Page 29 of Oops, I Fell For The Town Bad Boy!

“A long time ago,” he repeated quietly. “I guess that’s true.”

“I’m just glad you came back,” she said. “I’m glad you and I had the chance to see each other one more time. I kind of thought that was something that would never happen in our lifetimes, so I’m glad it did.”

He said nothing. He just went on looking at her.

And then, at last, he spoke. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

“What?”

“If you had feelings for me back then, why didn’t you say something about it?”

“I…” She hesitated. “I thought it was the kind of thing that could never turn into anything real,” she said. “You were so popular, and I was… well, we weren’t the same type of person.”

“That’s how I felt,” he said.

“What?” He couldn’t mean what it sounded like he had meant.

“I thought you’d never want anything to do with me,” he said. “You were too together. Practically an adult already, and the rest of us were just a bunch of goofballs. There was nothing I could offer you.”

“I didn’t need you to offer me anything,” Taylor said softly. “You could’ve stayed home instead of going out drinking and watched movies with me, and we could have had good times together. If we had known…”

Something went hard in his eyes. He reached out for her, pulled her close, and kissed her.

For a moment, the shock of it froze Taylor where she stood — and then the pleasure of his lips against hers got through to her and she relaxed into the kiss. Her arms wound around him, and she held him close and kissed him back, pouring into it everything she would have said over the past ten years if she’d had the chance — all her sorrow at the way he had left and all her relief and happiness at the fact that he had come back, even if it was only for a little while.

CHAPTER 15

TAYLOR

“You’re sure it’s okay for us to let people know you’re back?” Taylor asked Kane.

He chuckled. “Suddenly you’re worried about it being okay with me?” he asked without any reproach. “You weren’t worried what I thought when you told Maddie I was back without asking me first.”

“You said you weren’t mad at that.” Taylor had confessed the fact that she had discussed his presence with Maddie last night. She’d thought he might be angry about it, but he hadn’t even been surprised. “Of course you would tell your best friend,” he’d said. “I know I asked you to keep it a secret, but I never expected that you would hold to that religiously. I assumed it was going to leak out eventually. I’m mostly just happy that more people didn’t find out.”

But now he was telling her that he had changed his mind about even that. He had gone so far as to ask her to inform a few people of his presence in town to see how they would react, to possibly pave the way for him to be more public about the fact that he was here. Taylor was overwhelmed by the sudden change — could he possibly mean to let his presence be widely known? But she had agreed to help him.

In part, it was because she knew she had failed him by not helping him when they were young, when he had reached out to ask for her help, and she wanted to make up for that. And in part it was because she could see that to have everyone know he was back might honestly be the best thing for him. It felt to her as though Kane was crying out for accountability — to look into the eyes of the people he had spent so much time thinking hated him, and to know that it was in his imagination. To know that he could be, and had been, forgiven. That must be such a powerful thing.

But Taylor knew that there was a smaller and much less noble part of her that wanted to tell the world he was back because she wanted everyone to know that he was with her. Even if it wasn’t in any official or permanent way, he had been in her home, sharing her time, sharing her life ever since he had been back.

If Maddie had been entrusted with letting the town know that Kane McCormick had come home, she would have been thrilled at the opportunity for gossip. But for Taylor, it felt more as if she was a schoolgirl again. She felt the way her childhood fantasies had made her feel, when she had imagined walking down the halls at school hand in hand with Kane and knowing that everyone who saw them would realize that they belonged to one another. He didn’t belong to her, of course, nor she to him, but this would link them in the minds of the rest of the town. Whenever people thought about Kane from now on, they would think about Taylor. If they had questions about him, they would come to her, because of course she’d be the most likely to know how he was doing, wouldn’t she? It meant that their connection might fade when he went away, but it would never disappear. It was a way of holding onto him.

When she thought about it like that, it sounded pretty pathetic. But Taylor wasn’t too proud to admit that she dreaded the day he would leave Miller Creek, walk out of her life again. Especially after last night…

“What are you going to do?” Kane asked. “Tell Maddie she’s allowed to tell people now?”

Taylor laughed. “Absolutely not,” she said. “Everyone in town would know you were here by lunchtime if we did that, and they’d probably all have some made-up and highly convoluted story of why you came back and what it meant. We don’t want it getting all sensationalized. No, one of my colleagues is having a brunch this morning. I’ll bring it up there. It’ll be just a few nurses, so I’ll be able to judge the fallout a little bit better than I would if a bunch of people found out behind my back.”

“That makes sense.” Kane took a deep breath.

“Are you nervous?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

“You really don’t have to do this. You can change your mind.”

“No. I’m being silly to be nervous about it,” he said. “It’s not like I have to even talk with these people. It’s their own problem if they don’t like the fact that I’m back in town.”

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