No Falling Allowed (No Kissing Allowed) (16 page)

“Hi!” Lauren said, excited. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have called, but I couldn’t help it. Did you see your dad yet?” When I didn’t immediately reply, she said, “Oh, no. I ruined it, didn’t I? Hang up, pretend this call never happened.”

I started laughing. “I should have known it was you. What, did you call and yell at him?”

“Good! So he’s already been there?”

“Yes, thanks to you apparently?”

“No, actually, I think it was your mom, or maybe your dad all along. Your mom called me and asked where you were, said that your father needed to talk with you. I gave her the name of the B&B in Cricket Creek. You aren’t mad are you?”

I laid down on my bed, feeling as though a giant weight had been lifted from my chest. “Not at all. We talked. Like, really talked. Maybe for the first time in my life. It was great.”

“So you’re back to being a sexy millionaire who can go wherever and buy anything she wants?”

I laughed, so happy I wanted to burst. “Yep, super millionaire here. I’m off to travel the world on my new yacht. You may never see or hear from me again.” We laughed together, until I heard a creak outside my door that drew my attention over. I listened to see if someone would knock, maybe Lindy or Penny. Maybe Noah. The thought sent a fresh wave of giddiness through me. Everything in my life was coming together. “All right, then, gotta run. But I’ll call you tonight,” I said.

“Yeah, sure you will. Before or after you fall asleep with that hot bartender of yours?”

A smile took over my face, fixed there now. “Okay, so I’ll call you tomorrow morning.”

“Later, friend.”

I hung up and pressed my phone to my chest, before searching through my contacts and clicking NOAH HUNTER.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Noah

I ignored her call. I saw her name, stared down at it, hovered over the accept button, and let it go to voicemail. Like a coward. But truthfully, I wasn’t afraid to talk to her—I was afraid to face what I was sure to hear next. That she was leaving.

Who knew why I went back to the B&B. Maybe because she looked so afraid when she saw her father, or maybe because I was just that addicted to her and needed to see her again. Either way, I waited half an hour and then went back, only to hear her through her door, laughing it up with someone about how she was rich again now, how she was leaving. Never to be seen again. Those were her words, and now I couldn’t stop hearing them.

I picked up Jonah an hour later, the nagging voice in my head returning in full force. I wondered how many yachts the Soaring family had. One? Twenty? I didn’t know. But the realization that money meant that much to Grace made me think that the two of us may never be on the same page.

I would never have millions, would never in my lifetime know what it was like to buy stuff I didn’t need, to travel by yacht, and the truth was I didn’t care. I had what I needed in life, and that had always been enough for me. But would it be enough for her?

The voice in my head said it wouldn’t, and for the first time I couldn’t come up with a good retort. Grace had only ever known wealth, and I knew firsthand that losing everything you’d always considered normal could give you an identity check like nothing else.

I ran a hand over my face, wishing I could come up with a way around this. Time, something. But at the end of the day, I knew that Grace would want her old life…and I would never be able to give it to her. So where did that leave us?

“Noah!”

I grinned as Jonah ran for me and then scooped him up in a big hug. “Scale of one to ten, how fun was it?”

“Twenty bagillion!”

With a chuckle, I took his bag and stowed it in the Jeep, then helped him inside.

“Are we seeing Grace today?”

“Um, I don’t know, why?” The truth was I was supposed to see her tonight, and I went back and forth between wanting to cancel and wanting to keep the date.

“I made her something.” He held out a wooden, bead bracelet. “Do you think she’ll like it?”

I swallowed. “I think she’ll love it, little man.” Then with the full weight of an impossible decision on my chest, I pulled out of the school lot and headed to the bar.

We walked in, and immediately, Scarlett ran up to Jonah and hugged him. “We missed you.”

“We did,” another voice said, and I turned slowly to find Grace walking in behind us.

“Hey.”

Hey,” she said, beaming. “I tried to call you.”

I focused out the windows. “Yeah, sorry, I was going to call you back. I had some stuff to do here.”

“Like what?” Scarlett asked, and I could have killed her right there.

I threw a hand at the windows. “Like wash the windows.”

“Wash the windows. Since when?”

“Since now. They’re horrible.”

Scarlett shot me a look like I’d lost my mind. “Whatever you say. Hey, Jonah, why don’t you come tell me about your weekend, and I’ll fix you a peanut butter and jelly.”

“With a side of jelly?”

She grinned. “Of course.”

They walked away, leaving me alone with Grace and the weight of my dark thoughts. “Can we talk?” she asked.

“Sure.”

“Outside?”

I wanted to tell her that we should wait to talk, that my head wasn’t in the right place, and if pushed, I always veered on the conservative side, which in this situation meant I’d be saying good-bye. Only I didn’t want to say good-bye, not today, not ever. Why couldn’t this be easier? Why couldn’t Grace want a simple life, like me? But then, that was selfish. She deserved to be happy, and if a yacht would make her happy, then so be it. I wanted her to be happy. Even if that meant she wouldn’t be with me.

