The Last One You Loved

  THE LAST ONE YOU LOVED

  LJ EVANS

  This book is a work of fiction. While reference might be made to actual historical events or existing people and locations, the events, names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  THE LAST ONE YOU LOVED © 2022 by LJ Evans

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored, in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book. If you find this book on a free book website, it is stolen property and illegal to download.

  Published by THAT’S WHAT SHE SAID PUBLISHING

  www.ljevansbooks.com

  Cover Design: © Emily Wittig Designs

  Content & Line Editor: Evans Editing

  Copy Editor: Jenn Lockwood Editing Services

  Proofing: Karen Hrdlicka

  Library of Congress Cataloging in process.

  091022

  CONTENTS

  Playlist

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  MY LIFE AS A MIXTAPE

  Message from the Author

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Titles by LJ Evans

  PLAYLIST

  Listen now of Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3Pp12T5

  For all the cowboys who didn’t ride away.

  For Leisa who is the reason this book exists.

  And for the gang at TWSS who took a gamble on a lost cause.

  I’ll forever be grateful.

  PROLOGUE

  MADDOX

  AIN’T ALWAYS THE COWBOY

  “That restless runnin’

  Searchin’ for somethin’

  Leavin’ love in the dust of a midnight Chevrolet.”

  Performed by Jon Pardi

  Written by Kinney / Thompson

  The lake shimmered in the moonlight. The warm breeze stirred up tiny waves, sending white sprinkles shifting across the surface as it drifted toward the shore where we were parked.

  We were on the tailgate of my beat-up Bronco with our hands and limbs joined. McKenna’s jean-clad legs were flung over my lap, and her head rested on my shoulder. Her cowboy boots were off, lost somewhere behind me in the chaos of blankets and food wrappers. I ran the fingers of my free hand over the gentle arch of her foot, and she jerked it away, laughing.

  “Don’t you dare tickle me unless you want to end up with a busted nose,” she teased, her soft voice washing over me.

  It wasn’t like I hadn’t known she’d pull away. Ten years of knowing her meant I knew just how ticklish her feet were, but I'd done it anyway in an attempt to lighten the mood. But the sound and scent and feel of her made it almost impossible to feel anything but sorrow. It might be the last time I would hold her like this, and my heart screamed as if it could change what was happening by merely twisting inside my chest.

  “Wanna go for a swim?” I asked.

  It was still humid outside, even though the sun had set hours ago. Long enough that the twilight sounds of the bugs and wild animals had almost disappeared. Instead, a quiet had taken over the space, a preview of what would happen once she drove down the road tomorrow and my life was forever changed.

  In answer to my question, she slid off of me and started discarding clothes. She was wearing a string bikini under her jeans and floaty blouse, as if she’d known I’d ask for this―us in the water. I swallowed hard at the gentle curves I’d spent years getting to know as well as my own. I glanced down at my sinewy body toughened from years of working on the ranch. She’d always said my muscles were the very best kind—built from hard work. Would anyone else ever care about them the way she had?

  I hadn’t been as prepared as she’d been for a swim, so my boxer briefs were going to have to do. Once I’d stripped down, I recaptured her hand, determined to touch her for as long as possible, and led us toward the water, picking our way through the twigs and rocks as we went.

  As soon as we hit the cool water, I shivered. It was a soothing relief to the heat and heaviness of the day. If only it could lift the weight inside me as easily as it chilled my skin.

  We swam toward the makeshift dock someone had fastened to the middle of the lake decades ago. We didn’t pull ourselves up on top. Instead, we hid in the shadows. She wrapped her long limbs around my waist, and I looped an arm through one of the ropes hanging off the wooden slats to hold us steady while my hands continued to touch her.

  She kissed me. Wet and wild. Slow and torturous. Love and goodbyes blended into the movements as we rejoined our bodies in the way we’d been doing over the last couple of months. Like a flame on the wick of a firecracker, burning, burning, burning until it finally ignited into a shower of light and sound.

  Until it became nothing but us.

  She moaned into my mouth when my fingers slid under her bikini, touching pieces of her that were aching for me. I wanted to cry out as well, but with a different ache. I wanted to let my tears wash into the lake.

  But it would be selfish because I wouldn’t be crying for her. I’d only be crying for me, and that didn’t seem fair. McKenna deserved the future she was heading toward―her dream of becoming a doctor finally starting. But her desire to escape this town and her mother hurt because it meant she was escaping me and my family as well—the people who’d loved and sheltered her.

