Really, really, truly could have used that Coke just then, as my mouth turned into a sandbox. He was headed behind the counter and stopped cold when he saw me, shrugging out of his jacket and walking our way.
 
“Oh, crap,” I muttered, not meaning it to be out loud, but that was my life.
 
“What?” Becca said. “Ohhhh . . .”
 
A very particular kind of stabbing, wrenching, piercing pain sliced through my middle as his eyes met mine. They were freakishly blue in that light, and warm, and I had to look someplace else. Like at Becca, who was clearly watching me to see if I’d disintegrate.
 
“Ladies,” he said, his expression jovial with a side of longing.
 
Shit.
 
He looked positively friggin’ edible in a long-sleeved button-down black dress shirt and black jeans. I didn’t see his feet. I couldn’t care less about his feet. I wondered if he was meeting Shayna for a night out. Maybe dancing. Maybe I’d throw up, later.
 
“Hey, Noah,” I said.
 
“Mr. Ryan,” Becca said.
 
“Oh, no, no,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “See that ornery, crotchety old man over there? That’s Mr. Ryan,” he said. “Please—Noah or Hey you will work just fine.”
 
Becca laughed. “Okay, Hey you, what’s up?”
 
Noah laughed. “That’s good. You’re a joy, aren’t you?”
 
“That’s the rumor,” she said, snickering at her own wittiness.
 
I wanted to be witty. All I was was sweaty. His hand landed on my shoulder then, nearly sending me into sweaty orbit.
 
“I wanted to see if you still had that picture you took of me and Seth—here at the diner?” he said.
 
The one I still couldn’t look at? Sure. “Of course,” I said, fumbling with my phone.
 
Photos—where were the photos? Nope, that wasn’t it. Finally, I pulled them up and scrolled, hoping he didn’t notice that my fingers were trembling. Jesus, this was ridiculous. A week without seeing him and I was right back to the blithering idiot I’d been when he arrived in town.
 
My thumb froze on the photo in question, and my heart did a jump around in my chest. Their heads together, looking at me, so alike. And Noah’s eyes—shit.
 
“Here you go,” I said, handing it up to him.
 
He didn’t take the phone from me, he just put his hand over mine, holding it with me as he gazed upon the image and smiled.
 
Glaze over, I told myself. Don’t show weakness. Don’t show anything. Glaze, damn it. Glaze over, glaze over—
 
“Great picture,” he said. “Mind if I send it to myself?”
 
I let go of the phone, letting him do his thing, fully aware that I’d now have his number. And he would have mine. And now I could completely officially obsess over him never calling me.
 
“Didn’t Shayna take some too?” I asked, bringing his eyes back to me like a wrecking ball.
 
“Yeah, but she left before I got them.”
 
Everything in me went still.
 
“She left—like—on a trip?” I asked.
 
“One-way trip,” he said, typing in his number. He met my eyes again. “She’s back in Virginia with her family.”
 
He handed my phone back to me, and as much as I wanted to look away, I couldn’t. I was stuck. What the hell did that mean, Shayna leaving? And when did this happen?
 
“Are . . . you okay?” I asked, clearing my throat.
 
He nodded. “I’m fine. How are you?”
 
I smiled at Becca and patted her hand. “A night with my girl. Never better.” When I looked back up, there was a look of something that made my breath catch in my throat.
 
“So!” Becca said, clasping her hands together. I jumped at the sound of her voice, breaking the gravity his gaze held me with. “You look nice, all duded out. Big night?”
 
Bless you, Becca, for asking that.
 
“I hope so,” Noah said. “Leaving to meet up with my old boss about a job.
 
That jerked my head around again and this time I searched his face for answers. For something. No tells, no clues. When he looked my way again, his eyes were clear.
 
The two seconds of hope I’d felt at the news of Shayna’s departure were stomped down and ground out. He was focused and clear and driven.
 
And ready to leave the place that always muddied that.
 
It wasn’t meant to be. It never was. And that had to be okay. I nodded and smiled up at him.
 
“Good luck, Noah,” I said.
 
There was a long pause and a look I couldn’t read.
 
“Thanks,” he said, with a small smile. “You two have a good night.”
 
