Page 17 of Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy!

When he could wait no longer — Toby was scratching at the door and whining to go out — Kane got out of bed and headed down to the kitchen. He was dismayed to see that Taylor was still there, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and brewing a pot of coffee.

She leaned back against the counter. “I was starting to wonder if I would see you this morning,” she said. “Do you always sleep in so late?”

Even though he had come into the kitchen this morning determined to be nicer, Kane felt riled instantly. What was she criticizing him for? “Didn’t you get enough of picking my life apart when we were kids?” he asked crossly, going to the refrigerator.

“Hey,” she said. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Getting something for breakfast.”

“You could ask first.”

“This is my place too, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, the house. The groceries are mine. Everything in this house is mine, except for your father’s possessions and the stuff you left here.”

That got his attention. “The stuff I left here?”

“Your old things.” She regarded him for a moment. “Your dad never got rid of anything, you know. He left your room intact. It was like he was waiting for you to come back.”

Kane didn’t know what to say to that. “Where are those things now?”

“I packed them up after… after he died,” Taylor said. “They’re in boxes. I know maybe I shouldn’t have touched them, but I couldn’t keep that room as a shrine to you and still live here. It would have been too sad. I had to put those things away so I wouldn’t end up spending every day thinking about…” She trailed off.

“About how I wasn’t here when he died,” Kane finished for her.

She sighed. “I wouldn’t have done it if I had known you were coming back,” she said. “I would have waited for you to get here, if nothing else. But I had no way of knowing you’d be here so soon.”

“No, I guess you didn’t,” Kane agreed. “Look, I’m not mad about it. We can probably throw out most of the things you’re talking about anyway.”

“Your dad never touched your room, though,” Taylor said. “I want you to know that, Kane. If you’d gotten here two weeks ago, it would have been exactly the way you left it when we were eighteen. I’m the one who moved everything.”

“Well, thanks for letting me know.” Kane wasn’t sure how to feel about that. It added more guilt to what he was already feeling. His father never giving up hope that he would come back — that must mean that he would have welcomed Kane home if he had decided to come. It was hard to have to face the fact that he could have come home, and that he simply hadn’t.

“Are you going to get a hotel room tonight?” Taylor asked him.

Kane shook his head. “I can’t really do that,” he said.

“You can’t?”

“Well, for one thing, I’ve got Toby here,” he said. “I can’t keep him in a hotel.”

“Oh.” Taylor frowned. “I never thought of that.”

“I also can’t really afford the costs of staying in a hotel for the amount of time I’m going to need to be in town,” he said. “I was planning on staying at the house. I didn’t think I was going to need to make other arrangements.”

“Okay,” Taylor said. “I guess… I mean, this is your house too, so you can stay here if you want to.”

He thought of pointing out that she wouldn’t have been able to order him away even if she had wanted to, but he changed his mind. All things considered, Taylor was being pretty cordial, and he found that he didn’t want to make this more contentious than it had to be. “Thanks,” he said. “I appreciate it. Hopefully I won’t need to be in town too long — I don’t want anyone to know I’m here, so I’m planning to do what I need to do and get out as quickly as I can.”

She looked like she wanted to comment on that, but she restrained herself. “I’m sure it won’t take too long,” she said. “I mean, I’m not going to have the money to buy out your half of the house within the next few days…”

“That’s okay. We can figure out some kind of payment plan,” he said.

“I don’t know if I want to be in your debt.” Taylor frowned. “This is going to be a hassle.”

“Just like my dad, sticking us with something like that,” Kane said.

“You don’t need to be rude about it. He could have just left me the house outright.”

---