Page 27 of The Maverick's Homecoming

“And then I got pregnant and you were stuck…” She let the words trail off. A long silence followed. What could he say? She was right, after all. She added almost tenderly, “You tried so hard not to resent me.”

“I didn’t resent you, Kenzie.”

“Oh, Finn…” She let out a slow breath and said patiently, “Yes, you did.”

“I knew it wasn’t your fault. I was the one handling the contraception, after all.”

Her grin was suddenly devilish. “And apparently, you werehandlingit poorly.”

He pretended to glare her. “Very funny.”

And then, her eyes were sad again. “We were only eighteen at the time. We did the best we could.”

“I guess you’re right.”

She tipped her pretty chin high. “We bothknowI’m right.”

“Fair enough. And then, after the baby was gone, I just wanted to get away from the guilt and the sadness, to forget our little boy who never drew a single breath. So I said I didn’t love you.”

Silence echoed between them. He was acutely aware of the decorative clock on the wall across from the table, of the clicking sound it made as it ticked the seconds away. He waited for her to ask if he still loved her, even now.

But she didn’t ask. Instead, she set her soft, cool hand on his tightly clasped ones. “It’s alright, Finn. I mean that. And I meant what I said that day at the Grizzly. It wouldn’t have worked for us. We were too young. All the drama around my being pregnant and then having a miscarriage, the loss and the guilt—it was just too much. It broke us.”

There had definitely been drama. He remembered that far too clearly. Including the unbearable family meetings—both families, his and hers. His dad had made those meetings a living hell, yelling at Finn for being “a stone idiot,” accusing Kenzie of getting pregnant on purpose to “trap” Finn into marrying her. Once or twice, his dad and Kenzie’s dad had almost come to blows.

And then, in the space of a few awful hours one night in mid-July, the baby was gone. Finn hadn’t realized how much he wanted that child until there was no child, after all.

Gently, Kenzie squeezed his hands. “We both needed to start over. Yes, I resented you for leaving me. But I also needed time away from you as much as you needed space from me. Every time I looked at you, I would think of our baby, think of losing him. Think of the emptiness where he was supposed to have been. I longed to get away from the reminder of him, of the little boy he never got a chance to be—and yet there you were, the father of the child I would never know. It hurt, it really did, just to be around you then.”

He turned his right hand palm up and captured hers. She held on and met his eyes. The look they shared then went on for the longest time. Finally, he said, “I’m so sorry, Kenz.”

“Oh, Finn. Me too.”

He looked away then. “You’re too easy on me.”

She squeezed his hand and he met her eyes again. “I don’t need to be hard on you, Finn,” she said with a sad little smile. “You’re plenty hard enough on yourself. And weweretoo young. Too many couples I know went off to college vowing to be true…and then one of them cheated.”

“Kenzie, come on. We both know that wasn’t us—I mean, yeah, we were too young and we might not have made it as a couple. But I never cheated on you and I never would have done that.” She sent him a pained look and eased her hand from his grip. “What?” he demanded. “You don’t believe me?”

“I do believe you. But people cheat. You know they do.”

He studied her face in search of clues to her real meaning. And suddenly, heknew.“You’re not talking about college kids. Or about you and me. You’re talking about your ex-husband, aren’t you?”

Now, she was the one looking away. He waited for her to face him again. Eventually, she did. “Tate’s a land man for Treasure State Oil and Gas. I think I’ve mentioned before that he traveled a lot for work.”

“You have mentioned that, yeah.”

“Well…” She cleared her throat and then finally continued, “Sometimes, toward the end of our marriage, he’d come back from a business trip and his shirts would smell like somebody else’s perfume. Sadly, by then, his cheating was just more proof of what I already knew. It was over. Tate and I didn’t want the same things—and as it turned out, we never had.”

“What a fool.”

She seemed to shake herself. And then, she glanced at the clock.

He got the message. “Had enough of me for one night?”

Her gaze settled on him once more, the corners of her mouth turning down in a melancholy way. “I didn’t say that.” He wanted to take her hand again, to offer comfort. But he didn’t quite dare. She added, “And, Finn, I did have a great time today.”

“Me, too. Thank you for being my date. It was good to have you there with me.”