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“I really want to do that.”
“Me, too, which is why I think it’s important you know that several months ago, I got sick and tired of myself and what I was doing with my life. So I stopped. I stopped going to the bar just to drink too much and be with someone who I didn’t want to know anything about other than she wanted to be with me that night and that’s all. I stopped being an asshole user and started asking myself what I really wanted.”
He brushed his thumb across her cheek and stared into her eyes. “Chase was back in town and started working on the ranch again. The guys who work on the ranch are my buddies, but working with my brother... We found that connection again. I’d missed it. I’d missed him. I watched him struggle with his issues. No matter how hard things got, one thing was always clear to him. He loved Shelby. He had a single purpose. Love her and make them a family. Same thing happened to Hunt. He and Cyn... No two people were meant for each other the way those two are meant to be together.”
“And you wanted that for yourself.”
He cupped her face. “I had that and I lost it.” He released her and took her hands in his. “I wanted to figure out how you could know me better than anyone and then call me a liar to my face. I needed to know what I’d done to make that happen before I tried to find someone new that I could have something close to what we shared, what I saw my brothers find with their partners. I didn’t want to get it wrong again. I didn’t want to think I had something, only to lose it again.”
“That’s the risk we take in all relationships.”
“But ours shouldn’t have fallen apart like that. You should have believed me.”
Her gaze fell to his chest. “I didn’t want to believe you cheated.”
“I know. You were made to believe it. And not by me. Knowing what I know now, I wish I had tried harder to change your mind. Everything would be different now if I had at least tried.”
“Max, you can’t keep blaming yourself for what you did when we broke up. You can’t blame yourself for not doing something in the moment when at the time you felt another way. I wish I’d been brave enough to come to you when I found out the truth.”
“I made that impossible because of the way I treated you after the breakup. I acted like you didn’t exist, like what we had never mattered, when it mattered more than anything to me.”
Tears filled her eyes, but didn’t spill over. “I knew you were hurt and angry.”
“So were you. And that I can’t forgive. Hillary orchestrated the whole thing because she wanted me.”
She squeezed his hands. “The only thing that makes it any better is that she didn’t get you.”
Not that he’d been very picky after he lost Kenna about the women in his life. Any warm and willing body would do back then.
But something about the way Hillary tried to hold on to him those first few weeks after he lost Kenna didn’t sit right. She never really understood how much it hurthim to lose Kenna. Even though he’d been upset and angry, he still didn’t want to hear Hillary, or anyone else, bad-mouth the woman he’d still loved, even if they weren’t together anymore.
“I know the rumor around town is that I started going to Blackrock Falls and my cousins’ Dark Horse Dive Bar because I ran out of women in Willow Fork. The real reason is that I wanted to be around family and friends who wanted the best for me.”
“You wanted to be with the people who know you best, who’d understand what you’d been doing wasn’t you.”
“They understood I was hurting and trying to heal in the wrong way and only making things worse. Being with them, just spending time by myself and thinking about the past and what I wanted for my future—it made things clear.”
“You want a wife and family and someone by your side for the rest of your life, not just for a night.”
“I want you. Not that it’s a big revelation or secret. But I need you to hear it and believe it. I thought I’d have to find you in someone else, as impossible as that seems. So I stopped doing what I was doing and told myself to wait for it to happen, that someday soon a woman would walk into my life and I’d feel again. And then you were here with me and it was like an eruption. Everything I felt for you, it all came back, so vivid and intense and not enough because you tried to shut me out, and I tried to ignore it because I thought you thought the worst of me. But it ate me up inside because something terrible happened and you couldn’t come to me because of howI’d acted. You didn’t believe that I’d listen to what you had to say about what happened to us. You didn’t think I’d care about your situation or the past, when no matter what, I want there to always be the truth between us and for you to be safe and happy, even if it’s not with me.”
She leaned in and brushed her lips to his. “I have always been, I will always be yours until my dying day.”
“Fuck, Kenna.” He wrapped her in his arms, bent to her ear, and whispered his worst fear. “If something happened to you... I just couldn’t take it. Losing you was hard enough. Without you in this world... I don’t even want to think about it. I can’t. Nope.”
She put her hand on his chest. “You know what I’m going to do?”
“Stop doubting this is real and happening.”
“Yes. Exactly that.” She needed to stop trying to find roadblocks and saying things that made it seem like being with him wasn’t exactly what she wanted. “Thank you for letting me stay here with you.”
He slipped his hand beneath her long hair and against her neck. “I’m happy you’re here.” He kissed her on the forehead.
She melted at the sweet gesture because it was just another sign that Max was all in, their past mistakes behind them, and in this moment, all he felt for her was affection and understanding.
He’d let go of the animosity toward her and refocused it on Hillary, who’d caused all the problems between them.
And maybe that was the thing Kenna needed to let go of, her part in the breakdown of her relationship with Max.
