Page 25 of Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy!

Kane looked up at her in some consternation. It had been difficult enough to face the task of driving through town twice in one day. Now she was telling him that she wanted to run an errand?

“I’m sorry,” she said, clearly reading the look on his face. “But we need food. Don’t worry. You don’t need to come in. I placed an online order, so all we need to do is pull up to the front door and the shopper will load us up.”

Well, that wasn’t so bad. There was still the possibility that the shopper would see Kane, he supposed, but maybe that wouldn’t happen. Either way, they did need groceries. Taylor was right about that. He supposed it couldn’t be helped. Still, he wished that he’d worn the sunglasses he’d been using lately to shield himself from the stares of people in town — she had been right about that, too. Taylor Levine noticed everything.

He pulled up in front of the grocery store and Taylor got out to deal with the shopper. In the rearview mirror, Kane saw that it was a teenage kid, which meant that there was at least some chance he didn’t know who Kane was. Or if he did, at least he probably wouldn’t be able to recognize Kane by sight.

Loading up the car turned out to be quick and relatively painless, and then they were on their way. “Thanks for stopping,” Taylor said.

“It’s not a problem.” It was, a little bit, but it had been less of a problem than he had anticipated, and Taylor nodded and turned her attention to the road as they made their way home.

It wasn’t until they had arrived that Kane realized what she had been doing. He helped her carry the bags inside and unloaded them on the counter. He was looking through them, doing his best to figure out where they were going to put everything, when he suddenly realized that the ingredients before him were familiar ones.

“I know what this is,” he said, turning to face her.

Her cheeks colored. “Do you mind?”

“That you’re making my dad’s chili recipe?”

“I thought you might like to have it,” she explained. “And Jason taught me how to make it. I hope… I hope that doesn’t bother you. The fact that he shared it with me. I think he always wanted to share it with someone.”

“And you’re the one who was here,” Kane said. “No, I don’t mind. Better this than that it had died with him.”

Taylor nodded. “I hoped that’s how you would see it,” she said softly. “And I’ll show you how to make it, so you’ll always have it in your back pocket.”

“Why are you doing all this?”

“I just wanted to thank you for helping me out this morning,” Taylor said. “I know that wasn’t an easy thing for you to do.”

“I don’t think I really have any excuse for it to be a difficult thing for me,” Kane said honestly. “I’m back in town now. I have to face up to my past.”

“I never thought I would hear you say that,” Taylor admitted. “I thought you were done with this town forever. Even now that you’ve had to come back, I thought you’d bail as soon as you could.”

“Well, don’t get me wrong. I’m still going to bail as soon as I can.” He smiled wryly. “I can’t even drive down Main Street without being reminded that I’m the town pariah. I’ll always be an outcast here, so there’s no point in me trying to come back with any degree of permanence.”

“That’s why you never came back, isn’t it?” Taylor asked. “You were worried the town wouldn’t accept you.”

“Of course they wouldn’t. You can’t think they would have?”

“I don’t know,” Taylor said. “I don’t know what the town would have done. But I know what your father would have done. He always wanted you to come back, Kane. More than anything. And he worried that he was the reason you were staying away, that you thought he personally was angry with you. He told me that the two of you exchanged harsh words before you left, and that he always regretted it. He told me that he thought he had driven you to go.”

Kane sighed. “It was never that simple.”

“Can you reach that big pot for me?”

Kane pulled it down from the hook over the kitchen island and handed it to her, and Taylor began to mix in the ingredients for the chili.

“I didn’t leave because of Dad,” Kane said. “Not really. A lot of things happened all at once. It’s true that our fight did make me feel bad. But we fought with each other plenty of times. That alone wouldn’t have driven me to go.”

“No, I’m sure it wouldn’t,” Taylor said. “Still… I can understand how he felt. He always wondered whether, if he had handled that day differently, if he had been more sympathetic to you instead of calling you out for what you had done… if maybe you would have stayed.”

She looked up at him.

And in that moment, Kane realized they weren’t just talking about his father anymore.

“This is about you and me,” he said quietly.

“It isn’t only about you and me.”

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