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He wanted it to be different.
But it couldn’t. It wouldn’t. And it still made him angry.
So he left her and went back to his bed, the same thoughts he’d had earlier about the state of his life circling his head. The same loneliness he felt without her.
And in his heart, a spark of hope that maybe, somehow, she’d believe again that he wasn’t what she accused him of so long ago, but the same man she’d loved so well he couldn’t get over her.
Chapter Five
Kenna sat in the rocking chair in the living room by the window overlooking the wide front porch and the barn. She and Max had avoided each other all day.
It hurt that he couldn’t look at her, that he hated having her around. But she still secretly loved being here, because Max had always been her safe place. And even if he didn’t want her anymore, she still felt secure here.
He’d done the decent thing, taking her in, in her time of need, because he was a decent man.
She refused to let herself believe anything different, to even hope there was something more to his actions, because that would lead to utter disappointment. And she simply couldn’t take anything more right now.
She thought of what her brother said before he left, about telling Max the truth.
She’d wanted to for a long time.
What difference would it make now?
Which made her wonder why he showed up at the hospital last night at all.
Except that maybe, if Max had been attacked andhurt, she’d need to see with her own eyes that he was alive and well. Because once they were everything to each other. Maybe that, on a basic level, never went away even if it had all crumbled to pieces. That piece still remained, even if the whole of what it used to be had shattered, it still connected them.
She couldn’t sit here all day, thinking about Max, hoping to catch another glimpse of him, only to run up to the guest room the second he headed back to the house.
She couldn’t stomach anything right now. Not when she felt so sad about Marcus. It seemed she couldn’t erase the images of him fighting off their attacker or him bleeding on her floor. She could still hear herself begging him to wake up.
The whole thing seemed like a nightmare and all too real at the same time.
Her body started trembling again. Her eyes teared up, even though she spent most of the night waking from one bad dream after another and crying all over again.
She needed to get out of here and find a way to block it all out.
She grabbed her phone to call Hunt again. He hadn’t answered her earlier call or returned it after she left him a message. They had to have finished processing her house by now.
The officer who showed up last night to watch the house, had been replaced by a new one today. She’d gone out to his car earlier to ask if he knew when she could leave. He told her to talk to Hunt.
She tapped the screen and sent the call through.
“You’ve reached Hunt Wilde. Leave a message.”
“Hunt, it’s Kenna. Again. Please call me back. I need to go home.” She hung up and set her chin on her knees as she sat curled up in the chair. She didn’t actually want to go home, she just needed to get away from here and there was nowhere else to go.
She feared she’d never escape her own mind and heartache.
She’d called into work, told them what happened, and asked for a couple of days off. But once she felt a little better, she decided that getting back to her students, doing something productive, would help her cope.
“Are you okay?”
Startled, she gasped and turned her head to Mr. Wilde, who stood in the archway between the front door entryway and the living room. The bruised and battered muscles in her back and shoulders tensed, sending a wave of pain through her body.
Mr. Wilde held up his hand to let her know he meant no harm. “Sorry. I was just watching you watch Max. You look so lost and alone. It looks like you miss him a lot.”
She wondered how her life turned into this, when at one time she’d pictured her life so differently and every scene included Max.
