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“Here you go,” Coy said as he handed Kenzie a fresh ice pack. “Charlotte said it’s the last one, and you can rest. Something about watching the swelling.”

“Something about it, huh… that’s pretty specific.” She chuckled, swapping out her old ice pack for a freshly cold one. “I’m pretty sure I’m fine. If I wound up with a concussion, it’s minor. I’ve had zero symptoms.”

Coy pushed his lounger up against hers on the shared balcony outside their rooms and plopped down beside her.

“Well, we aren’t taking any chances. Let me see those stitches.” He asked, leaning in to get a good look at the wounds on her head and face. “Charlotte did a really good job. You can hardly tell.”

“Now I know you’re lying and just being nice. I am fully aware that I currently resemble Frankenstein.” She informed with a huff. “There’s nothing barely about the amount of stitches I’m currently wearing.”

“I’m serious, Kenz. It isn’t bad. A day or so from now, you won’t be able to tell. I didn’t think nurses were trained in this kind of care. At least not at this level.”

“She’s currently training to be more than a nurse. I forget what she called it, but it’s more than a nurse, not quite a doctor.”

“That’s awfully specific.” He said sarcastically. “You sure your head’s all right?”

“Yes. I just don’t recall the job title, smartass. Anyway, that girl has big ambitions. She wants to change the medical world for the better, she says. Pretty impressive.”

“She’s something else, all right. And she chose Nash.” Coy chuckled.

“She’s good for him, Coy. He’s still very much Nash but… better.” Kenzie said.

“Better? You sure you’re okay?” he teased.

“Yes. I’m fine.” She swatted at him, “Stop it, will ya? You know what I mean.”

“I do know what you mean. He’s grown up a lot these past few years, maybe more these past few weeks I’ve been home. It’s good to see this side of him. Of all of them, really. I’ve missed a lot, Kenz. And I’ll never get that time back.”

“You were working. It wasn’t intentional.” She paused. “Or, was it?”

“Maybe, unintentionally intentional.” He answered.

“Now, who’s not making sense?”

“What I mean to say is I didn’t mean to miss everything I have. I stayed away to protect them but keeping them safe from my world came with a greater cost than I realized. I thought I was doing something good, but really, my choices just stripped us all of valuable time together.”

“Do you really think that’s what it was? To keep them safe? Or were you just running?”

“Running? From them? My family?”

“I said what I said, Stone.”

“Why would I run from them? This is my safe place. This is home. They’re home.”

“Because loving and losing from a distance is less painful than losing someone you see every day, have routines with, and will have to adjust to a life without their everyday presence? When you’re away, you miss them the same as you did whether they’re gone or not because they’ve been at a distance for so long the loss isn’t as in your face.”

“You’re saying I don’t miss my mom or her loss as much now because I’ve been away?”

“No, I’m sure you miss her a great deal, but your life isn’t changing. You don’t have to get used to not seeing her every day, seeing her at the breakfast table every morning, missing the casual conversations around the fire pit in the evenings… you’re removed from the everyday of it all. The loss hits differently. It’s… psychological. A way to protect…”

“Protect who?”

“You.” She said.

“I stayed away to protect them. From me. The shit I see daily…”

“Right. You think it follows you everywhere. You think it’ll find you here and use them as a way to hurt you.” Kenzie shook her head.

“What? Why are you doing that? Why are you shaking your head at me? You think I’m lying?”

“No, I believe that you believe every word of that.”

“For fuck’s sake, Kenzie, just say what you want to say.”

“Your job doesn’t follow you everywhere you go, Coy. You just think it does. The only thing following you are ghosts from your past because, reality is, if someone you brought down wanted revenge, they wouldn’t need to follow you here to get it. They’d just come take it whenever the hell they saw fit, whether you were here or not. It would have already happened.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do know that, Coy, because it would be a much easier hit to wipe out your family without you here. If anyone were coming for you, through them, it would have happened already because they aren’t exactly a secret or hard to find, given who you are and who your brother-in-law is. The media has been in town since before Ransom’s plane landed –– everyone knows how to find the family Stone. How many shots have been taken at your family in the last decade?”

