Travis (Pelion Lake) by Mia Sheridan

She nodded, her gaze lingering on mine for a moment. I swore she held her breath as she moved around me, heading for her room.





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN




Haven



“You sound happy,” I said. Easton turned around, his teeth flashing as the tune he’d been whistling abruptly ended. “And you look happy too.” I eyed him suspiciously. “What have you done now?”

He laughed. “Ah, big sis, you always think the worst of me.”

“Yes, and you generally give me a good reason to.” I crossed my arms as I leaned against the side of the structure that housed the club’s pool equipment.

Easton swung a float over his arm, spinning it onto his shoulder. “Okay, okay, I deserve that. Except you’re wrong this time.” A blade of sunlight split his face as he stepped toward me and squinted one eye, using his hand as a visor, looking every bit the naughty but lovable little boy he’d once been. Only then his naughtiness had generally resulted in cracked windows or broken furniture. His own bones on two occasions. He’d moved on since then to breaking bigger things, namely lives and relationships. Things not so easily replaced or put back together.

Like Travis’s relationship.

At the thought of the other person involved in Travis’s relationship, broken though it may be, my body had dual reactions. My ribs ached a little bit while something simultaneously eased inside of me. She was the reason he was unavailable for anything more than friendship . . . with benefits. Because he’d loved her. And he likely still did. Love didn’t just fade to nothing in the span of a month. And how could you trust someone who loved that . . . temporarily anyway?

He probably still thought about her a lot. Maybe even while he was kissing other people.

People such as myself.

Maybe even while his skilled fingers were between other people’s legs.

Again, people such as myself.

I waved my hand in front of my suddenly heated face in an attempt to stir up some breeze.

Maybe even—

“How are you wrong, Easton?” my brother mocked, raising the pitch of his voice as my mind had wandered to Travis and I’d zoned out of the conversation, staring unseeing at Easton as he’d waited for a response that didn’t come.

“Okay, first,” I said, taking a deep breath and attempting to shake myself into the here and now, “that was a terrible impression of me. My voice is throatier. Much sexier. Second, how am I wrong, Easton?”

He grinned again, and his green eyes glinted in the sun. His grin wasn’t slow like Travis’s. It flashed instantly, like an unexpected streak of lightning, the unfortunate smile that allowed him to wreak havoc wherever he went. The expression that had women bending over backward—sometimes literally from the stories I’d unfortunately heard—to assist him in his efforts at being a complete menace to society. Still . . . I was obviously biased because that grin affected me too as far as a softening of my heart and probably offering him too much allowance when it came to his bad deeds. It was just . . . I knew him, I’d known him since he was a baby, and he was not a bad person. He just made bad decisions. Frequently. And with great and focused application.

“I told you how I’ve been volunteering at the fire department, right?”

“Yes.”

He spun the float again. “Well, it’s going great. They say I’m a natural. There was a kitchen fire at one of the B&Bs in Pelion yesterday, and they let me put it out myself.”

I swallowed. “That’s great.” If anything positive could distract him from those bad decisions he so frequently made, I was all for it. Maybe we could get out of this particular town without any more scandals or weapons being brandished in our direction.

He nodded enthusiastically. “The senior fireman is retiring next month,” Easton said haltingly. “The guys who are there now are all moving up in rank. There’s going to be an extra entry-level spot. All you need is a high school diploma to get hired on. It’s just a test and—”

“But we’re going to be gone by then,” I said, understanding exactly where his thoughts were heading.

He held my gaze for a moment and then nodded. “Yeah, I know.”

“You want to be gone by then, right?” I asked. We’d agreed on that when we’d driven out of California, the visions of that night still fresh in our minds. Four months was our absolute max. We wouldn’t stay anywhere longer than four months. One season. We wouldn’t stay anywhere long enough to watch anything shrivel or die. No destination, no attachments. Just us and the open road. I’d made the initial suggestion—desperate to literally outrun the stench of smoke and burned flesh that’d seemed to hang over LA—and he’d agreed to the idea. Up until Pelion, there had been no talk of staying in one place. But now?

“Yeah. I want to be gone by then.” He smiled. “It’s been fun in the meantime though, you know, doing things right for a change.”

My heart dropped. “Easton, you—”

“There you are!” came a voice from behind my brother. He turned and a pretty brunette in a red swimsuit reached her arms out. He rolled the float off his shoulder and handed it to her.

“Sorry I got held up,” he said, and by the sudden widening of her eyes, I knew that he’d grinned that grin of his.