“Mom, don’t act surprised,” he said, scrubbing a hand across his jaw. “You know they’re not my thing. Never have been. Not after what they did to you and Dad.”
She arched an eyebrow. “What they did to your dad and me? Travis, does that even make sense to you?”
“Of course,” he said, quickly before he could even think about the question.
“Well, think about it more seriously. Because it doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. Relationships didn’t do anything to your father and me. He died in an accident in the line of duty. Not because of a relationship. And I know you made a decision long ago, because of how deeply his death affected me, that you would protect yourself from relationships. All I can do is say the same thing to you that I said to your sister. I am sorry that his death took such a toll on me when you were younger.”
She sat up tall in her chair, keeping her gaze firmly fixed on him. “But you know what? I got over it. And I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad I have my heart to love again.” She tapped her chest, reminding him that her ticker still worked. “My heart is strong. Robert is amazing, and I am unbelievably happy with him. Yes, I was devastated when your father died, and for many years after. And yes, if I could redo those years, I would change many things. But the one thing I will not regret is that I didn’t shut off my heart. If I had, I wouldn’t have the life I have today,” she said, sweeping her arm out to indicate her home and, down the hall, her sleeping husband. “When your father died, I had a hole in my heart, and missing him was terrible. But then, time healed it. Because that’s what time does. I could have closed myself off from ever loving again. But that’s the real death. I hope you realize that. It is so much worse to live without love.”
Those last words were a sharp punch in the chest, stronger than the stinging slap he suspected Cara had wanted to give him when he chased after her in the limo and still couldn’t reciprocate.
He looked at his mom, and then his eyes roamed the house, cataloguing all the evidence of how his mother had taken a chance on love again, even when she’d been dealt the worst hand of all. She still had the photos of their father, the pictures of their younger years, and then she had new images on the tables and the walls — ones of her family now. Of her and Robert, of Megan and Becker, even of Travis and Henry. He flashed back on the lean years, then the ones that followed, remembering all the times he’d spent with his mom and his stepdad, from the barbecues, to the dinners, to even just the average, ordinary days now when they took care of his dog.
He could feel something shift in his chest, like a brick moving to let sunlight into a darkened room. “I’m glad you have Robert now,” he said softly. “I’m glad you’re happy.”
“I am, and maybe you can be, too.”
“I am happy,” he said, straightening his spine. “I have everything a man could want. Friends, family, a dog, a good job.”
She nodded. “Right. You do. And you could have something even more amazing if you’d get out of your own way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She yawned, rose, and rumpled his hair. “It means, young man, that it has not gone unnoticed for the last ten years that you’ve been in love with one girl.” She stood up and walked to her bedroom, waving once along the way.
His jaw hit the floor. He rubbed his knuckle against his ear. Surely he was hearing things. “What the hell was that about?”
Henry cocked his head to the side, one ear shooting up in answer. “Now I know she’s crazy,” he said to the dog, then leashed him up and headed to his truck. His mom was nuts. That was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. Besides, he didn’t need anything more. He was blessed already, and life had treated him well lately. He didn’t need to push his luck and ask for more. That’s what always got his clients in trouble. That’s where people got hurt in a fire, too, when they went back in to save the family photos, the mementos, that precious little thing they thought they couldn’t live without.
He settled Henry into the passenger seat, then buckled himself in. He backed out of the driveway, turned onto the street, then drove out to the main drag.
As he headed home through the dark and quiet night, the calm descending over Hidden Oaks, he rewound to his mom’s words, then returned to the things Cara had said to him, and finally he replayed the look on Becker’s face. His chest tightened as all these thoughts and images collided in his head, and he tried to detach them from each other, and make sense of them.
But was there any way to truly make sense of all these bizarre feelings? Especially the way he felt when he was near Cara, that strange, funny sensation that was like his heart trying to do cartwheels. He shook his head as he turned onto the main street through town.