“None. I’ve seen to it.”

“Right, by neutralizing any and all threats before they have the chance.” She said with snark and discontent.

“Exactly.”

“If you’re neutralizing threats before they can harm anyone else, then who the hell do you think follows you everywhere, putting your family at risk? They’re all dead and locked up, Coy, so who is it?”

“I don’t want to take chances.” He became defensive.

“Oh, so that’s the story now.” Kenzie shook her head in frustration. “Coy, you aren’t protecting them. You’re protecting yourself because your heart has already been broken in such a way you believe you wouldn’t survive any more blood on your hands –– not when it comes to your family.”

“You…”

“I, what?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure, I do. That’s why this is pissing you off. You know I’ve seen my fair share of the world’s bullshit, and I’ve suffered the worst kind of pain just like you…” She stood. “The only difference is –– I chose to go on living after my heart broke. I chose… to live .”

Coy watched her storm off to her room seeming aggravated while letting out an audible huff. Coy followed her.

“You think you know.” He said. “You think you know what it’s like.”

“I do.”

“Really? It’s not the same Kenzie.” He raised his voice. “Your husband did not die the same way or for the same reasons my wife did. Our losses… they may be equally painful, but they aren’t the same.”

Kenzie turned on her heels and stood toe-to-toe with Coy. She poked him in the chest, “It is the same. Do you think because you knew who killed your wife makes it different? Because you didn’t see the warning signs and led danger right to her?”

“Now you’re getting it.”

“Wrong, Coy. It’s still the same.”

“How do you figure?” he taunted.

“Because I couldn’t save him. Just like you couldn’t save your wife.” Tears began to spill over, and her voice quaked. “I couldn’t save him from the killer I knew either. I couldn’t save him from himself. I may as well have put the gun that he used to take his own life in his hand myself because I couldn’t stop him… and the worst part, I made it easy to take his own life by bringing him here instead of having him locked up somewhere until we could find some magical cure for the demons that haunted him. So, it is the same, Coy. It’s the fucking same.”

Coy stood silent and in absolute shock at her admission. The idea that she felt responsible for her husband taking his own life was more than he’d even thought to consider before. It never occurred to him that she would, or could, feel the way she did about her husband’s passing, given the circumstances. What hit him the hardest was that she did indeed feel just as he did, and yet, she’d managed to move on with life, and for some reason, he was still strapped in his.

“I-I had no idea you felt that way, Kenz.”

“Why would you? It seems ridiculous, right? To take responsibility for someone else taking their own life.”

“It’s not ridiculous, but you have to know…”

“That it isn’t my fault, and there’s nothing I could have done to change the outcome? I’m well aware. That doesn’t mean I live without the what-ifs, and could I have done more ? I knew he was unwell, yet I left him alone, and that one time, I ran to the little farm stand for eggs so I could make him pancakes for breakfast. I wasn’t gone but a handful of minutes, Coy. Minutes . I could have made him something else. I could have brought him with me. But he seemed fine, and I was going right up the road –– so close to home, I heard the gunshot… and knew. There is an endless list of would have, could have, should have’s… but at the end of the day, I know that no matter what I did differently, this was going to be the outcome… we can’t control the actions of others and we certainly do not get to control the fate of others. He wanted this. He was going to do it, eventually, no matter how hard I fought for him.”

“I… I don’t know what to say.”

“Then don’t say anything at all. Just listen, Coy. No matter what you wish you would have done differently, whoever came for your wife would have found a way, regardless. You had no warning. You only knew what you knew at the time. Had you known you’d been double-crossed and made by the darkest of enemies, you could have taken every precaution, protected her, got to them before they got to her… but you didn’t know, Coy. You believed she was safe because you kept her safe the best you could with the information you had. It was tragic, horrific, and soul-crushing, I’m sure, but it happened. And you didn’t die that day, too, Coy.”

“Part of me… part of me did.”

“When we love someone, they own a piece of our heart forever. When they die, that little piece dies, too. That’s why it hurts so bad, and we don’t feel like we’re whole anymore. You may not be whole, and you never will be while branded with a scar something like that leaves, but you still have a whole life, full of people who love and adore you, who miss you, and who feel like that little piece of their heart that you own… is dying. Don’t run from that kind of love, Coy. Embrace it. It may not fill the holes left from loss, but it sure makes them easier to live with.”

