Page 42 of Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy!

“And I’d like to think he appreciates that,” Taylor said. “But maybe he just thinks of me as someone who never got over a schoolgirl crush.”

“Is that true? Were you living out your teenage fantasies with him?”

“Maybe it started out that way. But he’s not who he was back then, and neither am I,” Taylor said. “What I feel for him now… it’s different. It’s bigger. Harder to ignore. It’s going to be harder to get over, too.” She sighed and let her hair out of its ponytail, shook it out, and pulled it back up. “The thing is that I don’t believe he’s selfish and flaky. Not anymore. I just wish I believed those things. But I’ve seen too many genuine moments where he cared about what was going on around him, about the people in his life and the people he’d hurt. I really believe the Chesterfield fire is the biggest regret of his life. I think what happened is that he was just too afraid to face it, in the end.”

“Well, I’m surprised,” Maddie said. “I thought he wasn’t like that anymore. I thought he had changed for the better. I mean, I really believed it. To find out that he still has this side to him… yeah, that’s disappointing. I understand why you’re so upset by it. Even if you weren’t in love with him, that would make sense to me.”

“Hang on,” Taylor objected. “I’m not in love with him.”

“Oh,” Maddie said, but she raised her eyebrows skeptically.

“I’m not,” Taylor protested.

“Okay,” Maddie said. “It’s just, you know. You’ve had feelings for him ever since forever. And now he comes back into town and moves into your house?—”

“It was his house too.”

“And the two of you start working on this big project together, which everyone in town knows you were under no obligation at all to help him with, because what did it have to do with you? And now he’s gone and you’re walking around like you’re haunted. I don’t know, Taylor. I’ve never seen you like this before. Guys don’t usually get to you this way.”

“It’s just because I thought I could count on him,” Taylor said weakly, wondering whether that was the truth. “It’s not because I’m in love with him.”

“Well, you’d be the one to know,” Maddie said. “I’m not trying to say I know you better than you know yourself here. It’s just that, as your best friend, sometimes I do.”

“So you are trying to say that.” Taylor couldn’t help laughing a little, despite her unhappiness.

“Maybe a little bit,” Maddie acknowledged. “Maybe I have perspective that you don’t have here.”

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” Taylor said with finality. “We can call it whatever we want, but the point is that he’s not coming back. What difference does it make if I love him or not? That’s not something I can hold on to now.”

“No, I guess it isn’t,” Maddie agreed. “But won’t you feel better if you admit it to yourself?”

“I don’t know.” If anything, Taylor felt a little worse thinking about things in those terms. If Kane was running away because he couldn’t face up to the sins of his past, she could pity him for it. If he was running because he simply didn’t care about anything and was exactly as cold as he seemed to be, she could hate him for it.

But what if it was neither of those things? What if he was running because he knew how she felt about him and thought it was too much to deal with? What if he saw what Maddie did — that Taylor’s feelings were bigger than any she’d ever had before? And what if he had decided that he simply didn’t want to be responsible for those feelings?

That would make it my fault he left. My fault that he ran out on the Chesterfields. My fault that he lost his opportunity to get closure.

It was a thought she could hardly stand. She had spent so long blaming herself for Kane’s flight the first time, wishing that she had handled their last conversation differently. This time, somehow, it felt even more painful to think that she’d let him down.

He hadn’t come here looking for love. He had come here looking for redemption.

Had Taylor ruined it for him by allowing her own feelings to get in the way?

She hated to think that she might have been that selfish, but there was no denying the point Maddie had made. Her feelings for Kane had overpowered all rational thought.

Her friend was right. She had fallen in love, against her better judgment. And in doing so, she thought she might have ruined everything — for herself, for the Chesterfields, and most of all, for Kane.

CHAPTER 22

KANE

The most important thing, Kane decided, was to get out of town quickly. To get away from here before he could do any more harm than he already had. There was no way of taking back the damage he’d already done to Taylor by allowing himself to get close to her, he knew that. She would be hurt when he left, and she had every right to be.

Hopefully, she would be able to reassure herself with the thought that he was simply a jerk. He had a feeling she would reach that conclusion fairly soon after the way he had behaved. And once she did, he knew, she would put the past behind her, and it would be as if he had never come back to town at all.

The more he thought about it, the more he felt as though he should have known all along that what those ladies in the hardware had said about him was the truth. Of course he was no good, a danger to everyone whose lives he touched. He’d let Taylor make him think that he could change, after all these years, but of course he couldn’t. If he thought back through his life, he couldn’t come up with one person who was better off for having known him. The best thing he could do was to go back to Detroit and fix cars — at least he was good at that — and never again require anyone to deal with him on a personal level. Everyone he knew deserved better than he could offer, and Taylor most of all.

He finished packing his things. Then, because he knew he would never be coming back to this house — there was no need, now that he had sold Taylor his share of it — he decided to take a quick last walk around. After that, he would be able to let the place go — he thought — and the past could be the past for good.

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