Hard Edge - Tess Oliver Page 0,62

my arms, but I kept my hands locked in fists at my sides. “I loved you too. All the while Grady was confiding in me and telling me how he really felt about you, I was keeping my own secret. It chewed me up inside, but I never told him.” I took a step toward her.

Kenna finally lifted her face to look at me. “When we were kids, I was over the top crazy about you, but I kept it from Grady too. Mostly because I knew it was a waste of my time and energy to have a crush on you.” A glimmer of a smile followed and I was relieved as hell to see it. “But mostly because I figured Grady would have teased me mercilessly about it.” She swallowed and took a breath. Her tears flowed again. “Now I’m thankful that I never told him. He would have been hurt. I might have lost him as a friend.” She looked behind her to make sure the bench was close enough and sat down hard, as if her knees had been kicked out from beneath her.

I walked over and sat down, not near enough to touch. Just near enough to make my case.

Kenna stared down at her feet. “As right as it feels being with you—” She lifted her face to look at me, and I knew, before the next words came off those soft, pink lips, lips I would never kiss again, I knew. “I can’t do this. It feels like the worst kind of betrayal.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I was feeling some of the same. Grady and I hadn’t talked about his feelings for Kenna for a long while. I’d been trying to justify my actions by assuring myself that he’d grown out of it. He’d gone off to college and a life away from Mayfair. I’d convinced myself that Grady had finally gotten past his feelings for Kenna. But the words, scratched so definitively in red in his planner, had made it painfully clear that my brother had still loved her. Just as my own feelings had never wavered.

Kenna pushed to her feet. “I need to get home.”

I moved to stand.

“But I want to walk back alone.”

I peered up at her. The anguish I felt was mirrored in her expression.

“I’m sorry, Cade. I’m going to need some time with this.”

Chapter 28

Kenna

I sat on the bed holding the Scooby stuffed toy in my lap. I hadn’t talked to or seen Caden since the day before, when I’d walked away from him at the park. I already missed him terribly. What had I done? How was I going to be able to just leave Mayfair and Caden without looking back?

It was strange how when things happened, they almost inevitably happened in giant cloud bursts. You could go along for weeks or months, just plodding through life, doing the stuff you were supposed to do with no real drama or excitement to mix things up. They were the boring sections in life that could roll you into the doldrums, like those last few weeks of summer vacation from school when a triple digit California heat wave confined you to the house and you watched your last days of freedom pass by with nothing to do but sit inside and watch the front lawn sizzle like bacon. But then something happened, something bad, to toss you out of the doldrums and you longed for those days of watching the grass turn brown.

Grady’s death had started the cloud burst, and it had been pouring rain ever since. In a few short weeks, I’d lost a best friend, broken up with a fiancé, rethought my career a hundred times with no conclusive answers, and fallen wildly in love . . . for a second time . . . with the same guy. Now I wished I could just erase it all and transport myself back to my previous life, as unsatisfying as it was, just so I could get past the emotional turmoil.

Seeing Grady’s declaration of love had felt like a stab in the heart. All along, I’d felt little fingers of guilt poking me, telling me that a relationship with Caden was wrong. I’d been Grady’s best friend and being with his brother had shades of betrayal. Knowing now that, to Grady, I hadn’t just been a friend made that betrayal feel like a wet wool blanket, heavy and uncomfortable. It weighed on my shoulders, on my