Travis

The air was still and muggy, not a whisper of breeze off the lake. I rolled the cold beer bottle across my forehead, sighing at the momentary relief. The porch swing creaked under my weight as I used one foot to move it idly, taking a sip of the cheap beer, the only kind Betty offered. It was still welcomed, as was the peace of this front porch, away from the hooch-drunk revelers joined together for social hour. It sounded like they were involved in a rowdy game of charades, although that couldn’t be right, because they’d never leave Burt out and blind men wouldn’t be a team asset when it came to charades. Whatever it was, there were lots of distant hoots and hollers.

I used my toe to give myself another small push. A fish jumped in the water beyond, its small splash leaving ripples on the deep blue surface of the water.

“Lonely, mister?”

My lips tipped and I turned my head slightly. I didn’t need to see her to know who it was. She pushed the screen door open, stepping forward into the dim light of the covered porch. She leaned a hip on one of the columns near the steps and turned my way. “And you look like you’re thinking very hard about something,” she noted.

I gave a half-hearted smile. “I went to see my mother today. She inspires reflection.” I held up my beer. “And alcohol.”

“Hmm,” she hummed, studying me. After a moment, she looked away, seeming to be wrestling with something. “I . . . uh”—she picked at a splinter on the wooden railing—“I looked up the town today . . . read more about the Hale family history.” She paused, finally meeting my gaze. “I hope you don’t consider it a breach of privacy.”

I looked back out to the lake. “No. It’s all public knowledge.”

“I overheard a couple of girls mentioning your family at the club today and it . . . it . . . well, I should have asked you . . . I just . . . I wasn’t sure, you know, if you would want to talk about your family with—”

“My friend?”

She let out a breathy laugh. “Yes.” Her fingers found that splinter again. “Yes, your . . . temporary friend. Well, or anyone.” Temporary friend, repeated in my head. With benefits, went unsaid. Then again, I wasn’t sure if she’d allow anything physical to happen between us again. At the thought of never kissing her, never touching her body, something opened inside me. Something empty and hollow.

She’d overheard a couple of girls gossiping about the Hales at the club today. It was very possible the conversation was less than positive. My family garnered mixed reviews when it came to the citizens of Calliope. But whatever she’d heard hadn’t caused her to judge me harshly. Because she was kind.

I watched her for a minute. By the way she was fidgeting, I could tell she felt awkward and off balance. We were straddling so many lines, and I had the sense that Haven needed to keep me firmly placed in the box she’d designated. I also had the sense that there were deeper reasons for that than just because she was only passing through town and didn’t want to make connections that would be difficult to sever when she left.

Call it intuition. Call it being a cop whose job it was to be suspicious of people.

Call it that my mind moved in her direction more often than I gave it permission to but, it’d been slowly attempting to form the full picture that was Haven Torres with the small puzzle pieces she’d been throwing my way.

I knew so little about her life. Just the few details she’d dispensed, seemingly randomly. She’d grown up poor. She’d been rescued, in some sense anyway, by a kindly couple who owned a rooftop garden. She’d worked at a grocery store so she could bring home healthy food. She had a reckless brother who I could only assume had grown up just like she had, only perhaps without the benefit of a rooftop garden to tend. Or the emotional benefits that that garden had obviously provided to Haven. Responsibility. The gift of trust.

And now she knew a few things about me. I didn’t know what the gossips had said, but I did know that what was online barely scratched the surface and definitely wouldn’t have given her the full picture.

“You’re a hero,” she said softly. “You took down a gunman who might have killed so many others.”

Case in point.

I had done that. But oh, I’d done plenty more too.

I was quiet for a good minute. Haven waited, not saying a word.

“I used to swim way over there,” I said, pointing across the lake, squinting one eye slightly as I tried to see the small public beach on the edge of what had been my uncle Nathan’s land, and now belonged to Archer. It had been public as far as ownership, but not very many people had known about it and so for all intents and purposes, it had been a private area my friends and I had all to ourselves. “Archer lives on the edge of that beach,” I explained, “and he has most of his life, at least since the time of . . . the accident. When he lost his voice. I used to make noise so he would hear me and my friends, and then I’d mock him when he came to watch us from the trees.”

I felt Haven’s gaze on me but didn’t raise my eyes to look at her.

“Why?” she asked softly, and I heard the quiet edge of surprised disapproval in her voice.