Man, he was going crazy trying to dissect this.
A yellow light streaked past him. His skin prickled, and his muscles tensed all over. A horn blared from another car. He slammed on his brakes, and the rear of his car fishtailed as he swerved out of the way of a white hatchback that had been hurtling toward him.
What the hell? Where had that car come from? The driver wasn’t paying attention at all.
Then he noticed the light at the intersection.
His pulse sped to sprinter levels when he realized what he’d just done. He’d run the red light at the town square.
Henry cowered on the floor of the car. The near-collision had knocked him out of the front seat and onto the floor. The poor guy was shaking. Quickly, Travis pulled to the side of the road and cut the engine. He reached for Henry and held him close. “You okay, buddy?” he asked, stroking Henry’s fur. The dog’s heart was beating fast, but he was otherwise fine.
Travis, however, was not fine. Not fine at all. He could have hurt his dog. All because he hadn’t been thinking.
He hadn’t been paying attention.
He was so goddamn distracted by the mess that was in his head and his heart that he hadn’t followed the simplest rules of the road. He heard the familiar sound of a siren, then a few seconds later there was a knock on his window. He rolled it down.
“Hey, Johnny,” he said to the cop he knew well.
“Hey, Trav. I know you weren’t drinking and driving. At least you better not have been.”
“No sir,” he said, shaking his head.
“What got into you then, running a light?”
That was a good question. Travis had never so much as had a ticket before. He never sped. He was careful behind the wheel at all times. He glanced at his dog. He thought of his talk with his mom. What had gotten into him?
That’s when all the colliding thoughts, all the supposedly foreign feelings, untangled themselves from each other. All the threads, all the knots, all the messy snarl of emotions—they crystallized into something clear. The strange notions that had been rattling around in his brain for last few weeks took hold in his heart, and he was left with one feeling—he missed her.
He knew the answer to Johnny’s question. The answer was in the way he felt when he was with Cara.
“A woman,” he said, with certainty in his tone. “I was thinking about a woman, and I have no clue what to do about her or how to get her back.”
Johnny smiled and nodded. “Know the feeling well. You be more careful next time, you hear?”
“I will,” he said, and it occurred to him that Johnny’s warning applied both to how he drove and to how he’d treated Cara’s heart.
When he arrived home, he grabbed a beer and flopped down on the couch with his dog. “What are we going to do now?”
Henry didn’t have an answer either.
As Travis fell asleep later, he wondered if Cara hogged the sheets, and what it was going to take for him to find out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was like a hangover, but worse.
Because this awful empty ache wouldn’t go away with coffee, eggs, aspirin, or any of the other tricks. Time was the only cure for this stupid heartbreak, and she was looking at a whole awful lot of seconds, minu
tes, and hours to get rid of the way she felt for that man.
As she rode faster on the elliptical the next morning, she reasoned that he’d made the task of getting over him a bit easier by acting like such an ass. She scoffed out loud as she recalled the things he’d said in the reception room. Mario Batali waxed on about gnocchi on her TV, as she replayed the way Travis tried to dismiss her. Faster, and faster still she pedaled, as if she could burn him off the way she burned off calories.
The TV show switched to a commercial break. A mattress salesperson appeared on the screen, screaming about the deal he had in his store today.
“This day only!”
The date blared across the TV.
She slammed on the pedals, stopping. Breathing hard. She dropped her head to the handles of the elliptical machine. Today was that stupid fireman’s auction. She had promised to be there with him, helping in the wings with Henry. The image of the sweet dog loosened the knot of anger she’d been nursing all morning. She had trained that dog; she wanted to see him perform. She longed for that moment of pride. She raised her head and gripped the handlebars hard, digging in with her fingers, sending all her frustration into the machine.
She wasn’t even going to be able to enjoy the crowning moment of her job, because there was no way she was walking into the hotel in San Francisco tonight to see the fireman’s auction. To think, she’d mapped out the perfect plan to bid on him and take him off the market, to win him no matter what, and, in return, he had so callously ditched her feelings.
