Page 52 of The Last One You Loved
He kissed her again, they exchangedI love yous,and then he headed for the door. I followed, and when Maddox turned off the lights, the room barely dimmed because of the number of nightlights scattered around the room. It was a haze of rainbow shimmers, like sleeping in a cotton-candy cloud.
“McKenna?” Mila asked.
I looked back, and she smiled a tired smile, eyes already drooping. “If you need one of my nightlights so you won’t be afraid, you can take one.”
My chest tightened again, emotions filling me, and I barely croaked out, “Thank you. I think I’ll be okay tonight though.”
Her eyes were already closed as Maddox shut her door behind us. An awkwardness suddenly filled the air as we stood with shoulders almost touching in the narrow hallway. Just when I turned toward the door leading to the guest room, he headed down the hall to the main living area and threw back over his shoulder, “Feel like a drink?”
I hesitated and then nodded. I followed him more because I wasn’t ready for this dreamlike evening to end than because I actually wanted the alcohol.
The bungalow’s living space had been opened up so the living room, dining room, and kitchen were one great big room with old wooden plank floors waxed to a shine, sunny yellow walls, and furniture that was a mix of whites and warm woods. It was modern and yet still held an agelessness to it. The couch looked soft and cozy and had two crocheted blankets thrown over the back, one a rainbow of colors, the other in blues and greens. The kitchen was full of stainless-steel appliances and two-toned cabinets.
“Have a seat,” he said, waving me toward the couch as he pulled open the fridge. “I have beer or hard cider.”
“A cider sounds good,” I said, curling into a corner of the couch.
He came back with an open cider for me and a beer for him. As he handed me the bottle, our fingers grazed, and awareness shot through me once again, curling through my chest and low into my belly. He drew back, sinking into the other side of the couch, leaving two cushions between us.
“I’m sorry I’ve disrupted your world,” I told him.
“Why’d you really come back?” he repeated his question from earlier in the day.
I fidgeted with the label on the bottle and then told him a half-truth. “Some things were going on at the hospital that I needed to get away from.”
“There a reason you came here instead of to wherever the fiancé is?”
“I’m not engaged. Haven’t been for almost three years,” I said. When I risked looking at him, I saw surprise and something else cross his face that I thought might be desire, but before I could really examine it, he’d hidden it away.
“What happened?” he asked.
I shrugged. “He got accepted for a residency at his parents’ hospital in Boston. I didn’t. He wanted me to move with him anyway, but?”
“You wouldn’t give up your dream for him either,” he finished for me. Our eyes locked, and I should have been mad at him for making it sound like I was cold-heartedly breaking off relationships to follow my dreams, but his words were justified. They also frustrated me. Why did I have to be the one to give up my dreams to keep the men in my life? Why couldn’t they be the ones to give up their dreams for me?
You’re nothing. No one will ever really want you. They’ll happily toss off the burden of you. Like throwing away a bad penny.
Mama’s words were brutal and cruel. But true.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” he said, looking away. Then, he drank from his beer before setting it on the side table and propping his bare feet up on the coffee table. His feet were long and lean. Like his hands. Like the rest of him. He’d bulked up since I’d seen him the first year of college, but not so much that it countered his overall litheness. Beneath the changes the years and muscles had wrought, there was still the Maddox I’d first explored with my fingers and tongue.
I swallowed hard, turning my thoughts away from him and back to what he’d asked.
“The truth is, even if I’d gone with him or he’d stayed with me, we wouldn’t have worked. I was pretending we were something we weren’t,” I said, voice tight, wondering why I was telling him anything about Kerry and me.
“What was that?” he asked.
“A family,” I breathed out. “We were never one. We were just two people who happened to get along and had similar goals for a while.”
“But he was enough for you to give me up,” he said, and I could tell he was trying to be nonchalant, but there was a layer of hurt to the words after all these years.
I pulled the label from the bottle and started folding it. I thought about the little bubble I’d lived in for so many years, the wall I’d kept myself safe behind…even with him. “I was pretty messed up, Maddox. I didn’t even know it for a long time. After Kerry left, I finally got help. Seeing a therapist has made a difference. It’s helped me understand how I shielded myself from everyone in my life and why I pushed away those who tried to see behind the shroud. But…I’m still messed up.”
My voice bobbled, and I hated it. I didn’t want to cry again like I had the other day in the car.
He sat up, feet hitting the ground, and moved as if he wanted to reach for me but then stopped himself just short of touching my arm. Silence settled over us. It wasn’t awkward, but it was full of tension. Not just the sexual tension I’d felt wafting between us since arriving, but expectant tension, as if we were both waiting for the other to make the first move.
“Will you tell me how you ended up with Mila?” I asked in an attempt to deflect the brewing desire.
