Dark hair tousled, eyes a deep, depthless blue.
It’s the guy I met this summer. The guy from the beach.
A friend of my brother’s.
A friend of mine?
“Noah,” I don’t mean to say out loud, but it slips from my lips.
My brother jerks beside me, and a choppy exhale pours from Noah’s lips.
My stomach tightens, and his forehead follows suit.
“I was hit by your football.”
He swallows. “You were.”
“You came to the bonfire.”
“I didn’t stay long.”
“I know, I remember.”
He licks his lips, giving a stiff nod. “I have that effect.”
A small laugh slips from me, but I cut it short the second I realize, and something softens in his gaze. As if it takes effort, he jerkily tears his eyes away. He looks to my brother, but only for a moment, before his gaze comes right back to me.
There’s something a little different about him, but I can’t put my finger on what.
“I, um,” he begins, the rasp in his tone rattling my throat. “I can’t stay.”
Mason flies to his feet so fast his shoes squeak against the floor, and a strange sense of unease builds behind my ribs.
“Okay.”
Noah looks up at the ceiling a moment, and when his gaze comes back, it’s beaten. “I found some people you’ll be really happy to see,” he tells me.
I don’t take my eyes off his as he glances behind him, and then he moves aside, someone else stepping through.
Relief wooshes through me, and my face falls into my hands, full, heavy weeps instantly tearing from me, completely overcome with the most welcome sight.
I sob, my body shaking, and then strong arms wrap around me, holding me close. “Dad.”
“It’s okay, baby girl.” His voice cracks. “It’s okay. I’m here. Your mama’s here.”
Mason sniffles beside me, and then my mom is there, running her hands over my hair. I fall into her chest, and my dad holds us close, but not before my attention is called across the room.
To Noah.
Who is already staring, and while he seems to ease before my eyes, his tell a different story. Only, before I’m given the chance to look further, he’s gone.
Noah
* * *
Outside the door, I fall against the wall, my eyes closing as I drag a deep breath through my nostrils, slowly blowing the air from my mouth.
I left again, walked out.
I looked into my baby’s eyes, saw that familiar flicker burn within them, and watched it fade away.
Again.
It took all I had not to go to her, to drop to my knees beside her and kiss her. To kiss the spot that would soon grow with our child if the world had been kinder.
It’s not. I know this from experience, but I’d have given anything to have been able to keep her from ever finding out.
Palming my chest, I push off the wall, but I don’t get two feet from it before footsteps fall behind me.
“Where you going?” Mason’s voice follows me farther into the hall. “Why even come if you’re just gonna cut out again?”
“Your mom saw me in the parking lot, asked me to walk her up. I couldn’t say no, but maybe I should have.”
“Why were you in the parking lot?”
I swallow. “Go back in with your family, Mason.”
“You go back in with your family!”
At that, I whip around, ready to tear into him, but the smirk on his lips throws me off.
Of course, it’s only there long enough for that, falling flat in the next second, and that same helplessness eating away at me washes over him. “You’re family, Noah. The minute she decided you were, that’s what you became.” He steps closer. “Don’t leave. She needs you.”
“She doesn’t even know me.”
“You heard her; she remembers everything that happened over summer. It’s everything after her last day there that’s fuzzy for her, but she remembers you.”
I shake my head, a heavy throbbing creeping in.
Goddamn it, why does that almost feel worse?
“She remembers some guy from the beach who she sat and talked to for a minute, just like she remembers being in love with someone else that day. The same someone who she sat in that hospital bed and reached for when the entire room found out she was growing a child inside of her and lost it. Our child, my child that she thinks was his. That she sat and mourned with another man in mind, not me.” A burning sense of torment spreads through me, and I swallow. “I didn’t get to comfort the woman I love after a loss no one should have to face, and I will never forgive myself for that. Ever.”