14. Taylor
CHAPTER 14
TAYLOR
“ I always loved Dad’s chili,” Kane said as they cleared the table that night after dinner. “It was my favorite meal when I was a kid. I would have eaten it every night if I could. It was only his insistence that I get some actual nutrition on occasion that stopped me.”
“Hey, there’s plenty of nutrition in the chili,” Taylor laughed. “It’s packed with protein, and onions are good for you.”
“I kind of wish you’d been around back then to make that case to my dad. Maybe he would have given in if he’d heard it from you,” Kane said with a smile.
“Oh, you think so?”
“You were always the most persuasive of our friends. You could talk anybody into anything.”
“Is that really what you think of me?” Taylor asked, taken aback. It made her sound so manipulative.
“It’s a good thing,” he assured her. “It’s why you were the voice of reason in our group.”
“What? No I wasn’t.”
“Yeah, you were,” he said. “Whenever we were getting into something crazy, you were the one who would speak up and stop things from going too far. Remember the time everyone was about to start jumping off the roof of the Chesterfields’ barn to see who could do the best stunts in midair?”
Taylor did remember. She hadn’t thought about that in years. “Someone would definitely have gotten themselves killed.”
“I know,” Kane said.
“That didn’t stop you at the time. You were pissed off as anything when I put a stop to it. You called me a drag.”
“Oh, I was just bitter because I could see you had something I didn’t,” Kane said. “People listened to you. People took you seriously in a way they never did with me. Which was a good thing, of course, because you were the one who was being sensible, but it made me feel threatened. It felt like I was powerless next to you.”
“I felt the same way, you know,” Taylor said.
“You did? Why would you feel like that?”
“People might have respected my advice, but you were the one they liked,” Taylor said. “You were the exciting one. The life of the party. I always felt like people let me hang around with that group because I was friends with Maddie — that if I hadn’t been connected to her, I wouldn’t have been a part of the group.”
“Well, that’s probably true,” Kane admitted. “But it’s kind of true about everyone. Everyone was connected to someone in that group. I was friends with Bradley. Bradley and Maddie were dating. Ian was Maddie’s cousin, and Gray and Scott were on the basketball team with him… It was all things like that. Little connections that pulled the group together. I wonder how many people from those days are even still in contact with one another.”
“Well, Maddie and I are still close,” Taylor said. “And I told you that she and Bradley had gotten married, and that’s going well. Not many people still live in Miller Creek, of course. Most of them followed in your footsteps and took off a few years after high school. But I’m still connected to most of our old friends on social media, and we talk sometimes.”
He nodded.
Taylor hesitated. “Have you ever thought of reaching out to any of them?” she asked. “I think people would like to hear from you.”
“Nobody would want to hear from me,” Kane said.
“I think you’re wrong about that,” Taylor told him. “I would have liked to hear from you. If you’d reached out a long time ago, I would have wanted to know how you were doing. I would have been glad you had made the effort.”
“That’s only because you were working with my father and you knew that he wanted to hear from me.”
“No,” Taylor said. “I mean, I won’t say that wasn’t a part of it. I knew he wanted you home, and I wanted that to happen for him because I cared about him. But even if that hadn’t been the case, I would’ve wanted to see you again, Kane.”
“Why?”
“I don’t like the way you and I left things all those years ago,” she explained. “The last time we talked, before you left…I wasn’t very nice to you.”
“I didn’t deserve to have anyone be very nice to me,” he said.
“Of course you did. People always deserve kindness.”
“See, that’s the kind of thing you used to say, even back then, that I could never have come up with,” he said. “That’s why people listened to you and never to me. You were just more right about things like that. I’d have been more likely to say that someone like me had no business talking to anyone at all, and that if I chose to take off out of town after what I had done then good riddance to me.”
“I don’t think you would have said that,” Taylor said. “Or if you did say it, I don’t think you would have meant it.”
“You’re giving me too much credit.”
“You’re not giving yourself enough credit, Kane. I know you. And I get it. You’re having a hard time with being back here after everything, and it’s probably not easy to evaluate yourself fairly. That makes sense. But think it through. What did you do when you left town?”
“I joined the military,” Kane said.
Taylor nodded. “I know,” she said. “Your father told me.”
“I didn’t realize he knew that.” Kane admitted. “I never told him.”
