She pulled the car key off the chain and handed it to him, and despite everything, just the small brush of his skin against hers sent awareness running up her arm.
He pocketed the key before placing a hand on the small of her back and leading her toward his truck. His hand was so big, his fingers took up almost the entire width of her back.
The second she slipped into the passenger seat, all she wanted to do was close her eyes and let the exhaustion of the day weigh her down.
Maybe Kayden felt that, because he was silent for most of the drive, just letting her sit and watch the rain hit the windshield in repeated splatters. He didn’t even ask for directions to her house. Maybe the entire town already knew where the infamous Taylor family had lived.
“You doing okay over there?” he finally asked, his voice cutting through the quiet.
She turned her head to look at him. His fingers wrapped tightly around the wheel, the veins standing out on his hands. The man was all strength. “Not really. I didn’t think coming back here would be easy, but I also didn’t think it would be quite so hard.”
“Why’d you come then?”
There was no malice in his question, just genuine interest. “Because this is home. This is where my mother raised me. Where most of my memories with her live. And she always wanted to come back, but she couldn’t. So I’m doing it for her.”
“Why can’t she come back?”
Tilly brushed her fingers over a crease in her pants. “She died a few months ago. An aggressive form of brain cancer.”
Kayden’s jaw visibly tightened. “Shit, Tilly. I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
Kayden’s handtwitched to reach across and touch Tilly. Her hand. Her thigh. Offer her some form of comfort, not just at the news that her mother had passed but also her admission that coming home had been so hard.
The sadness in her eyes when she’d looked up from behind the wheel…fuck, it had gutted him.
“I know what you mean about these mountains being home,” he said quietly, feeling her eyes on him from the passenger seat. “Even while I was away serving, every time I came back here, it was like this weight was lifted off my chest. A weight I didn’t even realize I was carrying until it was gone.”
“My mom used to call it magic.”
“She wasn’t wrong.”
“Do you miss it? Serving? You were in the Air Force, right?”
“Yeah, I was.”Didhe miss it? It wasn’t something anyone had asked him since he got out. “I guess some days I do. I miss the guys and the banter and the hit of adrenaline from extracting someone from a dangerous situation. But I don’t regret leaving. I got out six months before Dad died, and I wouldn’t take back that time for anything.”
“I’m sorry about your dad. He was a good man.”
Kayden took his eyes off the road to look at her, and something in his chest shifted. Because she understood. She knew the pain of losing a parent. It was incomparable to anything else, and that hole was never filled, it was just an empty space inside him that he had to learn to live with.
“Hewasa good man,” Kayden said quietly. “And not a day goes by where he isn’t missed.” He cleared his throat. “Turner Court, right?”
“Turner Court.”
They were quiet for the rest of the drive. When he pulled into her drive, his fingers tightened on the wheel at how isolated the property was. Too isolated for a single woman, especially one who was so disliked in this town.
Then he saw the house…
“Why are your windows boarded up?”
“The glass was already broken when I got back to town,” she said, exhaustion slipping into her voice as she released her seat belt. “I guess people broke in at some point over the five years the house was empty. Possibly more than once. It’s not surprising.”
“But you’ve been here for months. Why are they still broken?”
When the silence stretched, Harry’s reaction to her flashed in his mind—and suddenly he knew.
He pulled the car to a stop in front of the house, trying like hell to get ahold of his anger. “No one will come.”
