I cursed the fact that he kept catching me with my pants down. Someone squeezed in at the bar on the other side of him, nudging him sideways into me. I felt the heat of his arm through his shirt and my gauzy one, and my mouth went even drier.
“It—wasn’t what you think,” I said, pointing to my glass emphatically as the woman came back with the sparkly Sprite. Hearing my words, I realized I’d said something very similar about Patrick. Wanting to change the subject, I said, “I’m sorry, by the way, about today at the pump. I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to know.”
He shook his head. “It’s okay, it was my fault.”
“Hope you didn’t get in too much trouble,” I said, cutting another glance his way.
His face tightened a little and he handed the lady a ten and held up a hand to let her know to keep the change. “It’s all good, Jules.”
The woman grabbed my glass and stared at it as if she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do with it. “Ice please,” I said, reminding her. She jumped into motion, smiling at Noah, scooping one scoop of ice into the glass. “Extra?” I reiterated, and she huffed out a breath as if that just put her over the top.
He could have walked on, but he didn’t. He waited to walk with me. Why did he do that? I wanted to pour that whole glass on my head as I walked back to the table with Noah behind me. The look must have registered, because Ruthie clamped her lips together like she was ready to either laugh or beat him up. I reached for my chair to pull it out more but it moved out of my hand as Noah pulled it out for me. I paused and met Ruthie’s eyes, wishing he’d just go bring Shayna her damn Sprite and stay on the other side of the room.
“Ruthie,” he said as I sat and he passed behind me.
She smiled up at him with a smart-assed head tilt. “Noah.” She nodded at the glass and beer he held expertly in one hand. “No waitress on your side?”
His eyes flashed with the urge to spar with her. He picked up her drink and took a swallow straight from the glass, licking the salt from his lips as she shot him ice daggers with her glare.
“Nope.”
He set down the glass with an almost-smile and walked around the outskirts of the dance floor till he disappeared behind all the groping bodies.
“God, he’s such an ass,” Ruthie said, grabbing a napkin to wipe his cooties off her glass. “It’s like he’s still seventeen years old in an old man’s body.”
I chuckled in spite of myself, chewing on ice to cool off. “You think he looks like an old man?”
She gave me a look. “Hell, no, he looks like he was carved from stone. Which is amazing considering he left here looking like a pole.”
“I guess the Navy finds things that weren’t there before,” I said. “He was supposedly a badass.”
“Well, you just be careful,” she said, seriousness back in her tone.
I frowned, trying to pull her meaning. “Of—?”
“Noah.”
I started to protest, but then I took a deep breath and looked around. I knew what she was saying. “There’s nothing to worry about, Ruthie. We’re all adults now.” Hadn’t I just said that to Hayden? “And he’s settling in here with Shayna.” The words were rancid on my tongue.
“Mmm, yeah, I can see how settled he is,” she said, sarcasm lacing her tone. “And I’m willing to bet she can see it, too.”