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Jake clapped Cain on the back, and Mackenzie shook his hand.
“Name?” Jake said.
“We’re thinking Kristen.” Cain glanced at Mac. “You look like shit.” He shook his head. “Why are you still here? Don’t you need to be somewhere?”
Mackenzie nodded and backed up.
Yeah, he needed to be somewhere…he needed to be somewhere like yesterday.
Chapter 30
Lily heard her cell ring for the tenth time.
Or maybe it was the twentieth—she’d given up counting after the fifth. She knew it was Mackenzie, but she didn’t have the heart to talk to him. Not on the phone.
She didn’t know what he wanted to say, but it hurt to think that she didn’t at least rate a personal visit. Not after everything.
With a sigh, she got up from her chair on the back deck and stepped off, bare feet landing in the lush grass below. She’d tried to sketch earlier, but her entire world felt as if there was no color in it, and with no color, her creativity was dead.
Kind of like what she felt inside.
As she wandered in the backyard, her hand kept drifting to her stomach. She wondered about the baby in there. It was still so new, so tiny and new that it didn’t seem real. None of this seemed real.
But then a slash of pain rolled through her and the reality of her situation was more than clear. This was real.
She was going to have a baby, and she was going to have a baby alone. A harsh, bitter sound fell from between her lips. Wow. Father was going to love this one. It would seem that Maddison wasn’t the only screwup.
She thought of the list she’d started, the one she’d left on the counter in the kitchen. The one with call lawyer written in bold red ink.
Guess she should get on that.
Black-eyed Susans blew in the breeze along the far edge of the lawn, where two massive oak trees shielded a bench. A shiver rolled over her, and it didn’t seem to matter that it was hot and humid.
Lily was cold, and she thought that maybe she would never get warm again.
Carefully, she picked her way across the lawn, and she was nearly to the black-eyed Susans when she felt the first splash of rain on her face. It was a big, fat, wet drop, and she turned her face to the heavens, eyes closed, as it was followed by another. And then another.
She stood there for minutes. Or it could have been hours. But she let the warm rain slide over her body until she was drenched. Until the simple white dress she wore was plastered to her body and her hair hung in wet ropes down her back.
She stood under that summer rain, she inhaled its freshness, and she prayed for an end to the pain in her heart. As the drops began to lessen and slide over her more gently, she knew the pain inside her would never go away.
How could it?
What she felt for Mackenzie Draper was a forever kind of love, and a forever kind of love wasn’t something that would just fade away and disappear into the cracks like the water at her feet.
“It’s okay,” she murmured to herself. “It’s okay to feel like this for now.”
But she knew that she needed to pull herself together—she needed to do it for the speck of life growing in her womb.
Lily wasn’t sure how long she stood on the edge of the property, hands at her side, face raised to the clouds above her, but she knew the minute that she was no longer alone.
Brushing water from her eyes, she turned and gazed across the lawn at a man walking through the rain. He wore a simple blue T-shirt and old, faded jeans. His blond hair was slicked back off his face, and his intense eyes found her through the gloom.
He strode toward her, a straight path from her deck, his long legs unhurried and confident, but as he got closer, she saw the pain in his eyes. The pain and the longing and…
The love?
Mackenzie didn’t stop until his arms slid around her, until he hunched forward and drew her into his embrace. She felt his heart beating inside his chest. Ba-boom. Ba-boom. Ba-boom.
