Page 28 of Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy!

“You’re not giving yourself enough credit, Kane. I know you. And I get it. You’re having a hard time with being back here after everything, and it’s probably not easy to evaluate yourself fairly. That makes sense. But think it through. What did you do when you left town?”

“I joined the military,” Kane said.

Taylor nodded. “I know,” she said. “Your father told me.”

“I didn’t realize he knew that.” Kane admitted. “I never told him.”

“He received a couple of pieces of mail from the government that let him know what was going on,” Taylor said. “As I understand it, they weren’t very explicit, but the first one indicated you’d enlisted and the second one was something that was sent out when someone’s tenure of service reached its end. So he knew that you had served and that you were finished with your service. It was something he took great pride in.”

“Really?”

“He thought it was great,” Taylor said. “He used to say that he never knew you had it in you to do something so selfless.”

“Well… that’s a little mixed, as far as compliments go,” Kane said with a chuckle.

“It means you’re better than he realized you were,” Taylor said. “And you’re better than you realize you are, too, because when you ran off on your own, you didn’t lose yourself in hedonistic pleasures. You did something good for the world.”

“I think I just did it because I didn’t know what to do with myself at the time,” Kane said. “I’ve never admitted that to anyone before. It’s a lot easier to let people run with the story that I had some kind of heroic mindset. Actually, I think I was feeling lost.”

“Of course you were feeling lost,” Taylor said. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.” She could tell he felt like he was admitting to some dark secret, and she wanted to let him know that it wasn’t like that. “You had just left behind everything you knew,” she told him. “Your whole life had been upended. So of course you were at a loose end. I would have been shocked to hear that you weren’t.”

“So you see why you can’t act like I was doing anything special by enlisting,” Kane said. “I was just doing what I had to do.”

But Taylor shook her head. “You were lost and looking for a place to land,” she said. “I understand that. But you still made a choice. A lot of people would have fallen into drugs or crime. If I had made a guess about you when we were young, I would have guessed that you would move to a big city and spend your time partying and hooking up with women who meant nothing to you.”

“I’ve never done that,” he said.

“What? Party?”

“No,” he said. “I’ve never hooked up with anyone who meant nothing to me.”

“No one-night stands?”

“Oh, no, plenty of those.” He gave her a wry grin. “I’m not trying to say I’m always in relationships. But before I bring a woman home, I make it a point to at least learn something about her, so she doesn’t end up as just another notch on my bedpost or anything like that.”

Taylor nodded. “What about relationships? Have you been in many?”

“None since I left town,” he said. “I just haven’t felt like that’s something I could make room for in my life — and besides, I haven’t met anyone I was interested in like that.”

She nodded. “Well, we have that in common.”

“You haven’t met anyone you were interested in?” He frowned. “You never dated in high school either.”

“Well, that was different.”

“How so?”

“I was interested in someone in high school.”

Taylor couldn’t believe she had said it out loud. But what was the point in holding back? He was being honest with her, and she didn’t want to go on lying about her feelings. And besides, it didn’t matter. He was only here for a short time. Soon enough, he’d be gone again. What difference did it make if he knew now that she had had a crush on him when they were young?

But he was looking at her as if it made a great deal of difference. “Do you… who are you talking about?”

“I think you know who I’m talking about,” she said. “You said yourself that I was the last person who seemed willing to help you, right? You must have been aware of my feelings.”

“No,” he said quietly. “I never knew. I never guessed.”

“Well, it was a long time ago,” she said quietly. “A lot has happened since then.”

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