Page 92 of First Love, Second Draft

“You wouldn’t have had to do it alone.”

“I was already doing it alone!” Gracie shot a glance around the restaurant and lowered her voice. “Sorry. I thought I could do this, but I can’t.”

54

Gracie saw Noah’s hand reach across the table for her. “Gracie, wait. Let me help you.”

“I’m fine.” She wasn’t. Not by a long shot. But she had to get away from him. Regroup. Somehow scrape her puddled ice queen back into a block of ice. “Just pay and I’ll wait for you outside,” she muttered, not even sure if he heard her over the music and din of conversation.

Her vision blurred as she rushed outside, cold air smacking her bare arms. Shoot, she’d forgotten to grab her coat. She started to turn, then batted her hand. Forget it.

“Oh, sorry,” she said, nearly colliding into a young couple on their way into the restaurant. “Sorry.” Limping away, she passed several more people on the sidewalk. Noah had dropped her off, so she had no idea where he’d parked. Hopefully somewhere this direction.

She kept walking, her hip throbbing from where she’d banged it against the table in her rush to escape.

She spotted Noah’s Jeep parked on the side of the road at the same moment she heard his voice. “Gracie, hold up.”

The warmth of her coat settled over her shoulders just as she reached the passenger’s side. Without turning to face him, Gracie hugged herself and spoke. “I didn’t mean to call you before the game that day.”

Wind whipped a slice of her hair against her cheek. She attempted to tuck it behind her ear, only for the wind to slap it right back in her face.

“I was going to wait until the next time I saw you in person. Or at least wait until after you’d pitched. I told myself not to call. Then I told myself just to wish you good luck. I didn’t mean to tell you—” Her words clogged in her throat, but the memories refused to be tamed any more than her hair in the wind.

She’d kept the pregnancy test results a secret for weeks. After so many negative readings, she hadn’t wanted to jinx the first positive. So she’d kept quiet. Waited for her first appointment, planning to surprise Noah with the ultrasound photos afterward. Their dream had finally come true. A baby. They could finally turn that spare bedroom into a nursery.

For the first time in a long time, she had more than hope. She had an answer to prayer.

But that absent heartbeat had changed everything.

“I knew it was a mistake as soon as I hung up the phone. I thought about what a jerk move that was, giving you news like that right before your game. But I think part of me was hoping you wouldn’t pitch. Part of me was hoping you’d come home. I didn’t want to be by myself, but I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know what to do. Somehow I found myself driving to St. Louis.”

“You came to my game? You were there that night?”

Gracie nodded. “Everyone assumed I was there because of that boy. It was the only thing anybody talked about. How often you’d visited him at the hospital during his treatments. How close you two had gotten. How you had promised him to ‘win big’ that night. And sure enough, I watched you pitch inning after inning, true to your word. You were his hero. Everybody’s hero. But all I could think about the entire drive home was that I needed you to be mine.

“Later that night was the first time I started thinking you were right. It was time to move on. Let go of this whole motherhood dream. Let go of our marriage. By that point it felt like you already had.”

“Gracie.” Noah turned her around, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I never wanted to let go of anything. Definitely not you. I just didn’t know how to make things better.”

“I know, I know. And you know what—it’s fine. Really. It took me a while, but I’m finally starting to see how our divorce worked out for the best. It was the only thing that allowed me to move on. The only thing that eventually allowed us to be friends again.”

“We are not friends.”

“We’ve practically been living under the same roof for almost a month without killing each other. How many divorced couples can say that?”

“We are not friends.”

“Now we’re working on this memoir project together. Sharing a nice dinner out. We’re not letting things get complicated between us.”

This time he didn’t say anything. Just slid his hand around the back of her neck and tugged her mouth against his. He wasn’t holding her tight. She could have moved away.

But Gracie didn’t want to move away. She wanted to move the complete opposite of away. She molded against him and slid her hands to his back, wanting to get closer.

He tasted like chocolate frosting and coffee and everything familiar. Everything she recognized. Everything she missed.

He deepened the kiss. They must have been spinning because he nudged her backwards, pressing her against his Jeep and trapping her there. Not that Gracie minded. She had no desire to escape. If she was going to fall off the wagon with kissing her ex-husband, she was going to enjoy every blessed moment of it.

And apparently so was Noah. He didn’t seem to mind the fact they were kissing on a busy public street any more than she did at the moment.

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