Page 39 of Fall From Grace
Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Keep going.I placed Gus down and he started running circles around me. Wait a second, I turned back around but Noah was already out of the Jeep.
“Grace!” he called my name.
“Your number!” we said at the same time and started laughing.
Feeling a little flushed, I grabbed my phone out of my spandex underwear and skirt—I kept it on my hip. “Do you have a cell phone?” I asked.
“Yeah, give me your phone, I’ll save my number.” I did and watched as he punched it in. I heard his phone go off in his Jeep as he handed it back to me.
“That would have been so painful to leave you again without a way to contact you,” he told me with a silly grin.
“It really would have,” I admitted, feeling the pain all over again that he was leaving.
Noah started waving. “Hi, Mrs. Harper.”
I turned around and saw Mom waving back with a know-it-all grin. “Hi, Noah,” she whispered then pointed toward the house to let us know she was being quiet because she didn’t want Dad to know.
He looked at me with a soulful expression. “Bye, Grace.”
“Bye, Noah.”
I didn’t move from that spot as I watched him get in his Jeep. My phone beeped just as he started it up and left. It was a text from him.
I want that pic of u and Gus
He had to be talking about my home screen.
just send me every picture of you. I want them all.
I hugged the phone to my chest.
Seven-year-old Noah tried to claim my treehouse as his own…
Thirteen-year-old Noah stole my first kiss…
Seventeen-year-old Noah stole my air to breathe and his right to exist in this world anywhere without me.
“My, what a beautiful night we’re having tonight,” Mom chirped behind me.
I coughed as I twisted around. “Why would you keep us separated for so long?”
“Because was your night not full of surprises and new romance?” Mom waggled her brows and literally spun around on her toes. She looked at me and sighed. “Distance makes the heart grow fonder. With the two of you already pining over each other as kids, imagine what that could amount to when you get older.”
I rolled my eyes and didn’t smile—even though she looked goofy. “Mom stop making this a joke. You played with your daughter’s feelings, how could you do that?”
From her expression, I knew she had become serious about it. “I wanted to see what Noah would do… I refused to give him our number and told him to adjust to his surroundings and not to disappoint me, and of course, I told him to do all this without having contact with you.” Mom bunched up her shoulders as she walked across the porch and bent over the banister. “I told him to call me in a few years if he still wanted to get in touch with you, and of course, he called back. End of story.”
“I don’t get it. Why’d you do it?”
“Because, my darling daughter, you might not believe it but I’ve been rooting for Noah in my own way. I always will even though it doesn’t look like it. I want Noah to succeed in whatever he plans to do with his life. I just know that you are a huge part of that goal.” I frowned and she turned away with a smile. “I mean, you’re the reason that boy doesn’t know how to let anything get him down, he’s got a lot to prove from the looks of it. I wonder who he wants to prove himself to and who it is he’s doing it for?” She eyed the house then me before she started giggling like a kid. “I feel like I’m truly blessed to have gotten to see the two of you grow up together.”
I shook my head and finally smiled. “I give up.” I climbed the porch steps and hugged her. “Thanks for sending me back to Noah, and thanks for believing in him like I do.”
“I believe in you too.”
21
Grace age 16