Page 67 of The Last One You Loved
“In other words, he thought you’d change your mind,” I said.
She grimaced slightly. “Maybe.”
“You have to work a lot of long hours yourself, right? You’re in your third year of residency?”
She nodded, a haunted look returning to her eyes before she looked away.
“What field of medicine did you decide on?” I asked.
“Emergency medicine. I love the pace of the ER, the ebb and flow, being able to be there for people when it feels like the worst is happening,” she said. Her choice didn’t surprise me at all. She knew a lot about worst days, and I could absolutely imagine her wanting to make those better for others.
Her phone buzzed, and she ignored it.
“You have someone calling you a lot,” I said, referring to the messages she’d received almost every time I’d been with her. “A boyfriend, maybe?”
She flushed. “I wouldn’t have let you kiss me if I had a boyfriend.”
My eyes fell to her lips, and they parted slightly under my inspection.
“I want to kiss you again.” I was surprised to find the truth escaping me—a truth that seemed ridiculous after years of her absence and my panicked attempt to force her out of town. I still didn’t trust her to stay. I didn’t trust her to not hurt me and blow up my world, and yet, it was still true. I not only wanted to kiss her, I wanted to devour every inch of her. Notch myself in her so deep and so hard she’d finally forget about California, the ex, and anything but me and Willow Creek.
“Don’t you have to go to work?” she asked, eyes sliding down my uniform and then toward the door.
I chuckled, stood up, and put my plate and cup in the sink. “Yes. And if I started kissing you, and there was no one like Amy around to interrupt us, I might never make it there.”
My voice was deep and growly with barely contained desire.
Her phone buzzed again, and this time, she actually looked at it. Her expression changed immediately, fear slicing through her again as it had on Sunday.
I reacted on instinct, snatching the phone from her grasp.
“What the hell?” she exclaimed right as I read the text.
1-530-555-8220: Fucking fix this, bitch. Fix it, or I’ll find you.
Fear and dread filled me. As if it wasn’t bad enough that Mila and I had Sybil and the West Gears hanging over us, threatening our family, now there could be some unknown menace coming our way as whoever this was tried to find McKenna in Willow Creek. The piece of me that had screamed at her to get the fuck out the day she’d arrived raised its ugly head and made me want to scream it at her all over again. My number-one job was to protect Mila at all costs.
But then I looked at the fear McK was battling, and I saw the teen girl who I’d repeatedly shown up too late to save—the one with blood on her chin and terror in her eyes. And, suddenly, anger was the only emotion I felt. Not at her, but at this asshole who was threatening her, promising her violence after she’d spent an entire childhood being tormented by it.
I’d once promised myself I’d always be there to rescue her, or at least pick her up and hug her after she’d saved herself for the millionth time. And I hadn’t. I’d let her go because it was easier to blame her for leaving than my inability to follow.
“You’re right—what the hell?” I growled, and I wasn’t sure who the growl was directed at—her, me, or the dick who’d sent the text. “Who is this? What is this?”
“Give me my phone, Maddox,” she demanded, holding out her hand.
I didn’t at first. Instead, I took my phone out and snapped a picture of the text before handing it back to her.
“Tell me why someone’s threatening you,” I insisted, trying to pull on the calm of my job and just ask for the facts. But inside, I was broiling. Inside, I wanted to smash a nameless, faceless person against a few walls.
“It’s none of your business,” she returned, pulling on the expressionless mask she was so good at wearing when the worst came at her.
“This…” I waved the picture I’d taken toward her. “This is why you’re here. You’re running? From who? For what reason? What could you have possibly done working at a hospital that would result in this kind of attack? Does the hospital know? What do the police say?”
I sounded like Mila, rambling out a series of questions one after the other, but my heart was pounding, and my chest was aching. My fight-or-flight instinct kicked in, and I was ninety-nine percent sure I was going to be knocking down doors and raising hell with people in California.
She sat back down at the island, elbows propped on the counter, and put her face in her hands. She looked…crushed. Lost and devastated, like she’d looked the first night she’d shown up, and I’d seen her crying in her car. I wanted to fix it. Needed to fix it. All those years ago, just like she’d said, I’d walked away without a fight, and there’d been no one there to protect her—some asswipe of a fiancé who’d abandoned her just as easily as I had.
I eased over to her, and when I rested a hand on her back, she jumped. She’d done that for at least a year after I’d first found her in the shed as a child. But later, she’d gotten used to me touching her in the random way friends would collide, had even touched me back at times. And when we’d finally kissed nearly nine years after the moment we’d first met, she’d never held back.
