Travis (Pelion Lake) by Mia Sheridan

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.”