Travis (Pelion Lake) by Mia Sheridan

Where was he? I needed to find him right that second.

“Will you excuse me, Gage? I’m sure you have to get back to your guests. I’ve loved talking to you, and this house is like something out of a fairy tale. Thank you for having me.”

And without waiting for him to respond, I got up and stalked toward the door, flinging it open and going in search of my friend the lying liar!





CHAPTER TEN




Haven



I made my way through the groups of well-dressed guests, peering into rooms, and checking twice at the bar. Just as I was turning away from one of the small balconies, I spotted a lone figure, leaning against the stone wall of a patio on the floor below. My heart gave a jolt. Anger of course. I turned abruptly, racing down the stairs and moving through the house, out a back door and along the patio, turning the corner to where he stood. He turned, a drink in his hand, a look on his face I couldn’t read—something glum. Almost sulky. He should be glum and sulky. I was about to kill him.

“You double-crossing rat!”

He leaned back casually against the stone, assessing me as I approached. “You look . . . upset, Haven.”

I stepped closer, socking him on his arm. It felt like I’d struck the wall behind him. He didn’t even blink. “You lied so I’d look like a fool.”

“Lied about what?”

“Oh quit the innocent act. You made up some ridiculous story about Gage’s soft spot for possums of all things.” I socked him again with the same result as the first time. “I went on and on about ticks, for the love of God! In front of Gage! Ticks! I sounded like a screwball!” I placed my hands on my hips. “I concede that I said a few other things that didn’t put myself in the best possible light, but the possum thing! The possum thing! There was absolutely no coming back from that.” My breath came short, chest rising and falling.

“It does sound ridiculous. I’m surprised you believed me.”

My mouth dropped open and I stepped closer, toe to toe. “Do you like to humiliate people, Travis? Is that it? Do you like to set people up? Is that what you do?”

He flinched slightly. “It was meant as a joke. I didn’t think you’d run with it.”

“Well I did, you ass. I made a fool of myself in front of my crush. Why did you do it? What is wrong with you?”

He stood straight, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “You’re right. I am an ass. You should know that. It’s a good thing to know about me.”

I started to agree with him, my mouth opening and then closing, my chest still rising and falling with the emotion I’d exerted as I’d searched this monstrosity of a house looking for him and then subsequently railed and socked him on his immovable arm made of rock.

He was watching me, his own quickened breath mingling with my own, despite that, from what I assumed, he’d been standing nearly motionless on this patio for at least a little while. He looked so damned wounded, when I was the one who’d been tricked into talking ridiculously about tick-eating-possums with a man I’d wanted to impress. Which . . . did sound . . . well, ridiculous. My lip trembled and then I laughed, a sudden hiccup-sounding guffaw.

Travis regarded me warily, offering a tense, concerned smile.

I clapped my hand over my mouth, laughing again. Oh my God, it was all so ridiculous. Being at this house. The way Travis Hale was looking at me as though simultaneously hopeful my anger had faded and he was off the hook, and also like he was considering making a call to have me committed. This road trip I was on was ridiculous. This dress that I couldn’t afford yet had bought anyway to impress some man who’d likely only ever see me as ridiculous and rightly so, was totally ridiculous.

Hell, my whole life had been one ridiculous link in a ridiculous chain of events. I was laughing so hard that tears pricked my eyes.

And there was a billiards room upstairs. A billiards room! The apartment we’d lived in the longest had had a homeless prostitute named two-toothed Trina who had slept in our building’s doorway. I’d made her sandwiches when we had enough food to spare and sat with her as she’d gummed them.

I laughed and laughed.

And some absurd part of me missed Trina and worried that there was no one to make her sandwiches anymore, because I was here in Maine lying about my love for possums to a man whose family home included a billiards room.

“Haven,” Travis said, and there was something in his tone, something so incredibly gentle as if, though I didn’t understand what was happening to me and perhaps he didn’t either, he recognized the feelings behind it.

How could that be true? It couldn’t. Not from Chief Hale, who’d grown up in a virtual Mayberry by the lake with love and family, and history, and freaking blueberries, ripe for the picking, all around him.

“Haven,” he said again in that same gentle way, stepping even closer, taking my hands from my mouth and holding them down by my sides.

My laughter dwindled, my shoulders dropped.

“I’m an ass,” he said.

“I know,” I answered breathlessly.

He nodded, something like sadness in his eyes. “Everyone knows,” he said. “There’s a consensus about it.”

My heart squeezed. My laughter became air. In. Out. In. Out. He was an ass. But he also wasn’t.

“Polls have been conducted,” he went on. “Graphs have been charted. There are debates about the magnitude of—”