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“What’s wrong?”
“I just got a creepy feeling that I’ll find something bad inside again.”
Max frowned. “Another thing I can hang on your brother. You shouldn’t be afraid to walk into your place.”
“It used to just make me feel lonely.”
Max slipped his hand up under her hair to her neck. He stared deep into her eyes. “I know how you feel.” He sighed and his gaze dropped away, then came back to meet hers. “I tried to fight that feeling in all the wrong ways. I drank too much. I spent time chasing a feeling that, in the moment, chased away the lonely, but it always came back. Faster and faster, until it never went away, because I hadn’t found what I needed.”
“What was that?” she asked on a whisper.
“What I lost. A real connection. Trust. Love.” Max dropped the boxes and pulled her into a hug. “You.” Max pressed his cheek to her hair. “I missed you, even when I didn’t want to think about you. I loved you, because love like that doesn’t go away. I hated that we ended the way we did, and I wanted you so damn bad anyway.”
She tilted her head back. “Do you trust me again?”
“Yes. Because I know we won’t walk away again without fighting for us.”
“I felt so stupid for believing her lies. Every time I see her,Iwant to hither.”
“She’s her own worst enemy. She sabotages herself while she’s going after other people. One of these days, she’s going to do something that really gets her intotrouble. And when that happens, we’ll still be together and happy and she’ll still be alone and stuck in the same self-destructive behavior.”
“I know. It’s just...”
“She makes you mad.”
“Furious.”
Max softly brushed his thumb over her cheek. “Me, too.”
She turned and kissed the pad of his thumb, then opened her apartment door and went completely still. She saw the attack happen all over again.
“Kenna, breathe.”
She sucked in a breath.
Max bent and put his face right in front of hers. “You are safe. No one is going to hurt you.”
She knew that in her head, but the echo of that night still rang through her body and mind with a wave of fear and the need to flee.
She fought it, because she didn’t want it to control her. “I’m okay.”
“We’re here to get your stuff.” The reminder helped her brain focus on the task, not the past. Max nodded. “It won’t take us long to clean up.”
They’d done a lot of the work the day after it happened, when she came back to look for whatever Kyle had left with Agent Gunn and Hunt.
He’d tried to keep his distance, but that hadn’t worked.
The last few days, just hanging out on the ranch with him, had been peaceful and wonderful. A glimpse into their future life together.
But to fully be there with Max and live that life, she needed to finish this, even though it brought up all the bad memories.
She walked into the apartment, but stopped short.
“Kenna? What’s wrong?”
She picked up the little cat figurine from the dining room table. “Kyle left this. It’s the cat he brought the night he left and Marcus died. He’d put it on the shelf with the others.”
“The one we came here looking for the next day?”