He walked away, leaving a gaping hole in his wake. And it was everything I could do to hold it together. I turned to face Becca, not quite able to look her in the eye. I couldn’t. My eyes were burning, my chest was tight, and I looked around the room looking for a focal point. I clamped my jaws together as tight as I could to push it back.
 
“Mom.”
 
“Hmm?” I said, as the blessed Coke finally arrived and I drank down half of it before even finding the straw. Anything to cool my jets.
 
“You still love him, don’t you?”
 
 
 
• • •
 
 
 
Her words, spoken soft and mature and knowing, as if she were twice her age, made me chuckle.
 
“Don’t be silly,” I said.
 
She gave me a look. “I thought we were being honest. I know what you look like when you’re trying not to cry, Mom, so save it.”
 
I smiled, though it wasn’t real. Opened my straw and stirred my ice.
 
“Yeah, I guess you are more perceptive than I’m prepared to admit,” I said.
 
Becca scoffed. “Not really,” she said. “But after Seth said that about you and Mr.—Noah—the other day, well, now it just seems crazy not to see it.”
 
“Well, it doesn’t matter, Bec,” I said. “People can see all they want, it doesn’t mean it’s gonna work out that way.”
 
“But it makes you sad.”
 
I smiled slowly. “Tell me about this year-off idea you have.”
 
“Wow, subject change of the century,” she said, taking a drink.
 
I widened my eyes at her. “Take the moment, baby.”
 
She inhaled and let it go. “Okay. I’m not talking about blowing it off, I just—” She stopped and looked at her hands for a minute. “I’d like to concentrate on my writing for a while without having to do school stuff, too.”
 
I sat back. I hadn’t expected an actual reason. “Your writing.”
 
“Yeah,” she said, licking her lips and fidgeting with her napkin. “I don’t even know if I’m any good at it, but I’d like to find out. Maybe submit a story to a magazine or something. I did some research online and I have a—list . . .” Her voice trailed off as she looked up at me. “I just don’t want to settle for something else before giving it a shot, Mom.”
 
The tears I’d managed to put away came back for a second attempt. It was like sitting across the table from my mother years earlier, having a very similar conversation.
 
I’d been accepted at a state school for the arts. It was four hours away and a chance to find my sanity again. But that wasn’t practical or logical, and so the dream I’d manufactured for years was shredded in a matter of seconds. I took business courses instead, to ready me for running the store.
 
I looked at my daughter’s hopeful expression, my skin buzzing from head to toe.
 
“Take the year,” I said, my voice gone husky and foreign to me.
 
Becca blinked. “What?”
 
I nodded, a rush of warmth spreading over me, making me stop and take a deep breath. “Take the year, and do it seriously,” I said. “If at that time you decide you want to go into creative writing or journalism or whatever, or something else entirely, then at least you can make an educated decision.”
 
Becca’s face was priceless. “Are you serious?” she whispered.
 
The absolute relief and joy and hope in her tone made my heart heal a little, right there on the spot. For one second, I felt I’d done something right.
 
“Never settle, baby,” I said, quickly whisking a rogue tear away. “Never, ever settle.”
 
Her eyes misted up, and the smile that grew as her mind started working on her newfound possibilities was refreshing.
 
“Thank you, Mom.”
 
“So, do I get to read any of this stuff?” I said.
 
Her smile grew even bigger although a little anxious. I recognized that anxiety. Once upon a time, no one saw my work until my signature was at the bottom and I’d deemed it done. Even then, I’d panic a little.
 
“Yeah, but I have to work on some things, first.”
 
“Whenever you’re ready,” I said.
 
Becca looked at me, leaning forward, a new energy in her eyes. “You know, there are some non-credit summer writing classes I heard about, that are just like a few weeks long.”
 
“And your job?”
 
“I can work around that,” she said, shrugging off what had been the biggest news of the night just thirty minutes before. “What if you take some art classes, too?”
 
I nearly spewed a mouthful of Coke.
 
“Oh, wow.”
 
“I’m serious!” she said. “We could be part-time students together.”
 
