Page 37 of The Last One You Loved
Ryder rubbed his unshaven jaw. It looked almost as thick as mine did, as if we’d both given up the battle with our facial hair.
“You’re the one who is always telling me that what happened with you and McKenna is totally different than what happened with me and Ravyn,” Ryder said.
“This isn’t about me!” I barked out, shooting daggers at him with my eyes.
“Isn’t it?” he said quietly. “If you keep Mila from knowing her now, and she asks about her later, what are you going to tell her? How will Mila feel, knowing you kept her sister from her? Just because you let them get to know each other doesn’t mean you have to let her back intoyourheart. Fuck that. You have every right to keep your heart to yourself.” Then, he got up and headed for the door. “Just think about it,” he tossed back as he left.
I put the paperwork back into the safe and found my feet journeying to Mila’s room. The nightlights were on, sending their typical rainbow of color across the walls and ceiling, but it was empty of the person I loved more than anyone in this world. The thought of it being empty permanently, or even semi-regularly if I had to share her with someone, shredded my insides. I lay down on her bed, looking up at the ceiling. Her pillow smelled like her berry shampoo.
Damn Ryder for making sense. I knew it killed him almost as much as it did me to think about McKenna invading our lives. But what would Mila say in a few years if she found out? Was my determination to force McKenna away really about me feeling abandoned rather than what was right for my daughter? What would really happen if I let her into Mila’s life?
Ryder was right. Letting them get to know each other didn’t mean I had to let McK back into my heart. My subconscious laughed at me because I wasn’t sure she’d ever left it. But the girl who remained tucked in my memories, embedded in my soul, was just a mirage. Someone who didn’t exist anymore. A teenager who’d faced the abuse of a drunken mother with so much bravery it seemed impossible. A girl who’d laughed and teased and challenged me. Dared me. Pushed me out of my comfort zone.
McKenna wason the back of Shadowfax, the dapple gray stallion she’d ridden since Dad had taught her to ride. Her hair flowed out behind her as the two of them leaped across the fast-moving river, swollen with the heavy winter rains. The day was cold, and there were several inches of snow on the ground, making it hard to see what was beneath it. I’d told her not to jump, but she’d been determined to reach the hollow and its tangle of cavern-like roots from the old oaks on the hill above it as quick as possible.
When they landed gracefully on the other side, she looked back at me with a smile that carved its way into every vein and molecule of my soul.
“Come on, Maddox. Don’t chicken out on me now.”
I patted Arod, the dark bay I always rode. “What do you think, fella? Are we going to take the chance?”
McKenna pulled Shadowfax to a halt. “Mads…come on…the hollow is calling us. It’ll all be melted by the time we come back.”
I turned Arod around. We trotted back several yards before I bent low over his shoulders and sent him racing toward the creek. The cold wind bit into my hands and face as we increased our speed, and he didn’t even hesitate as I urged him over the rushing water. We landed on the other side not quite as gracefully as McK and Shadowfax, but Arod found his footing again and headed in their direction.
When I drew near her, I pulled on Shadowfax’s reins until the horses were so close I could lean into McKenna’s space. “You can’t take risks like that, McK. If something happened to you…”
And then I was kissing her, hot and fast and heavy like we’d started doing since that day I’d taken her from her mama’s house and not allowed her to go back. I groaned when she pulled back, and I felt almost despondent when I saw the smile had disappeared from her face.
She pulled a jar from her saddle bag.
“I need to do this today. I need to bury this so the bad memories won’t follow me to California.”
I hadn’t known exactly what was in the mason jar other than the fact they were little strips of paper she’d been working on for days. It lodged a knot in my chest when I realized she was writing down her darkest memories.
I was trying hard to not let this?a day filled with thoughts of her leaving?to be one of mine.
Because it should have been a sweet memory. The sunlight hitting the snow made the ice crystals glisten and sparkle and was almost as beautiful as her twinkling eyes. Her cheeks were bright pink from the wind and exertion…and maybe my kisses. But instead of being a moment I wanted to hold on to, it was tainted by the knowledge that she was leaving…that she’d be gone in a few months, following her dreams…and I couldn’t help the black hole it carved in me.
“Come on, broody boy. Let’s go.” She pushed away from me, sending Shadowfax into a trot that kicked up the white powder on the ground. And all I could do was follow her. Follow her and wish that I had it in me to follow her farther…all the way to California. But just the thought of leaving my family when they needed me, of leaving Tennessee and the town I loved, made my stomach twist. I wanted both. I wanted to keep her and my home.
She wanted to escape, and sometimes, I knew she meant escaping me as well, because, just like me in this moment, her good memories of me were tangled with the dark cloud that was her mama.
McKenna may have buriedher worst memories that day and escaped to a brand-new world with dreams and a fiancé and safety, but now Sybil had placed the dark cloud over my head. It had been hovering there for too long. I needed to excise it just as McKenna had tried to do with strips of paper. I needed to call Sybil’s bluff because I was fifty percent sure she didn’t know who the father was.
But the risk…God. What if I took the risk and the worst happened? I’d have to run. I’d give up the law, my family, everything, to keep Mila with me.
CHAPTERTHIRTEEN
MCKENNA
FIRE AWAY
“Pick up your sticks and your stones,
And pretend I’m a shelter,
For heartaches that don’t have a home.”
