A fierce knock sounded at the door, echoing through the whole house. She almost didn’t answer it because who else would knock like that except a man who had a lot of built-up anger? At her, apparently. After ten years of turning over every aspect of her relationship with Kyle, analyzing it to death while looking for the slightest nuance of where it had all gone wrong, never once had she turned that inspection back on herself.
But she’d made mistakes, that much was apparent. Then and now. Somehow.
Only she didn’t quite buy that what happened ten years ago was all her fault.
And all at once, she wanted that reckoning. Wanted to ask a few pointed questions of Kyle Wade that she hadn’t gotten to ask before being thrown out of his bed two long and miserable days ago.
She yanked open the door and the mad she’d worked up faltered.
Kyle stood there on her doorstep in crisp jeans, boots and a work shirt, dressed like every other man in Royal and probably a hundred other towns dotting the Texas prairie. But he wasn’t anything close to any other man the world over, because he was Kyle. Her stupid heart would probably never get the message that they were doomed as a couple.
He was holding a bouquet of beautiful flowers, so full it spilled over his hand in a riot of colors and shapes. Her vision blurred as she focused on the flowers and the solemn expression on Kyle’s face.
“Hey, Grace.”
No. He wasn’t allowed to be here all apologetic and carrying conciliatory flowers. It wasn’t fair. She couldn’t let him into her head again, and she certainly wasn’t offering up her heart again to be flattened. He didn’t have to know she’d given up on getting over him.
“What do you want, Kyle?” She didn’t even wince at her own rudeness. She got a pass after being shown the door while still undressed and warm from the man’s arms.
“I brought you these,” he said simply without blinking at her harsh tone. He held out the bouquet. “Thank-you flowers. Because I owed you.”
Wasn’t that romantic? She didn’t take the bouquet. “You owed me? You definitely owe me, but not flowers. An explanation would be better.”
Kyle dropped the bouquet, his expression hardening. “May I come in then? Your next-door neighbor is out on the porch with popcorn, watching the show.”
“Mrs. Putter is seventy-two.” Grace crossed her arms and propped a hip against the doorjamb. “This is all the fun she gets for the year.”
“Fine.” Kyle sighed. “I came to apologize. I shot first and asked questions later. It’s the way I do things, mostly because people are usually shooting at me, too.”
Not an auspicious start, other than the apology part. “And yet I still haven’t heard any questions.”
“Grace.” Kyle caught her gaze, and something warm spilled from his green eyes that she couldn’t look away from. “You meant something to me. Back then. You have to understand that I had a lot of stuff going on in my head that I didn’t want to deal with, so I didn’t. I shut down instead. That wasn’t fair to you. But you were the best thing in my life, and then you were gone. I was a wreck. Seeing you with Liam was the last straw, so I left Royal because I couldn’t stand it, assuming that you’d found the Wade brother you preferred. There was never a point when I would have confronted you about it.”
Openmouthed, she stared at him. That was the longest speech she’d ever heard him give and it loosened her tongue in kind. “I get that I messed up with Liam. I was young and stupid. I should have been more up-front about my feelings, too.”
Kyle nodded. “Goes for both of us. But I still owe you a thank-you. I joined the military because I wanted to be gone. I figured, what better way to forget Royal and the girl there than to go to the other side of the world in defense of my country? But instead of just a place to nurse my shattered ego, I found something I didn’t expect. Something great. Being a SEAL changed me.”
Yes, she’d seen that. He’d grown up, into a responsible, solid man who cared about his daughters. “You seem to have flourished.”
“I did,” he agreed enthusiastically. “It was the team I’d been looking for. I never fit in at the ranch. That’s part of what was weighing me down back then. The stuff inside. I was contemplating my future and not seeing a clear picture of what I should do going forward. If you hadn’t staged that ploy with Liam, I might never have found my unit. Those guys were my family.”
The sheer emotion on his face as he talked about his fellow team members—it was overwhelming. He’d clearly loved being in the military. It had shaped him, and he’d soaked it up.