“Because I was jealous. I wanted him to hurt the way I did.” I paused again. Why was I telling her this? I never talked about this. Ever. “The day our dad died, he was leaving town with Archer and Archer’s mother to live a new life, away from here.” Away from me. “I wanted Archer to hurt,” I went on, “because no matter what he’d lost, he’d had our dad’s love—at the very end, our dad had chosen him over me. It was all I’d ever wanted and there was no way to get it back because he was gone.”

It was right, I supposed, that I was the one sitting here feeling sort of sad and lost, and he was the one snug in his cozy house across the lake, the love of family surrounding him, all his dreams had come true.

Cosmic justice and all that. It was no surprise that Karma hadn’t smiled down upon me.

Haven was staring out at the lake, the expression on her face sort of sad and sort of thoughtful, but when she turned my way, I saw empathy there too. “I understand that, Travis,” she told me, letting out a soft sigh. “More than you might know.” She paused for a second, her head tilted in consideration. “Maybe the terrible truth about love is that when it’s gone, it leaves a hole in your heart so big it feels like nothing will ever fill it. The idea of risking again feels fatal. A human being can’t possibly lose that much of themselves and still survive. And so you try desperately to fill it with things that never quite do the job. Things that sometimes hurt other people,” she finished softly.

Her words made my heart twist. And I wondered if she was speaking generally . . . or personally. Or maybe a little of both. “You’ve been hurt,” I said. She’d told me a little, but her words made me think there was much more.

But she smiled and waved her hand as if dismissing the gravity she’d obviously heard in my tone. “Of course. Life hurts us all in ways big and small. But as for you, Travis, Archer and Bree have obviously invited you into their lives for a reason. You apologized and your brother forgave you. And however you downplay it, you were a hero that day. Take pride in that.”

I let out a chuckle devoid of humor. “You think too much of me. You don’t know all the details. If you did know . . .” If you did know, you wouldn’t be sitting out here on this porch with me, speaking softly and kindly because you sensed I could use a friend. I suddenly realized that I wanted this woman to know me. But with the realization came fear, because if she truly knew me, if she knew all the things I’d said and done, not as a child, not as a teenager, but as an adult who should have known and done better, she’d turn away in disgust. And why shouldn’t she?

“We’ve all made mistakes, Travis,” she said. “We get to reinvent ourselves. And if the new version is even better, it means we’ve learned and we’ve grown.”

“That easy?”

“No.” She laughed softly. “No, not easy. But . . . but I think it might be worth it.”

I eyed her. “You sound like you know a thing or two about reinventing yourself.”

“I know about trying. And failing. And trying again. That’s mostly what this road trip is about. Reinventing myself. Starting fresh.” She looked troubled, as if she doubted the probability of that happening.

A bird dove down over the water, and swooped upward just as quickly, wings flapping softly in the still nighttime air, a spray of water arcing behind it. The bird’s talons were empty. Whatever he’d spotted under the smooth surface of the water had managed to get away.

“How do you know what to change, and what to hold on to?” I asked. Were there parts of me that were good and valuable, or did I scrap it all and start completely from scratch? And if that was the case, how in the hell did one go about doing that? Especially in a small town where stories became legend, and every buried secret eventually rose to the surface?

If I wanted a fresh start, I’d likely have to change my name and move to Siberia.

Maybe Haven had come to a similar conclusion. Only instead of settling in a deserted arctic tundra, she’d chosen to settle nowhere . . . and everywhere.

There are one of two paths for you. Either lose it all. Or lose it all.

Haven smiled at me. “Well, that’s a deep question and I don’t know if I’ve quite figured that out yet. I guess the answer is different for each of us. Maybe it’s an ongoing process, you know?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” When it came to learning and growing in an emotional sense, I’d seldom been quick on the uptake.

We were both quiet for a moment but it was a comfortable silence, broken only by the soft splashes of the wildlife in the lake, the buzz of insects, and the muffled shout of laughter that found us from the other side of the house.

“Can I ask you a question?” Haven asked.

Will I kiss you again? Will I take you upstairs to my bed and put my mouth on every inch of your skin? My body stirred, despite the slightly melancholy nature of our conversation and the mood I’d been in since I’d made the drive home from my mother’s. Will I arrest Gage and lock him up for life? Throw away the key?

“Sure.”

She tilted her head. “Why do you drive all the way over from the other side of the lake to work out at that snotty club?”

