Page 27 of Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy!

“Hey, there’s plenty of nutrition in the chili,” Taylor laughed. “It’s packed with protein, and onions are good for you.”

“I kind of wish you’d been around back then to make that case to my dad. Maybe he would have given in if he’d heard it from you,” Kane said with a smile.

“Oh, you think so?”

“You were always the most persuasive of our friends. You could talk anybody into anything.”

“Is that really what you think of me?” Taylor asked, taken aback. It made her sound so manipulative.

“It’s a good thing,” he assured her. “It’s why you were the voice of reason in our group.”

“What? No I wasn’t.”

“Yeah, you were,” he said. “Whenever we were getting into something crazy, you were the one who would speak up and stop things from going too far. Remember the time everyone was about to start jumping off the roof of the Chesterfields’ barn to see who could do the best stunts in midair?”

Taylor did remember. She hadn’t thought about that in years. “Someone would definitely have gotten themselves killed.”

“I know,” Kane said.

“That didn’t stop you at the time. You were pissed off as anything when I put a stop to it. You called me a drag.”

“Oh, I was just bitter because I could see you had something I didn’t,” Kane said. “People listened to you. People took you seriously in a way they never did with me. Which was a good thing, of course, because you were the one who was being sensible, but it made me feel threatened. It felt like I was powerless next to you.”

“I felt the same way, you know,” Taylor said.

“You did? Why would you feel like that?”

“People might have respected my advice, but you were the one they liked,” Taylor said. “You were the exciting one. The life of the party. I always felt like people let me hang around with that group because I was friends with Maddie — that if I hadn’t been connected to her, I wouldn’t have been a part of the group.”

“Well, that’s probably true,” Kane admitted. “But it’s kind of true about everyone. Everyone was connected to someone in that group. I was friends with Bradley. Bradley and Maddie were dating. Ian was Maddie’s cousin, and Gray and Scott were on the basketball team with him… It was all things like that. Little connections that pulled the group together. I wonder how many people from those days are even still in contact with one another.”

“Well, Maddie and I are still close,” Taylor said. “And I told you that she and Bradley had gotten married, and that’s going well. Not many people still live in Miller Creek, of course. Most of them followed in your footsteps and took off a few years after high school. But I’m still connected to most of our old friends on social media, and we talk sometimes.”

He nodded.

Taylor hesitated. “Have you ever thought of reaching out to any of them?” she asked. “I think people would like to hear from you.”

“Nobody would want to hear from me,” Kane said.

“I think you’re wrong about that,” Taylor told him. “I would have liked to hear from you. If you’d reached out a long time ago, I would have wanted to know how you were doing. I would have been glad you had made the effort.”

“That’s only because you were working with my father and you knew that he wanted to hear from me.”

“No,” Taylor said. “I mean, I won’t say that wasn’t a part of it. I knew he wanted you home, and I wanted that to happen for him because I cared about him. But even if that hadn’t been the case, I would’ve wanted to see you again, Kane.”

“Why?”

“I don’t like the way you and I left things all those years ago,” she explained. “The last time we talked, before you left…I wasn’t very nice to you.”

“I didn’t deserve to have anyone be very nice to me,” he said.

“Of course you did. People always deserve kindness.”

“See, that’s the kind of thing you used to say, even back then, that I could never have come up with,” he said. “That’s why people listened to you and never to me. You were just more right about things like that. I’d have been more likely to say that someone like me had no business talking to anyone at all, and that if I chose to take off out of town after what I had done then good riddance to me.”

“I don’t think you would have said that,” Taylor said. “Or if you did say it, I don’t think you would have meant it.”

“You’re giving me too much credit.”

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