My chest hurt as I pushed through the back door and started for the dock, the certainty of what I was about to do taking over my head and heart.

“I’m sorry for how my dad treated you earlier,” she said once we stopped, the water all around us. “He was startled to see you, but he isn’t a bad man. Actually, we came to an agreement.”

I faced her then, unable to hold back. “I know. I came back by your room. I heard you. You have it all again, right? You’re taking your millions and leaving.”

She pulled back. “What? But I didn’t—”

“Didn’t think I would hear you? Didn’t think I would care that you want to travel the world, disappear back into the comfort of your wealth?”

“You know I don’t care about the money, that it isn’t me. You know me. Or at least I thought you did…maybe I was wrong.”

“Maybe you were.”

Her eyes narrowed and she studied me, waiting for me to say the next thing, but I knew anything from me would only make it worse.

“Look, Jonah just got back. Let’s talk later. Tomorrow.”

“I thought we were getting together tonight.”

I turned toward the water, my gaze on the storm brewing overhead, and pressed my palms into the railing, my head dropping below my arms, before I glanced back up. “I think you should take some time to think.”

“You mean
you
need some time to think. Can’t you at least look at me?”

I spun around and immediately wished I hadn’t. Her eyes were red from the effort to not cry, and I felt like stabbing myself in the chest for hurting her. But then I noticed Jonah waving from the windows, and I knew that at the end of the day, this could never work out. She wanted the world, and I couldn’t give it to her, but at least I could be honest with her.

“Yes, I need some time to think.”

“About what?”

“About all the crap that happened earlier today.”

“With my dad? I explained that, he’s—”

“It isn’t him.”

“Then what?”

“It’s you! You want those things. Sure, you want your freedom and want to create your own life, but you want it in that world. You like having money. You like having things. You like not having to worry about your next meal. And I get it, I do. But that’s not my life…and it never will be.”

Tears slipped down her cheeks in slow, sad lines, and I ached to reach out and swipe them away, pull her to me and tell her I didn’t mean any of it. I was sorry. But I couldn’t, because at the end of the day, I knew my words were the truth.

“You’re wrong. Yes, I want to experience life, but I’m not…” She stopped herself, and I knew she was thinking about what I’d said, contemplating whether I was right. My heart sank into my chest. “We’re just starting, and you want things, too,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

I released a sarcastic laugh. “See that. That’s the problem. You want me to want more, but I don’t. This is my life, and it’s enough for me.”

“You can hide behind your parents’ deaths, and lie to yourself about your real wants and dreams, but you can’t lie to me. They died, Noah, not you.”

The anger simmering inside me bubbled over. “You think you know so much about me, huh? Well, let me fill you in. My parents didn’t just die. They died in a car crash. A car crash caused by me. I was lit, Grace, six shades to the fucking wind, landed myself in jail, and they came to get me in the middle of the night, Jonah asleep in the backseat. They died driving to get my wasted, piece of shit self out of jail. So you can stand there and act like we live in the same world, with the same problems, but you don’t know a thing about the real world. My parents are dead! And I will never let myself forget why.”

A crash of thunder boomed overhead, and then the sky opened up, pouring down on us, yet neither of us moved. “You promised,” she said.

Pain washed over me, coating me in it, because she was right. I had promised. With her scent still in the air and her body pressed against me, all of it a dream, I would have promised her the world, and the truth was I wanted to keep that promise. God, did I ever want to keep it. But I couldn’t.

“You should go.”

She nodded, her jaw set now. “You know, I thought you were different. I thought finally,
finally
someone saw me for me. But no, you’re just like everyone else.”

I waited until she was down the dock, running through the rain, before I slumped to the ground, the rain soaking me as I dropped my head. Whoever said love lasted forever was an evil jackass. Because time and again, fate proved to me that it couldn’t. At least not for me.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Grace

There was once a time that I thought I was immune to heartbreak. That my mind could push aside a crush, my heart close its doors.

Then I met Noah.

It had been five days since I left Cricket Creek and returned to New York. Five days of trying to figure out how to go on and finally accept that someone had broken through all my walls, and now I didn’t know how to be the old me. Or even if I wanted to be that person anymore.

“Sweetheart…”

I glanced up at my mother, not sure why I had agreed to our Friday night dinner, but I needed the familiar around me. I needed to see that my life before Noah really had existed and that I had been fine. Would be fine again. Because right that second I felt like my heart no longer worked, and I wasn’t sure how to repair it.

“I’m sorry. I…” But what could I say? There were no words.

She rose from her chair in their sitting room and walked over to me. My father still hadn’t arrived due to a business call running long, so it was just the two of us.

