“I would have hurt you, Sky!” He gripped her arms.
She froze. But the grip was far from rough. It was desperate and tender, a need for connection and an attempt to push her away, all in one. The desperation, the pleading in his eyes, belied his angry tone. Despite the intensity, despite the anguish on his face, he tucked an errant strand behind her ear, pushing her hat off-kilter, so gentle, in contrast to his angry tone. Anger she was beginning to realize had nothing to do with her and everything to do with his frustration at himself. Touching her seemed like just the balm he’d needed to bring himself down a notch.
“I gave Toby a black eye once.” His voice was lower now, throaty, even if the edge was still razor sharp, and the self-loathing she saw on his face made her want to cry for the wounded kid in that grainy wheelchair photo. His brow twisted in pain now. “I—I hit my momma in my sleep once, my fits were so bad, and all I can remember is waking up to her crying and my pops putting me back in my place.” Her hand covered her mouth at the horror he must have felt, waking up to realize what he’d done, because Travis and his brothers had always adored Deborah. He chewed that cheek. “Bombs going off in my sleep… I was a kid. My license might have said eighteen on it, but I was a kid, and I didn’t know how to cope.” He shook his head, sunlight glinting off his shades. “I for damn sure couldn’t have married you and been a father.
“So I popped those pills like candy, drank my daddy’s liquor cabinet until he caught onto it and poured out every last drop and finally just moved out. I was as bad as Rhett,” he said as disgust twisted his voice. “And I couldn’t bear for you to see me like that. I knew you’d never be able to depend on me or trust me ever again… And that look on your face right now?” He nodded as if proof of something he’d suspected. “Yeah, tells me I was right.”
The anger fizzling out completely, Skylar’s eyes remained rounded, watery, and she stood silently, one of his hands still holding her arm, the other cupping her cheek where he’d pushed the strand behind her ear, as the sun baked them both, heating her plaid shirt and tank top so that it felt like it was on fire beneath it. Sweat trickled down between her shoulder blades and breasts. She resisted the urge to swipe at them.
“I failed to save Boss. But I could save you from me.” He let go and fished out his wallet, flipping it open and thumbing through it. He pulled out a photo and handed it to her. “I carried this photo of us. Would take it out each night when the orders came that we were being deployed, could hear your words echoing, ‘The army owns you now… You could be deployed, die somewhere…’ and was so damn scared, realizing the gravity of what I’d done to you. And when I got home, I held this same photo of us, and I made that decision, that if I loved you, I’d let you go.”
She looked at the photo, the mist in her eyes undeniable, and took in the image of their youthful, innocent faces, so happy.
“You took the choice away from me instead,” she breathed, not looking up from the photo, wanting to grasp him and hold him, wanting to shove him and tell him he was an idiot.
“I made the choice for me, too,” he admitted. “I didn’t want you to look upon me as half, when you’d always ever known me as whole.”
“Yet here you are,” she whispered, her finger drawing over their image like her finger traced circles on him, the gloss of the photo damaged from time. Another photograph in the history of Them. He fell silent. He’d kept this all these years. He’d never really moved on, had he? “Talking about therapeutic riding contracts and hitting the ground running and sure as hell not looking like half of anything. Which is it? Let me go or not? I only see the man I l—”
It was too soon for that declaration. She’d always loved him. But she needed to know she could depend on him, too.
“I don’t know.” He perched his hands on his hip and backed up a step. “I can’t get a read on you, Skylar. I feel you kiss me, and it feels like you want me. And then you’re flinching back from me like I’ve burned you, and I question everything. Am I moving too fast, am I missing something, did I do somethin’ wrong…”
Deep down, she knew the same Travis was there, but it had only been a handful of days since they’d been reunited. How easily she’d begun to pretend that things were as they’d once been, especially now that their work might intertwine at the therapeutic riding clinic. What he was saying echoed within her.
She reached up tentatively and cupped his cheek, unable to resist. Had she been confusing him? She supposed she was confused herself. How could she be clear with him when her own emotions were clear as mud? How could he not see himself for the fighter he was? He smarted but quickly chased her touch and leaned into it as if thinking wiser of it and grabbed her hand, covering it with his so she wouldn’t pull it away, turning his lips into her palm, kissing it.
“You haven’t done anything wrong,” she murmured. “Orthopedic surgeon, physical therapist, program director, all that research and those prestigious grants…all without your daddy’s money. I don’t get it, Trav? You look like a damn overachiever. How can you see yourself as a failure? You’re not so changed as you think. Still so stubborn as hell that you wouldn’t let what happened define you.”
“I was a drunk.” A harsh guttural. He picked up a strand of her hair to toy with it, as if this flaw was the only thing he could still see in himself.
“No. You were scarred,” she whispered back, then she threw her arms around him, uncaring of whether or not he’d want the hug—she needed it. The brim of her hat collided with his chest and tumbled off. “And if you think I’d be afraid of you or pity you, then you’ve got a lot to learn about me still. Thank you…for letting me in.”
She squeezed his rigid frame, willed his arms to come around her, and they did, until she was encompassed in muscle and the hot skin of his arms.
“You’re too forgiving,” he murmured. “I don’t deserve you.”
“I’m not too forgiving. I just pick who I forgive—”
Which felt like it offered more than she wanted him to see. Because she’d never forgiven Rhett for never being there for her the way a daddy should have been. But she’d forgive him, if only she could count on him to stay.
That was it. That was what she needed. Stay. It hit her like a truck now. The miscarriage, the grief from his “death,” her dad telling her as she lay in that hospital bed to never come home again while her soul was aching over the OB/GYN’s sad words about her body callously shedding the life she and Travis had made, that her heart had wanted it so badly… She just needed Travis to stay.
And if this clinic ended up opening in Dallas, he’d only leave. And she couldn’t.
She continued.
“Don’t run off. It’s what you once did, and…you’re right. I did it, too. Look what happened. To me and to you. Try again. Don’t do it for me. Do it for you. Don’t shut me out again; we used to share everything.”
God, she sounded like she was begging. But it seemed like the new Travis still bailed when the going got tough, and she could never build a life with him if he kept doing this. She could never allow him to get close to Brandon if he couldn’t root himself down.
“You said you’d do whatever it took for me to trust that you’re in this for the long haul. I don’t need you to ride or not ride or dance. I don’t need you to protect me or sneak me out my window with the promise of ice cream. I just need to see that you’re tough enough to follow through. Because…” Her voice wobbled. Not from tears. But from the culmination of frustration and desire that had warred within her for days now. “More than anything, I just need you to stay.”
He stared hard at her. Held her. Felt that pensive finger of hers drawing circles upon his skin. He was listening.
“And Brandon needs that, too. He needs anyone in my life not to be a distraction but someone he can depend on. Because if all you are is a pretty distraction, all the history in the world between us isn’t enough when I consider the commitment I made to him, to protect him as best I could. The state is considering moving him, and I don’t want him to feel abandoned all over again. He deserves what he’s never had. He deserves a family.”