Forever Summer - Melody Grace Page 0,57

It was in the past, that’s what he’d been telling himself for months now. Ancient history. He’d done his grieving and left it all behind in Nashville, a shadow in his rearview mirror. He was starting over back in Sweetbriar Cove, and meeting Evie had felt like being given a fresh slate: a way to ignore the past and move on.

But maybe there was no pushing past it. It was always there, in the background, even when he tried to pretend otherwise. The wound that still felt raw and pained.

The daughter he never got to hold.

Noah wasn’t sure how long they’d been sitting there when he felt Evie take his hand. She gave it a gentle squeeze. He forced himself to look over at her, and her found her watching him with heartbreaking tenderness in her eyes.

“I’m so sorry,” she said in a whisper. “I can’t imagine what that must have been like.”

But maybe she could. She’d lost someone she’d loved, after all. And knowing she’d been through that made Noah take a deep breath—and finally start to speak.

“It’s why we got engaged,” he said quietly. “I mean, we’d been dating for a couple of years, and things were going great, but I wasn’t thinking about the future just yet. And then Caitlin got pregnant, and I just … I was so happy. Shocked, but happy.” He paused, his chest growing tight with the familiar ache. Looking back now, it had all seemed so simple. Sure, he’d been nervous about being a father, but with every sonogram and doctor’s appointment, his excitement had grown.

“So, I proposed, and we started planning,” he continued. “For the future. For our family. Everything seemed like it had fallen into place. And then Caitlin started getting cramps. We were nearly six months along. We went in to get her checked, and … they couldn’t find a heartbeat.”

He couldn’t say the rest, there weren’t any words for it, so he just watched the waves roll in until he found his voice again.

“After … I tried to be there for Caitlin,” he continued. “We went to a counselor, and they said it takes time to heal from something like that. But Caitlin didn’t want to take any time at all. She … changed,” he said, feeling the hollow ache in his chest all over again. “She pulled away from me, and she didn’t want to talk about it—or even act like it happened at all. I tried to help. I thought we could get through it together, but she … she didn’t want that. She started staying out late, partying with new friends, acting like I was some kind of buzzkill every time I tried to ask if she was OK. I know it was out of grief,” he said with a sigh. “It was her way of trying to deal with things. But she shut me out. There was nothing I could do. And in the end, she just came straight out and said it was over.”

Evie squeezed his hand again.

“I know she was the one who went through it,” he said. “And however she needed to cope was her choice, but still …”

“You lost something too,” Evie finished for him, her voice gentle.

Noah nodded. “It felt like everything got ripped away all at once. The life we’d been planning, it was just … gone.”

And he was left alone, with nothing more than a diamond ring and a half-built crib to show for all those dreams.

“Anyway,” he said, pulling himself back to the present. “Time passed. I kept seeing the counselor for a while, on my own, and that really helped. But I just couldn’t stay in that town anymore. It belonged to a different life, you know?”

Evie nodded. “I had to change apartments after Glen died,” she said softly. “I didn’t want to. I loved our old place, but … that whole neighborhood reminded me too much of him. The coffee shop we went every morning before work, the little bar on the corner …” Her voice was full of memories. “It hurt too much.”

They sat there in silence, watching the waves turn darker as the sun sank lower in the sky.

“It’s amazing, how the human heart can heal,” Evie said at last. “If you’d tried to tell me two years ago that I would be able to start over. That I’d be happy again … well, I probably would have smacked you in the face,” she said with a wry chuckle.

Noah found himself smiling.