“That snotty club? The one that hired you?”

She gave a half-hearted eye roll. “I’m temporary help.” She paused. “It just seems like it’s a long way to go when you live—usually anyway—and work in Pelion. Don’t they have clubs or gyms there?”

I shrugged. “Yeah, but the club in Calliope is the best.”

But that felt off. It felt like I was lying . . . to her . . . to myself. Especially after I’d just thought about how my family name was often said in contemptuous tones by Calliope residents. So why did I make the thirty-minute drive to the exclusive club when I could have worked out in Pelion? Why did I frequent the restaurants on the other side of the lake? Was it because—as I’d told myself—I wanted something of my own? Something that didn’t have Archer Hale’s fingerprints all over it? Even if I wasn’t a hundred percent welcomed or embraced?

Or was it something I hadn’t acknowledged?

Talk about straddling lines. Maybe it came easy to me as far as Haven was concerned, because I had plenty of practice.

Perhaps I’d grown used to straddling the line between the old life I’d lived when my mother owned Pelion and I was set to inherit it all—when I’d felt important and when Victoria Hale was the toast of the town—and my new life as a small-town chief of police who would never live the high life, at least not on the level I once had.

Certainly not on Gage Buchanan’s level.

But was there really anything wrong with still enjoying a few holdovers from the life I’d grown up with? The life that separated me from my brother? The one that was my own? Mine and no one else’s? Should I apologize for that?

“Just preference,” I answered her. Or habit? I scratched the back of my neck. Jesus. Maybe I had no idea who I really was. Still. Even after all this time.

She bit at her lip momentarily as if unconvinced by my answer. Why shouldn’t she be? Hell, I was unconvinced of it myself. “Any interest in running for political office?”

“Political office? Where did that come from?” I gave her an amused half-smile.

She shrugged but looked away. “Being chief of police is a government position. I just wondered if maybe you’d thought of running for other offices.”

I shook my head. “No. I enjoy law enforcement, but I have no desire to go into politics.”

She was silent for a moment, watching me. “Hmm,” she finally answered. “Then . . . what sort of life do you want, Travis? Where do you see yourself, say, in five years?”

Confusion overcame me. What sort of life do you want? Where do you see yourself? What she was really asking me was what were my dreams. No one had ever asked me that question. No one since my father. I’d told him I wanted to be a policeman like him, and I’d seen the light of pride in his eyes. I’d tried so hard to let him go because he’d let me go. But I’d held on to that look. I’d carried it with me, and I’d become the chief of police. I’d bought the land that was my father’s. I planned to settle there. If I had really let my father go like I’d convinced myself, why was I walking in his footsteps?

What sort of life do you want? My mother had certainly never asked me that question. And none of the women I’d dated—including Phoebe—had wondered. Hell, I’d never asked it of myself. I’d thought about marriage, kids. But after Phoebe’s betrayal, that particular idea had been lost. And yet I didn’t mourn it. At least . . . not with her. “I guess I have everything I want,” I said. “This is it. This is the dream.”

She studied me for several beats. “You don’t sound very sure of that.”

I chuckled. “What about you? What sort of life do you want?”

Haven fidgeted again, staring in the direction of the lake. “One that’s peaceful. Stable. We moved a lot as a kid. Usually in the middle of the night.” She let out a small laugh that held a hint of pain and little humor.

Ouch. I took the blow of that one too, watching her for a second. She’d lived a life filled with inconsistency and hunger of at least a few varieties. She’d mentioned several times what a dream our town was. How peaceful. How stable, went unsaid. And I’d seen the longing in her eyes for what she didn’t have, and maybe never did. “Life on the road doesn’t seem very stable,” I said as gently as possible.

“No. I guess not.”

“What will bring you peace?” I wondered. “Where do you see this journey ending?”

She smiled softly. “At a garden somewhere. I see planter boxes filled with plants. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. But it feels like a decent start.”

Do you think that garden might be here in Pelion? I wanted to ask. But I didn’t. She’d made it clear she was leaving, and I didn’t want to hear her say no.

Something crashed inside to a chorus of laughter and Haven gave a small eye roll, breathing out a laugh. “The hooch is flowing tonight,” she said.

“Heavily.”

Our gazes held for a moment before Haven stood. “I should get to bed,” she said. “It’s been a long, eye-roll-filled day. Junie Wellington had a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ at the pool.”

“Again?”