She flipped to the TV menu, hoping there would be a comedy, maybe even a spy flick on tonight. Something, anything, to take her mind off where she would have been.
…
As he jogged home after an early morning workout at the gym, his phone buzzed with a text message.
He peered at the screen in his hand as his feet pounded along the sidewalk near his house. The message was from Hunter and it instructed him to check his email.
He clicked over and scrolled through a few messages, but he didn’t see the man’s name in his inbox. Instead, he spotted an email from the Families of Fallen Firefighters.
Shit. The tension shot sky high in his chest. He feared another note about lack of funds, another plea for help that would go unanswered. He slowed his pace to a walk, took a steadying breath, and read the note.
“A donation of $5000 in your name has been made for a job well done. In addition, a matching donation of $5000 has been made from one of our corporate sponsors. This is a HUGE help in restoring some of the services that our communities have come to rely on, including the one-to-one support we provide families. We are so grateful to you and Hunter, and we will be able to reinstate some of our services immediately.”
He stopped in his tracks.
His jaw fell open. He was sure it clanged loudly on the sidewalk.
He rubbed his eyes, blinked, and read the email again to be certain. The sun blared brightly this morning. Maybe it was playing tricks on his eyes. He peered more closely at the screen. The words were there. The donation was real. Hunter had helped the cause.
That ball of stress in his gut unwound. He felt lighter, freer. While the charity’s future may not have been his burden, he was so damn glad that the organization that had helped his mom to recover could keep doing the good work.
He dialed his biggest client. “That was awfully nice of you. And well beyond the call of duty. To what do I owe the honor?”
“Hey!” Hunter sounded particularly upbeat this morning. “Good to hear from you.”
“Even better to hear from you. Or, I should say, to hear from the Families of Fallen Firefighters. You did an amazing thing, man. You helped out in a big way where it’s needed most.”
Hunter made a pshaw sound as if it were nothing. “Just doing my small part. Least I could do after you came through for me yesterday.”
“I assume this means you followed my advice and took home a tidy sum,” Travis said, resuming his pace.
“Nope. I lost even more money after you left,” Hunter said, sounding oddly jubilant—the complete opposite of how he sounded yesterday.
Travis furrowed his brow as he crossed the street to his block. “You hate losing money. Explain.”
“Correction. I don’t hate losing money. That’s what I realized when you left. I actually like making big bets. I love taking risks. That’s why I play poker and that’s why I do what I do for a living. But the thing is, I was playing poker like it’s my job and it’s not. I don’t want to play the same way I work, and I wasn’t having fun when I was trying to be all controlled and methodical.”
“But that’s what you wanted me to teach you. That’s why you came to me,” Travis said, the sun blazing at him as it rose higher in the morning sky. “So help me out, since you’ve thoroughly confused me.”
“I did want you to teach me how to play better. How to analyze the risks, study the hands, play like a pro. I hired you because I thought I wanted to be some master of the game, and to play like I invest. But then the game became another job. I get enough frustrations at work. I want to play for fun, I want to play without a plan, and sometimes that means I’ll lose a lot of money, and sometimes I’ll win, and sometimes I’ll break even.”
“Hey, I’m glad you’re happy, though I have no idea what I did to get you there.”
“If you hadn’t talked frankly to me I wouldn’t have been able to see that I needed to do the opposite. You said you’d be happy when I no longer needed you. And I don’t need you anymore, because now I’m just playing to have fun. So in a roundabout way, your final kick in the pants was exactly what I needed, and that’s why I wanted to thank you.”
“And fire me, too,” Travis said with a laugh, as he reached his porch and took out his key.
“I hope you’re cool with it.”
“I couldn’t be happier that you no longer need me. And thank you for the donation. You didn’t need to do that, but I appreciate it,” he said. “And it sounds like you’re going to have a blast playing cards without a plan.”