“He received a couple of pieces of mail from the government that let him know what was going on,” Taylor said. “As I understand it, they weren’t very explicit, but the first one indicated you’d enlisted and the second one was something that was sent out when someone’s tenure of service reached its end. So he knew that you had served and that you were finished with your service. It was something he took great pride in.”
“Really?”
“He thought it was great,” Taylor said. “He used to say that he never knew you had it in you to do something so selfless.”
“Well… that’s a little mixed, as far as compliments go,” Kane said with a chuckle.
“It means you’re better than he realized you were,” Taylor said. “And you’re better than you realize you are, too, because when you ran off on your own, you didn’t lose yourself in hedonistic pleasures. You did something good for the world.”
“I think I just did it because I didn’t know what to do with myself at the time,” Kane said. “I’ve never admitted that to anyone before. It’s a lot easier to let people run with the story that I had some kind of heroic mindset. Actually, I think I was feeling lost.”
“Of course you were feeling lost,” Taylor said. “You’re not telling me anything I don’t know.” She could tell he felt like he was admitting to some dark secret, and she wanted to let him know that it wasn’t like that. “You had just left behind everything you knew,” she told him. “Your whole life had been upended. So of course you were at a loose end. I would have been shocked to hear that you weren’t.”
“So you see why you can’t act like I was doing anything special by enlisting,” Kane said. “I was just doing what I had to do.”
But Taylor shook her head. “You were lost and looking for a place to land,” she said. “I understand that. But you still made a choice. A lot of people would have fallen into drugs or crime. If I had made a guess about you when we were young, I would have guessed that you would move to a big city and spend your time partying and hooking up with women who meant nothing to you.”
“I’ve never done that,” he said.
“What? Party?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve never hooked up with anyone who meant nothing to me.”
“No one-night stands?”
“Oh, no, plenty of those.” He gave her a wry grin. “I’m not trying to say I’m always in relationships. But before I bring a woman home, I make it a point to at least learn something about her, so she doesn’t end up as just another notch on my bedpost or anything like that.”
Taylor nodded. “What about relationships? Have you been in many?”
“None since I left town,” he said. “I just haven’t felt like that’s something I could make room for in my life — and besides, I haven’t met anyone I was interested in like that.”
She nodded. “Well, we have that in common.”
“You haven’t met anyone you were interested in?” He frowned. “You never dated in high school either.”
“Well, that was different.”
“How so?”
“I was interested in someone in high school.”
Taylor couldn’t believe she had said it out loud. But what was the point in holding back? He was being honest with her, and she didn’t want to go on lying about her feelings. And besides, it didn’t matter. He was only here for a short time. Soon enough, he’d be gone again. What difference did it make if he knew now that she had had a crush on him when they were young?
But he was looking at her as if it made a great deal of difference. “Do you… who are you talking about?”
“I think you know who I’m talking about,” she said. “You said yourself that I was the last person who seemed willing to help you, right? You must have been aware of my feelings.”
“No,” he said quietly. “I never knew. I never guessed.”
“Well, it was a long time ago,” she said quietly. “A lot has happened since then.”
“A long time ago,” he repeated quietly. “I guess that’s true.”
“I’m just glad you came back,” she said. “I’m glad you and I had the chance to see each other one more time. I kind of thought that was something that would never happen in our lifetimes, so I’m glad it did.”
He said nothing. He just went on looking at her.
And then, at last, he spoke. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
“What?”
“If you had feelings for me back then, why didn’t you say something about it?”
“I…” She hesitated. “I thought it was the kind of thing that could never turn into anything real,” she said. “You were so popular, and I was… well, we weren’t the same type of person.”
“That’s how I felt,” he said.
“What?” He couldn’t mean what it sounded like he had meant.
“I thought you’d never want anything to do with me,” he said. “You were too together . Practically an adult already, and the rest of us were just a bunch of goofballs. There was nothing I could offer you.”
“I didn’t need you to offer me anything,” Taylor said softly. “You could’ve stayed home instead of going out drinking and watched movies with me, and we could have had good times together. If we had known…”
Something went hard in his eyes. He reached out for her, pulled her close, and kissed her.
For a moment, the shock of it froze Taylor where she stood — and then the pleasure of his lips against hers got through to her and she relaxed into the kiss. Her arms wound around him, and she held him close and kissed him back, pouring into it everything she would have said over the past ten years if she’d had the chance — all her sorrow at the way he had left and all her relief and happiness at the fact that he had come back, even if it was only for a little while.