Haven let out a short laugh. “Again.”

“How many guys got trampled this time?”

“At least four.”

I chuckled. Don’t go. “You probably need some rest then.”

I know we said no complications. But . . . that felt sort of complicated.

“Yes, I . . . do.”

Don’t go. “Goodnight then.”

Ask me up to your room. I waited, but she only nodded. “Goodnight.”

She passed by me and I resisted reaching for her, stood, and turned just as she disappeared through the door.

**********

I stared, mostly unseeing, at the blur of the whirring fan overhead, my mind spinning along with the blades.

I wanted her.

Why had I let her go? Why hadn’t I made a move?

I’d felt shy for Christ’s sake.

Scared.

Doubtful.

Because when it came to Haven, I was always the one making the moves and it made me feel vulnerable and uncertain.

She’s right down the hall. Only a handful of steps away.

And she made it clear the “with benefits” part of our friendship was overly complicated.

I’d never gone to a woman in my life. I’d always waited for them to come to me, and I was never left waiting long.

Not with Haven though.

If I wanted Haven, I’d have to go to her.

And face rejection.

Kisses . . . even orgasms in a lake in the dark of night, might be one thing. But what I wanted was much more than that. I wanted her in my bed. I wanted her naked. I wanted to perform a slow exploration of every dip and swell of her body and then I wanted to—

I groaned in frustration, forcing away the sensual pictures forming in my mind, and turned onto my side. 

I could still taste her. I could still feel the silky texture of her skin beneath my fingertips, recall in vivid detail the way she’d shivered in my arms as she came.

And it wasn’t enough.

God, the way she made me feel. It was . . . I didn’t even know what it was, because it wasn’t only physical. I liked to talk to her. I liked to hear her thoughts and listen to her stories. I wanted more of her kindness, her insight, and the understanding she held in her gaze.

Oh God, what was happening to me?

I rolled onto my back, bringing the pillow over my face and then, as a thought came to me, I removed the pillow, my eyes opening and hope descending.

I’d helped Haven gain Gage’s attention by increasing the challenge. Maybe, on some level I hadn’t even acknowledged, I was responding to that challenge too.

I frowned. That didn’t feel quite right. Still . . . this didn’t have to be complicated. I was good at simple. Hell, before I’d decided that maybe it was time to start thinking about settling down, simple had practically been my middle name.

I was making far too much of this. So, I liked her. I liked things about her I hadn’t liked about other women before. Different. Seemingly deeper.

Which spoke to the fact that we really were friends.

Plus, she was only here temporarily. And suddenly that felt like a relief.

I was swearing off relationships for the time being, but did I have to swear off women? Did I have to swear off simple?

Forget that she had feelings for Gage. A mist of red clouded my gaze momentarily and I wondered vaguely if anyone would notice one more “barn cat” grave dotting the property of The Yellow Trellis Inn.

Then again . . . did she really have feelings for Gage Buchanan? She didn’t even know him. My muscles unclenched. At least we were friends. My lips curved into a slow smile that dropped quickly.

I lay there for a few more minutes, wallowing in the confusion, the self-consciousness of being on unsteady ground. I’d never known what vulnerability felt like—not when it came to a woman. And I’d never willingly gone toward vulnerability of any kind. In fact, I’d gone to great lengths to avoid it. So why was I even considering walking toward it now?

Because I was grasping for certainty. And the only thing I felt sure of at the moment was that I wanted her. More than I’d ever wanted anyone in my life.

And that’s what propelled me to my feet and out the door of my room.

Down the hall, Haven came out of her room. I halted, our eyes meeting, flaring. But then I saw the relief in her expression.

My heart leapt. I walked toward her, her lips parting as she stayed rooted to the spot, her hand still wrapped around her doorknob as though it was the only thing holding her up.

So many emotions warred in her expression, and we simply stared at each other for a few moments, neither seeming to know what to say.

“Slightly complicated isn’t . . . isn’t as bad as it sounds,” she finally said. “We’re making too much of this.”

Funny, I’d convinced myself of something along similar lines just a few moments before and yet, hearing it from her scraped something inside, the words like sandpaper.

Never mind that . . . I wanted her with a desperation I wasn’t sure what to do with and so I nodded, accepting what I’d been offered. “No strings,” I said. “No promises.”

She visibly relaxed, shoulders dropping. “That’s my motto,” she whispered, and then she took my hand and led me into her room.