He was dying to see her, and TJ. It’d been a long time since he’d seen either of them. Two years and a month almost to the day. It had been Thanksgiving weekend the last time he saw TJ, his son. The boy was three. McKenna had been so very silent and sad, sad in a different way than he’d seen before. He hadn’t realized that would be their last visit. He hadn’t realized she’d decided then that she was through…

He winced at the hot lance of pain shooting through him.

It’d taken him a long time to process that she wasn’t coming back. In the beginning of his incarceration, she came every two weeks with the baby. And then gradually she came once a month and then every five to six weeks until that last trip for Thanksgiving when she never returned again.

He’d about lost his mind at Deer Lodge. He’d died in ways you couldn’t explain.

She wouldn’t write him back. She wouldn’t visit. She just…cut him out.

That was when he truly suffered. That was when prison became a living hell. He was trapped. Hostage. He couldn’t do anything about it but write and write and write…

He must have made a sound because Troy suddenly looked at him, brow creased. “You doing okay?”

Trey clamped his jaw tight and shoved all the worry and fear deep down into that tough hard heart of his and snapped the lid, locking it, containing it.

He wouldn’t let guilt and anxiety get the best of him.

He’d sort it out. Make it work. There was only one girl for him, one family, and that was McKenna and TJ.

But he had put her through hell. He was the first to admit that he’d done her wrong. She didn’t deserve any of the pain and heartache he’d given her… the trouble he’d dished out in spades.

So he had one task: fix the mess he’d made of their lives.

Tonight, tomorrow, sometime this week after he’d cleaned up and calmed himself down, he was going to go to her and apologize for his stupid asinine immature self and beg her forgiveness and show her he was different. Changed.

She’d see that he’d finally grown up, and he was ready to be the husband she deserved. Ready to be the father TJ needed and a real family at last.

A wedding, a honeymoon, more kids, the whole bit. He couldn’t wait, either.

“Worried about going home?” Troy asked, breaking the silence.

“No,” Trey said roughly, his voice a deep, raw rasp. He winced at the sound of it, but what did you expect? He hadn’t talked much the past four years. He’d never been a big communicator to start with, but prison just put the silent in him.

“Home for Christmas,” Troy said.

“Yeah.” And it would be nice. He’d missed the ranch. Marietta. Everyone.

But mostly he’d missed McKenna and his boy.

Just thinking about her and TJ made his gut burn, and his bones ache.