Coy sat at the edge of her bed and buried his face in his hands. She was right. He’d been punishing himself all these years and, by doing so, punishing his family too.

“I didn’t mean to… ya know? I didn’t mean to push them away. I really want to keep them safe. I didn’t think…”

Kenzie stepped closer and ran her hand through his hair as a gesture of comfort, “I know you didn’t. Love hurts and costs us a lot, but it’s the most worthwhile investment if you don’t waste it. There’s a difference between life and living, and you get to choose if you’re just present for it or you’re going to experience every inch of it, Coy. You don’t have to keep punishing yourself or those around you. You’ve already paid the price, dearly. Take away the power from those who are really responsible because every day you give in to the guilt and sorrow, they win just a little bit more.”

Coy put his hands on her hips and brought her closer, resting his head against her belly, his voice dropping to a near whisper as he began to confess what was heavy on his heart. “Today. In that basement at the station… it took everything in me to keep me from running straight into the fire to find you, Kenz. When I heard that gunshot, and I couldn’t find you… it was that pain all over again.”

“I’m fine, Coy.”

“It doesn’t matter if you’re fine. I still felt it. Like I’d… lost you too. I couldn’t live with that, Kenz. Not now, not ever.”

“You didn’t lose me.”

“And I’m so damn glad because being back here, with you, has been the most healing thing I think I’ve experienced, and getting to know you all over again, despite the circumstances… I wasn’t ready to let that go. And I felt guilty for it. I don’t deserve it, and I don’t deserve you. It felt like a cruel joke.” He let out a cold, cynical laugh. “Like I was being punished all over again.”

Kenzie cupped his chin and lifted his gaze to match hers, “And it still isn’t your fault. You can’t save everyone from everything. I chose to go back inside, alone, and I fought my way back out until you could find me. I’m okay. I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”

“I have no right to you.” He whispered as he pulled her to his lap. “I have no right to feel this way for you.”

“You have every right, Coy. We both do because we deserve to be happy again. We paid the price through the pain, and I can say, without a doubt, your wife wouldn’t want you to go through life an empty shell of a man.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because when you love someone that deeply, you don’t want them to hurt the way you hurt. You want them to be happy and remember how to love because remembering how to love means you get to be loved again, and love, real love, isn’t something worth wasting.”

“How did you figure all this out? It seems so easy for you.”

“I got tired of hurting. I miss my husband, but I also miss being loved. I want that again. I know he would want that for me just like I’m sure your wife would for you.”

Coy nodded his head in agreement. “I want that too.”

“Then let yourself have it, Coy. Let yourself love and be loved so fiercely it hurts.” She paused. “Forgive yourself and let love in.”

Coy ran the back of his hand gently down her cheek and, swiped away the flood of tears she’d been wearing, and nodded his head.

“I do.” He whispered. “I will.”

He took her mouth and kissed her deeply, wrapping her body around his. Something came over him at that moment: a sense of freedom, and the weight of the world that had been resting on his shoulders somehow felt lighter. He was ready to love again, ready to love her. Kenzie was familiar, but still different than she was all those years ago. There was both comfort and intrigue in that.

As their kiss deepened, Coy felt a surge of emotions flooding through him, washing away the remnants of past heartaches and uncertainties. With Kenzie in his arms, he found solace in the familiarity of her touch, yet excitement in the discovery of the woman she had become. In her, he saw a reflection of his own journey, marked by growth and transformation. And as their lips parted, he gazed into her eyes, knowing that this moment marked the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. One filled with endless possibilities and the possibility of a love that could withstand the trials of life they’d both been handed.

There was a promise of something new, fresh, and intriguing. He’d never love anyone like he’d loved his wife, Emery, but he thought that’s what made her unique. Just like how he felt for Kenzie was unlike anything he felt for anyone else. Maybe that was the point of love. It came in many designs, each as unique as its beholden.

So, he loved her. Coy spent the rest of the night showing her all the ways.