“I am,” Hunter said, and they said good-bye as Travis walked inside his home.
Henry ran to greet him. As Travis refilled the dog’s water bowl, he scratched Henry between the ears. “Buddy, we’ve got a lot of work to do. You know that?”
Henry raised an ear as if he were listening.
“Somebody just did something special for us. So now it’s our turn,” he said, then stood up. But really, it was his turn. Hunter had given him a beautiful gift. Like a fairy godmother in the stories Travis had read to Megan when he was younger, the man had swooped in to save the day. With his big thank you, Hunter had freed Travis from the weight of needing to be the hero for an organization.
The pressure Travis now felt came from someplace else. From a place inside him he’d tried hard to deny existed. But it had insisted on being heard anyway.
That meant something else was at stake tonight.
Something he hadn’t expected to want. But he wanted it now. So much that he couldn’t imagine living without it.
Or really, living without her.
But after what he’d said to Cara last night, he knew he needed to do something as meaningful for her as Hunter had done for him.
He called Becker. Sure, there was a part of him that could see the value in operating without a playbook. But winging it would not work now.. He needed his men to help him win one woman tonight.
Especially since he had a sinking feeling that the one woman was incredibly pissed at him.
…
Becker parked his hands behind his head, tipped back in the chair in his kitchen, and laughed. Loudly. Knowingly. Enjoying every single second of Travis’s big ask.
Travis rolled his eyes. “So will you help me?”
Becker held up his hand. “Just tell me again when it was you realized you were a complete and utter dipshit? ‘Cause that’s my favorite part of the story.”
Megan chimed in, drumming her fi
ngers on the table. “Yeah. Mine, too. Was it when Mom gave you a talking to or was it when Mr. Safety ran the light? Or was it, wait, don’t tell me, was it the look on Cara’s face when she drove away from you last night?”
Travis motioned with his fingers for them to keep piling on. “I deserve it. I know. Just keep ‘em coming.”
“Seriously,” Megan said with a laugh as she took a drink from her iced tea. “You are a piece of work. I knew you were in love with her, and I knew she was in love with you. And you fucked up.”
“No. Kidding.” Travis exaggerated the words. “I am well aware of that.”
“Just tell me one last time,” Becker said. “Tell me the moment when you, the avowed single man who swore he’d never get involved with any woman, who was so firmly against commitment that he once tried to keep me away from the woman who became the love of my life,” he said, stopping to reach for Megan’s hand and hold it tightly. “Tell me when you knew you’d been in love with Cara for the last ten years and then some.”
Travis gulped and took a deep breath. “Look. It is what it is. Okay? Now, I just need your help.”
“No,” Becker said firmly, slapping his free hand on the table. “Tell me.”
Megan dropped her chin into her hand and batted her eyes. “We want to know. C’mon, Travis. You’d do anything for your little sister. Tell me the moment when the most stubborn person I’ve ever known knew he was wrong.”
He heaved a long, frustrated sigh. But he was only frustrated because the clock was ticking. Even though he was throwing caution to the wind, he still needed to line up all the pieces for tonight. “I knew it when I was driving home last night. It all became clear. And then I got home, and I missed her. But if you really want the full story, there were probably a million moments when I felt it and just hadn’t realized it. When I brought her the flowers. When I fixed her car and found myself wanting to help out with anything else she’d ever need me to do. Or when she gave me a haircut, and I could see her doing it again and again, every time I needed one. Or when I saw her at Smith’s wedding, and my heart started pounding just from looking at her,” he said, recounting some of the moments that had read like Latin in his mind at the time, but had now been properly translated to spell out the depths of his feelings. Of course, there were other times, too. Ones just between him and Cara, like in the shower the other day when he’d washed her hair. Or right before then, in her bed, when sex had felt like love for the first time. “I can tell you all that, or I can tell her tonight. Will you just help me?”
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