I laughed, tickled at her sudden gusto. But would that just tease me back into something I didn’t have time for? Then again, why the hell not.
 
“Get me the info,” I said. “I might just take you up on that.”
 
“Deal.”
 
Our food came and I took that fried food down like it was my last meal. I looked at it as only the beginning of a heartburn-filled weekend. The chili cook-off guaranteed the rest.
 
Sitting back, fat and happy, I studied Becca’s demeanor. It was like the weight of the world had been lifted. How is it that I never saw how simple that would be?
 
“I want to be with you when you get your tattoo,” I said.
 
Another look of astonishment. I was really learning to love that shock value.
 
“Who are you?” she said, looking at me like I’d sprouted horns.
 
I opened my mouth to respond something cute, and then paused and closed it. “Maybe someone I wished my mom could have been,” I said. “And seriously, I want to be sure you’re at a safe place—it’ll be my graduation present. Start researching it.”
 
Her jaw dropped. “Seriously, you’re trusting me? With all of this? School and everything?
 
Burn. Again.
 
“Yeah,” I said. “I am.”
 
And that, dear Mother, is how it’s done.
 
 
 
• • •
 
 
 
There was a letter stuck in my door when we got home, like I’d closed it in the jamb a couple of times. Must have missed it. Wasn’t hard to figure out the pretty handwriting on the envelope, but it made my stomach hurt just the same.
 
I waited till Becca left to open it.
 
 
 
Hey Jules,Short and sweet, but if you don’t know already, I’m going back home. I need family around to do this thing alone, and it’s not Noah’s fault about that. I’m actually glad it all came out, because I don’t think I would have had the stamina to hold that secret forever. And that would have been even more wrong.I just wanted to tell you good-bye. You have been a really good friend to me. One I would have never expected to have, and I was blessed to know you. He loves you, Jules. That’s a hard thing for me to write . . . it took me a few minutes to do it. But it’s true, and impossible to miss. And it’s okay, because I feel in my gut that it’s probably meant to be that way. I think you still love him, too, although you don’t admit it, maybe not even to yourself. You two have that thing that we all hope to find. Cherish that. Take care of him.Love always,Your friend, Shayna
 
I was trembling as I read it again, and folded it up. Yeah, I was a great friend, all right.
 
I laid in bed awake a long time that night after Becca left, watching the shadows on the walls move with the sway of the tree outside. Listening to the many settling noises of an old house, that only seem noticeable when the life inside goes quiet.
 
Somehow, I’d found the secret key with my daughter. Ironically, it was the same one I’d always needed myself, and my mother refused it time after time. All the way to her grave. I was so grateful that I learned this lesson now, so that Becca hopefully had a chance at the life she wanted. Or at least the opportunity to try. And maybe she wouldn’t be lying awake at forty-three, lamenting her life and cursing me.
 
I pulled my phone from my bedside table and pulled up my photos. One in particular. Seth and Noah looking at me, making my heart hurt again. You still love him, don’t you? Becca had said. He loves you, Jules.
 
I’d spent a week of nights just like this, falling asleep to the memory of being in his arms. Remembering every touch and every kiss and every inflection of each word we’d said since he hit town. And every look. God, those looks of his—they were worth more than a million words. Did he go to sleep every night remembering those things? Could he close his eyes and smell me the way I could him?
 
My heart, that I’d kept protected and sealed off for so many years, even in some ways from Hayden, was now open and exposed and battered. Over a man that was taken, or so I thought. Now, all my wonderings over whether they were going to work things out—if he decided to take on another man’s child—that was all null and void. And meant nothing if he was leaving.
 
If he was leaving.
 
A very selfish and immature imp inside me kept asking how he could leave. When a second chance was right there for the taking. When he could look at me like he did—how in holy hell could he walk away again?
 
But that wasn’t the reality of the world. We weren’t independently wealthy people who didn’t need incomes. And Copper Falls held only grief and pain and bad memories for him. So, the logical thing to do would be to go.
 
I’d survived it before. I’d do it again.
 
And there was something else. Something that kept circling around after my talk with Becca. Something that made my heart race every time I considered it, and reminded me of the exhilaration on her face.
 
It was going to be a long night.