  Knowing it was coming hadn’t eased the pain of its arrival. As much as I wanted to follow her, I couldn’t. My life was here with my family, and the ranch, and my own dreams of serving my community. Even if everything at home had been perfectly fine, I wasn’t sure I’d want to leave our small town for a place where you couldn’t see the stars. Here, they were so bright it seemed like you could grab them, put them in your pocket, and take them with you. If I was forced to live in a city, I’d burn out just like those faraway suns. If you forced her to stay, she’d wither like the roses I’d given her last week. Dust into dust.

  We loved each other more than I’d ever thought was possible, especially considering we were just two kids, barely legal. I knew her smiles and looks and moods better than she knew them herself, and vice versa. But this was where the road we were on finally divided after a decade of running side by side. A bitter taste rose inside me because I wasn’t sure our roads would ever cross again.

  “I’ll come visit,” I told her, breaking my mouth from hers. “Thanksgiving or spring break. Whichever works.”

  Could I get through to spring without seeing her? Touching her? Loving her? How would I even come up with the money for the trip?

  She rested her forehead on my shoulder, placed a gentle kiss there, and then looked up at me with sad, tormented eyes.

  “Maddox…between college, medical school, and a residency, it’ll be at least eleven years before I’m done. I’ll always be your friend. I’ll always love you…but…I just…” A choked sob broke free from her, and my throat bobbed, eyes watering.

  “You want to break up. You don’t even want to try?” I asked, that bitterness coating my tongue and my mouth growing. She had choices. She could have applied to Tennessee State. She could have kept us closer, but even as I said it, I knew she couldn’t. McKenna needed to put her childhood behind her…even if that meant giving me up along with it.

  She put her hands on my cheeks, cupping them and kissing my lips sweetly.

  “You’re my favorite thing. My favorite memory. My favorite gift. My favorite person,” she said quietly.

  I could no longer hold the tears back. I didn’t know how to let her go. But I’d have to because it wasn’t always the cowboy who ran away.

  Sometimes, it was the golden-haloed woman with a future so bright the gods had to be jealous.

  That was my McKenna.

  And tomorrow, she’d be gone.

  No longer mine, but the world’s instead.

  CHAPTER ONE

  MCKENNA

  YOU ALL OVER ME

  “Now every breath of air I breathe reminds me of then.”

  Performed by Taylor Swift with Maren Morris

  Written by Carusoe / Swift

  TEN YEARS LATER

  Bouncing on my bed woke me. I forced my eyes open and then slammed them shut upon seeing Sally’s glowing face. It was too early for this kind of over-the-top happiness.

  “Happy birthday, McKenna!” she practically
screamed, forcing me to look at her again.

  I groaned and tried to bury my head under the covers, but my roommate wouldn’t let me. Instead, she ripped the blankets back with surprisingly strong hands and shoved a heavy present at me. Her large, mahogany eyes twinkled in her light-brown face as her pink-tipped waves swung around her sharply defined cheeks and chin.

  I hated birthdays, while Sally was from a family who celebrated them like they were a bigger deal than Christmas. In the three years I’d been living with her, she’d made sure I had cake, presents, and whatever I wanted for dinner. Last year, she’d even thrown a surprise party for me at the nurses' station. I’d wanted to run as soon as I’d turned the corner, and I’d made her promise never to do it again.

  Growing up, my birthdays had been a painful reminder of what had gone wrong in Mama’s life, and she’d done everything to make sure her worst day would also be mine. Only one person besides Sally had ever tried to make this day something different.

  I pushed aside the memories that threatened to weigh me down and groused without any real heat, “It’s too early for presents and celebrations, Sal.”

  “Shut up and open it!” she said, ignoring my grumpiness and shoving the box at me with her wide smile fixed permanently in place.

  I sat up, and my naturally blonde hair tumbled around me in knots. I’d regret going to bed with it wet, but I’d been exhausted after my twelve-hour shift at the hospital had turned into a sixteen-hour one. I’d barely been able to shower, let alone worry about my hair.

  I pulled the bulky gift onto my lap and shot Sally a frown. “I hope you didn’t do something stupid, like spend some of your car money on me. I don’t want to be the reason you can’t get it in January!”

  She flicked my shoulder. “Just open it and stop being ridiculous.”

  I slowly undid the ribbon and pulled off the lid. Inside was a DVD collection of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Every season. I swallowed hard. The DVDs weren’t new, but they still had to have cost her a pretty penny to get the entire set. With both of us barely scraping by due to the enormous college debt resting on our shoulders, this wasn’t a little gift.

  Tears hit my eyes for real, but I refused to let them out, like I’d learned to do early in life by biting my cheek and clenching my nails into my palms. But my voice was still clogged with emotions when I choked out, “Dang it, Sal.”

  She hugged me to her, and I did my best not to stiffen, letting my head land briefly on her shoulder.

