Page 70 of The Last One You Loved

Mila nodded.

“And remember our talk about where bacon comes from?”

“I love bacon, but I still don’t like the idea of killing pigs to eat it. I wish it wasn’t so good,” Mila pouted.

“Turkeys are the same, chick-a-dee. Humans eat plants and animals. As long as the animals are treated humanely, it’s okay to enjoy the food.”

Mila put her hands on her heart as she stepped away from Eva. “I don’t know, Nana. I think I might become a vegetation just like Mrs. Cody.”

“Vegetarian.”

“Yep, that’s what I said.”

“You’d give up bacon?” I asked, inserting myself into the conversation for the first time. “I don’t know if I could do it. Bacon is one of my favorite foods, too.”

“It is?” Mila asked.

I nodded.

Her little face looked conflicted. “I need to think about this,” she said. Suddenly, she stopped moving, eyes going wide before she took off at a dead run down the hall. “I have to go to the bathroom!”

The silence left behind her was, as always, loud.

Eva’s lips twitched as she found my gaze with hers. “When I saw Rianne at our book club last night, she said you and Maddox seemed to be getting along well.”

I tried not to let my face flush as I thought of the way we’d been tangled earlier on the very stool I was sitting on and the promise Maddox had made of making love to me until I couldn’t walk. My chest ached, and my heart slammed against my rib cage.

Eva laughed. “The two of you were always like that. Combustible. I was half worried you’d end up pregnant before you could go off to college.”

I lost the battle I’d been fighting, my cheeks fully turning red. “Wow…I don’t even know what to say.”

Her laugh died, and her eyes journeyed down the hall to where Mila had gone before they came back to take me in. “But there’s a lot more at stake now, McKenna.”

“I know,” I said softly.

“I don’t know why you came back to Willow Creek, and I’m not asking you to tell me all your secrets. Just tell me you’re not going to walk away and not see them again for ten years.”

There was not an ounce of anger in her voice, not even reproach, and I wondered why. I’d hurt Maddox, deeply, irrevocably. There was a chance I could do the same to her granddaughter, and yet, she wasn’t holding my past over me. She just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to screw up the future.

“I very much want to stick around,” I told her, feeling the strength of it in my blood. The research I’d done that morning I could put into action only if things in California went my way. If they didn’t, I could still stay, but I’d have to consider an entirely new line of work.

Mila skipped down the hall with a paper in her hand. “I forgot to give this to you yesterday,” she said as she handed it to me.

It was a stick-figure drawing of a man in a cowboy hat, a woman with what looked like a stethoscope around her neck, and a little girl who stood between them. Their stick arms had ball hands joined together, and above their heads was writtenBFFs. It hurt as much as it filled me with joy.

“I’m not that great of an artist yet. But that’s Daddy”—she pointed to the man—“me, and you.” She continued to point to the people. “You and Daddy used to be BFFs, which means all three of us can be BFFs now.”

I hugged her to me tightly as, once upon a time, Maddox had held me, with an overwhelming sense of belonging rushing over me. I’d never felt it before. Not with the Hatleys. Not even with Maddox as a teen. Maybe because I’d never dropped my shield around them. But for whatever reason, the feeling slammed into me today. We could be a family. A family I’d never, ever had and never thought I needed or wanted, but it was all I could think about now?keeping them all.

“You know what my favorite part of BFF is?” I asked her softly.

She shook her head.

“The forever part.”

She giggled, and when I looked up at Eva, her eyes were full of tears she brushed away. She patted my shoulder and headed for the door. “I’ll see you on Thursday.”

Mila wiggled out of my embrace and ran after Eva, hugging her legs. “Love you, Nana.”