Travis (Pelion Lake) by Mia Sheridan

“Congratulations,” Easton said, his voice still dull, his lips tipping humorlessly. “You exacted the perfect revenge. You waited, and you struck, just like you said.” He held his hand out. “Brilliant strategy. The win goes to you.”

Travis’s lips thinned, and his jaw ticked as though he was clenching it. He looked down at Easton’s hand, but didn’t take it. “This isn’t how it seems—”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, lifting my chin. I felt a sob moving up my throat and I could not cry in front of these people. I could not. “There was no need to make flyers to get rid of us,” I said to the crowd at large. “I’m sorry you wasted the ink. And the research time. We were never staying anyway. Let’s go.” I batted Easton’s hand down, still held out in the air, yanking at his sleeve.

Easton only hesitated a moment before he took my hand. We turned just as Travis reached toward me, but I avoided him, walking on legs that felt like rubber, my deep self-consciousness making my muscles twitch as I focused solely on moving. Away. Away. Run.

I waited until we’d gotten in the car and Easton was pulling out of the lot before I allowed the tears to flow, my heart and my pride in utter ruin.





CHAPTER THIRTY




Travis



Devastation rolled through me. What had I done?

I groaned in despair, gripping my head in my hands. She’d never forgive me, and why should she? It had been my stupid, misdirected need for revenge that had started the ball rolling and ended in Haven and Easton’s very public humiliation.

I’d wanted to kill Spencer when I’d approached him after Haven and Easton had left. But his eyes had been wide with shock and shame and he’d said miserably, “We didn’t know they’d be here.” I’d tried to hang on to my rage about the fact that he hadn’t sought my approval regarding the flyer, but I knew it had all started with me, and that I’d been negligent in letting it be printed at all. I was the chief. The fact that that had gotten past me was unacceptable. The buck, so to speak, stopped here.

As a result of me being asleep at the wheel, I’d destroyed Haven, and Easton too. Dear Jesus. I pictured the wounded looks in their eyes, the way they’d both tried so desperately to hold on to their pride and only barely managed to do it. Two people who’d been unwanted all their lives. It felt so . . . callous. Heartless.

All things I’d been called before. And rightly so.

I’d collected all the flyers, telling the crowd they were a mistake, but it was pointless by then. The whole place was buzzing, debate springing up about whether calling out individuals for misdeeds was right or wrong. I’d been too sick about it to engage, my head spinning uselessly with ways I could fix this.

Bree and Archer had approached me, the looks on their faces such stark examples of disappointment that I’d wanted to sink into the floor.

It would have been easy to place the blame on Spencer, and on Birdie Ellis too, but I’d always taken the easy way out, and I sensed, on some cosmic level, that this was my final lesson.

Lose it all, or lose it all.

I’d come to the crossroads, both paths seemingly leading in the same direction.

I looked out the front window of my truck, raindrops streaking over the glass and blurring the old red barn, misery tracking through my veins.

I hadn’t slept a wink and as soon as the sun rose, I’d driven here, trying to grasp some peace, some clarity. Because all I kept seeing was her expression the moment she realized what she was holding.

The look on her face had ripped my heart to shreds, the way she’d stood there, the judgmental eyes of all of Pelion upon her. The place she’d considered such a dream. The place that had brought her peace.

Raindrops streaked, clouds rolled by, and I couldn’t avoid another harsh truth.

Archer had felt that way once upon a time too.

I’d been part of it.

I deserved to feel like this.

Haven did not.

And neither did Easton for that matter.

The flyer had highlighted Easton’s transgressions, but I knew the list had hurt Haven just as deeply, because she loved him. And they’d both been there to ask for acceptance from the town. I let out a staggered breath. The thing was . . . I knew what reading a list like that must feel like because I’d been him. I’d done things purposely to hurt people. I’d left destruction in my wake, and for longer than two years. But unlike him, I’d been embraced, not shunned. I’d been given a second chance. Hell, I’d been given more than a second chance. I’d been offered not only acceptance, but love.

But I’d wanted what had happened at that meeting, or some version of it anyway, not so long ago.

They’d been there to join the community, to be part of something. To risk asking for acceptance when risk was so very difficult for people who’d been through what they had. I’d known the reason they were there the second I’d seen her and it had sent happiness whirling dizzily inside me. I wanted to know how and why and when she’d arrived at the decision because even before she’d seen the things written about them, she looked like she’d been crying. I knew the choice had taken immense courage. Her eyes had been red and swollen but there had been such raw hope on her face.

“Idiot, idiot, idiot,” I murmured, sitting up straight.