  “Now, you’ll always have Buffy when you need her,” she said softly.

  “I need her less these days because I have you,” I responded. She was the best female friend I’d ever had. I’d say she was my best friend ever, but there was a teeny-tiny place inside my heart that knew it would be a lie. But I wouldn’t hear from him today. I’d shoved him out of my life for a dream―a mirage―that had disappeared in the shimmer of the hot sun.

  My gut twisted.

  I couldn’t think of that today. Of him. Of my mistakes.

  I had to get my head on straight, put on my white jacket, and head to the ER—to the real dream I was mere months away from finalizing.

  Once my residency was over, I’d be one-hundred-percent official. I’d not only be a doctor, but I’d also be able to call the shots. Goosebumps covered my arms. Ten-year-old me would hardly be able to believe it. That I’d actually escaped and made it happen.

  “Get dressed. Your birthday breakfast awaits,” Sally said and basically pushed me out of the bed. I stumbled, barely catching myself on the dresser.

  “Geez, if this is how you treat a friend on her birthday, I don’t want to see how you treat your enemies,” I teased.

  She headed for the door. “If you’re not out in five minutes, I’m going to shove your pancakes—whipped cream and all—in your face. Dickwad Gregory is in charge today, so neither of us can afford to be late.”

  My stomach knotted thinking of the head of the ER department. He was obnoxious, and egotistical, and thought everyone should swoon over his fifty-year-old, married self. Worse, some people did. Made me pukey even thinking about it.

  “McK, I’m not kidding. Five minutes,” Sally said, bringing me out of my thoughts.

  “Okay, okay.”

  I slipped into the bathroom, washed up, and pulled on my scrubs. As I fought to drag my messy hair into a high ponytail, the shadows under my hazel eyes caught my attention. They’d pretty much become a permanent feature since starting my residency and were almost as black as my heavy brows. My hand stalled as it hit me suddenly―I looked like Mama.

  That scared me. My tired expression wasn’t from drugs and alcohol, but it was from running fast and furious for too many years.

  “McK!” Sally hollered.

  I shoved my phone, water bottle, and keys into a small backpack and hurried out of the room before coming to a complete stop, mouth dropping open.

  The entire apartment was full of balloons and streamers.

  I bit my cheek hard, tasting blood, and blinked rapidly to hold back the waterworks. Sally was all but dancing around me, excitement on her face from the pure joy of doing this for me.

  I didn’t care about my birthday. But I thanked the universe for the day Sally had found me on the bench outside the hospital, in a rare fit of tears, and befriended me. It was almost as important as the day Maddox Hatley had found me cowering in a shed behind his uncle’s bar when I was eight.

  Too bad I didn’t have Maddox anymore.

  It made this, what I had with Sally, that much more important. So, I’d celebrate today because she wanted me to. Because she was literally the only soul left on this planet who would care if I disappeared tomorrow.

  CHAPTER TWO

  MADDOX

  SLOW BURN

  “It’s a song, it’s a face, it’s a time,

  It’s a place in your life that belongs to her.

  Sometimes a memory like that is a slow burn.”

  Performed by Zac Brown Band

  Written by Hayslip / Simonetti / Brown

  I pulled back just in time, letting the fist barely graze my chin. The movement was enough to send my Stetson flying, landing amongst the straw where it was going to get trampled. It was the sight of my hat on the ground that pissed me off more than the fist or Willy Tate’s drunken, angry snarl as he lunged for me again.

  I ducked the second shot and shoved my shoulder into his gut, taking him down to the ground with me. The music had stopped, the customers in the bar quiet as they watched two burly men wrestle. Several chairs were tipped over, tables were bumped, and drinks were spilled as we rolled around. It took me one too many moves before I finally had him pinned facedown with his hands behind his back and my knee holding him in place.

  “Damn it, Willy, you owe me a new hat!” I growled.

  Clapping filled the air along with hoots and hollers that made my eyes roll.

  “Thanks for the show!” someone in the back yelled as someone else shouted out, “Brings me back to my sheep-tying days!”

  “Thanks for the help, y’all,” I said sarcastically, eyeing my brother sitting calmly on a stool at the bar with a crooked grin.

  “Why, Sheriff Maddox, no one would ever presume to think you needed help.” Ryder’s grin grew, and then he had the audacity to wink at me as he raised a beer in my direction. I barely resisted flipping him the bird as laughter erupted from him, causing his blue eyes that matched mine to crinkle at the corners. He brushed a hand over his perfectly tousled dark-brown hair that should have been smashed flat after wearing a hat all day but instead looked like he’d stepped off the page of a damn magazine.