Travis (Pelion Lake) by Mia Sheridan

“Relax. You don’t need to defend yourself.”

Easton, seemingly unconvinced, stared suspiciously at me, only weaving slightly.

“I heard you’re doing well at the firehouse.” One of my best friends worked there and he’d told me the kid was a hard worker. A quick learner. Diligent.

The suspicion in his expression mixed with fear, and some amount of surprise, his drunkenness not allowing him to conceal his every emotion.

He tried though. “So?” He stood straight, feigning nonchalance.

“So that’s good.”

He squinted at me as if trying to determine what trick I was playing on him. “You’re not going to do anything to ruin it for me?”

“No, I’m not going to do anything to ruin it for you. Though you’re leaving soon, so what does it matter?”

He watched me for a moment and then let out a long sigh, swaying and sinking down into the chair next to him. He ran his hand through his hair. It was wavy, not curly like Haven’s. And his eyes were a different color, but the shape was the same.

“Listen . . . Chief.” He looked up at me, and though he was obviously drunk, to his credit, he was barely slurring. He obviously held his alcohol well. “I’m sorry, okay? I knew about you right from the start just like you said. Your girlfriend—” He squinted one eye as if trying to recall something.

“Phoebe.”

“Yes, right. Phoebe. She had a picture of you in your uniform as the screensaver on her phone. I saw it.”

I regarded him. “It added a little challenge for you?”

“I guess.” He looked slightly dejected as if the admittance brought him no joy.

Good.

I sighed, leaning forward, and placing my elbows on my knees. “You hurt your sister when you do things that reflect poorly on her, Easton. Don’t you think you owe her more than that?”

His shoulders sank and he was quiet for a moment. “Did she tell you why we’re on this road trip?” His eyes met mine and despite his drunkenness, they gleamed with emotion. “Did she tell you our junkie mom accidentally dropped her pipe and almost burned us all to death? The whole place went up in flames like some goddamned inferno that represented the hell that was our lives.”

He let out a breath, his head dropping. I stared, my muscles clenched tight.

“I dragged Haven out of there,” he said, as he massaged the back of his neck, his palms facing outward so I saw the raised and twisted skin. Melted. Burned. Healed. But not the same. Never the same. “And I managed to get our mom out too. But she was already dead. She’d died of an overdose before the flames even started spreading.” He let out another long breath. “We’re better off, you know? Haven spent her life trying to help her . . . cooking food for her, cleaning up after her, attending the things she was supposed to attend. I would have been in foster care a thousand times over if it wasn’t for Haven.” He leaned forward. “Once, our electricity had been turned off, and she asked for help from one of the guys she thought might be her dad.” His face twisted in distaste. “There were a few possibilities. I think Haven had this idea that one of them might be decent. Anyway, instead of helping, the dude hit on her. She came home sobbing her eyeballs out, and our mom just looked right through her like she wasn’t even there. And she still can’t manage to hate the worthless bitch. I can. Most days I can. And if I forget, I just remind myself what it looked like, our mom lying there, dead on the street, her skin burned, track marks littering her arms, our building in flames and Haven trying to run back inside for those fucking plants, trying to save them like they were her children.”

Oh God. The plants from the Kims’ garden. The ones she’d nourished and cared for after they’d left.

Not her children. A representation of the only stability she’d ever known. Before it, too, went away.

Just like everything and everyone that had ever meant anything to her. Whether they’d earned it or not.

I couldn’t breathe.

Haven Torres had been hurt and abandoned by the people who were supposed to care for and protect her. All her life. But instead of lashing out at others, she’d sought to be a protector, a rescuer. She’d remained good and loving despite all that she’d endured.

Unlike me, who’d turned my pain in the opposite direction.

I knew what it was like to lose someone a part of you wished you could hate. I had turned that hate outward. But Haven had found a way to love around it. And it was honorable and brave and beautiful. But I knew better than anyone that it was still there, inside, that ball of complex emotion that festered and hurt.

And so she’d run.

She’d cared for others, even to her own detriment. And she’d given every last ounce she had to give until she couldn’t do it anymore. And even then, her loving spirit demanded that she rescue something, and so she’d rescued plants.

She was a goddamn miracle.

How could I demand more? If I truly cared for her, and I did, God, I did, then I could not ask for more than she was willing to give. If I cared for her, I could not manipulate or plot, or try to control, the way I’d always done.

That was my fallback. Always. Manipulate. Position myself. And when I took a moment to consider this, I knew why. It was familiar and it made me feel artificially powerful because I was doing something to attempt to lessen my hurt. My feelings of being less-than. Second best.