Mom sat down beside me and patted my leg, then peeked at me below her full lashes, her eyes glassy. “I don’t know how to help you through this if you won’t talk to me about it. I know I haven’t…” She swallowed, then shrugged a bit, the move so unlike my mother that I reached for her hand in an effort to soothe her. Or maybe it was to ease me. “I have never been the sort of mother to listen, but these last few weeks without you… Well, I’m listening now. I’m here. Talk to me.”

Once again, I tried to find the right words, a way to tell my mother that she couldn’t help me. Not through this. Not when I’d cried until there were no more tears. Not when I’d picked up my phone a thousand times just to look at his name, so desperate to call him. But I didn’t. Because what would I say that I hadn’t already said? Nothing. And then he would turn me away again, and I didn’t think I could handle it for a second time.

“Grace, please…”

Finally, I leaned my head on my mother’s shoulder and released a rattled breath. “Someone broke my heart, Mom, and I don’t know what to do now. How do I make it go away when I still love him? When I still think he’s the best person I’ve ever known? How do I go on when I already know there’s no one else. He’s my perfect person, but I’m—I’m—” My voice broke around a sob. “I’m not his. He’s great, and I’m just…not.”

“Oh, dear. Now, I may not be the wisest woman in the world, but I know people, and you are not merely great. You are one of a kind. Intelligent and funny and so kindhearted. Any man deserving of your affection already knows these things about you. You claim to love him. Do you believe that he loves you back?”

I held up my hands and then dropped them back in my lap lifelessly. “I don’t know. I thought he could love me. But his life is complicated, and he probably felt I made things more complicated.”

At that, Mom wrapped an arm around my shoulder, hugging me close. “Did you talk about the complications? How you felt about them? How he felt about them?”

I thought back to all our interactions—the talks about him raising Jonah, about me living in New York City and him living down South. But never once did we discuss how our relationship would work in spite of those things, only that we wanted to try. Or I wanted to try.

“No…we didn’t. We had just begun, and then he…” Even now, I couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong. “I don’t know what happened.”

“Then perhaps that is part of the problem. Maybe he pushed you away to protect himself. Or in his mind he did it to protect you. Either way, I think it would do you both some good to talk about it. At least then you’ll know.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Noah

“You’re an idiot.”

I sighed as I dropped a dirty rag into the trash behind the counter and went to the sink to wash my hands. “Not the first time I’ve heard you say that, and probably won’t be the last. And I’d like to remind you that I’m your boss. Meaning, I sign your paycheck.”

Scarlett rolled her eyes. “As though that scares me. You couldn’t run this place without me.”

She was right about that, but I wouldn’t admit it. At least not now when I was already knee-deep in self-doubt.

For the hundredth time, I replayed my last conversation with Grace, the look on her face, and I wished with all my heart I could hit rewind. Take it all back and beg her to pretend none of it had happened. But then I thought about how long I’d stared at my phone that night, then the next day, and then the next. Never once did she call. And I realized that maybe I’d given her the break she needed.

Scarlett stepped in front of me then, blocking me from heading to the back. “I know what you’re going to do. And I’m not going to let you do it.”

“Not going to let me grab some more napkins? Fine, then, you grab them.”

“That wasn’t what you were going to do and you know it. You were going to stare at your phone like a fool. Then you were going to stare out into space like an even bigger fool when you see that she hasn’t called. Well, let me save you the trouble—she’s not going to call. Want to know why?”

“No, not really.”

Scarlett pointed at me in warning. “I’m going to tell you anyway. She isn’t going to call because you ended things.
You
did. If you want to talk to her, you need to call her. But you won’t, will you? Which brings me back to you being an idiot.”

“Well now that we’ve cleared that up.” I tried to step around her, but she blocked me again, and I seriously considered firing her just so she’d get the hell out of my way. “Move.”

“No.”

“Whatcha doing?”

I closed my eyes at the sound of Lindy’s voice from beside us, every bone in my body tense now. Why couldn’t they all leave me alone?

“I’m trying to tell Noah that he’s being an idiot for not calling Grace.”

Lindy sat down at one of the stools at the bar and nodded. “Yeah, I’d agree with that. But we can fix this real easy.”

I drew a long breath, wishing I’d called in sick, but I’d done that the day after Grace left, and people were still asking me if I was all right. “Fine, I’ll bite. How can I fix it?”

A kind smile curved her mouth. “You can call her.”

Tossing my hands in the air, I fought the urge to scream. “Actually, no, I can’t call her, because calling her doesn’t change anything. I have—”

“Responsibilities, we know,” Scarlett said, her tone full of sarcasm. “But you could have Grace, too, if you’d be willing to try. Let down your guard, Hunter, and try.”

The thought settled over me as Scarlett took Lindy’s order, giving me a chance to slip into the back. I pulled out my cell and checked my calls, my texts, my voicemails, but there were no signs that Grace had tried to contact me. And truthfully, Scarlett was right. Grace
shouldn’t
call me.

But I still wished with everything in me that she would.