Page 43 of The Last One You Loved

“Mads?” she said with a frown, her breath becoming unsteady as she looked down at my hands holding hers.

“I get why you want to leave Willow Creek. I get how bad your life is with your mama, but there are people here who care about you. If you go clear across the country, who will you have? If you’re in Knoxville or Nashville, I could get to you in a couple of hours.”

She squeezed my hand gently, shaking her head. “Honestly, Mads, you have no clue how bad it is.”

“Because you won’t tell me.”

“Because if I do, it makes it more real. This way, I can pretend she didn’t dump her cigarette ashes onto the only meal I’d had at home in three days, or that she didn’t shred the sweater your mama gave me for my birthday.”

She gulped and closed her mouth into a straight, tight line, as if she’d hated telling me any of it. While all I hated was her mama and the fact every time McKenna walked through the door of a home that should have been a safe haven, it was like walking into a torture chamber. She pulled her hands away.

“I’m not sure California is even far enough…”

“I wouldn’t let her hurt you. If you came and stayed with us, she couldn’t hurt you anymore. Don’t go back tonight, McK. You don’t need to. Do you think she’d even care where you were?”

“She’d care because she wants me to be miserable. She’d come and find me and drag me back.”

“My parents wouldn’t let her.”

She closed her eyes, fighting emotions like she always did. I was the only one she showed them to, and even then, it was rare. If she let Sybil see the fear, it only egged her mama on.

“I can’t…I don’t want you and your family to start hating me too.”

“They’d never! I’d never.”

“They would. She’d call the cops on them. On me. And besides, all I’d be here is another burden. Another mouth to feed. Another drain on their bank account.”

The ranch had had a couple of bad years. Things were tight, and McKenna knew it, but Dad was working to get some new contracts. He was turning it around, and Mama had started selling her pies. We were going to be okay, but it was also why my list of schools included only the local JC. I was needed here, not at a four-year university, increasing our debt.

“That’s your mama’s demented thinking, McK,” I said. “Don’t give in to it.”

She got up off the bed, picking up her books. She didn’t have a backpack. She carried everything by hand, leaving her things at school or hidden in Uncle Phil’s shed because if her mama saw them, she’d ruin them.

“I can’t stay in Tennessee, Maddox. But I get why you need to.”

Even if my parents weren’t struggling, I’d still want to be here. I didn’t want to work at the ranch forever, but I also had no desire to live thousands of miles from the family I loved, from the hills and valleys and creeks of my childhood. But I’d do it for McKenna. If it meant we could be together, I’d follow her to California after Dad got the ranch back on its feet.

Except,by the time my parents had started to turn things around, McKenna had asked me not to come. She’d asked me to stay in Tennessee because it was too hard to see me and then have me leave. Really, I thought she’d needed to forget everything about her childhood, including me.

The bitter taste of heartache and disappointment filled my mouth.

I looked back in the window of the café, and I saw McKenna, her golden hair twirling around her finger as Tillie leaned on the counter next to her. They were both smiling, and McKenna’s was heartstoppingly beautiful, even when it was fake like it was now. I wondered if she ever smiled her real one anymore, if her fiancé got to see the one that crinkled the corners of her eyes and stretched her cheeks until they almost disappeared into her ears.

I turned and headed down the sidewalk.

I couldn’t afford to feel sorry for her or wonder what about her life had momentarily made her think she couldn’t go back to California. I couldn’t do anything but wish she’d leave as quickly as her mama would.

CHAPTERFIFTEEN

MCKENNA

USED TO THE PAIN

“There’s a scar that’s always gonna be.

There's a past in everyone.

You can’t undo, you can’t outrun.”