A Real Cowboy Never Walks Away (Wyoming Rebels Book 4) (13 page)

T
ravis slept
.

There, in Lissa's arms, he fell asleep.

He hadn't slept hard since he was a kid, not after his dad had stumbled into his room, drunk and pissed after losing money on a pool hustle. Travis hadn't had time to get out the window, and he still had the scars, both the ones on his skin, and the deeper ones that only his brothers knew existed.

Since then, he'd learned to stay awake, even while dozing off, so he always had time to escape if something came for him. Nothing ever did, except nightmares, but that didn't change the lessons he'd learned and his fear of going fully to sleep.

But when he woke up to Lissa's alarm at half past five, he realized he'd been dead asleep.

Lissa bolted upright at the sound of the alarm, lunging across him to shut it off. He caught her around the waist, laughing when she almost fell off the bed, not taking his presence into account before she'd moved.

He pulled her back on top of him, and she grinned at him, her eyes bright and alive. "Hi."

She was happy. He could see it in her face, and he relaxed. He grinned, and pulled her down for a kiss. "I was afraid you'd be regretting it this morning."

She propped her chin up on her hands, using his chest as a pillow, still grinning. "Last night was amazing. You made me feel special and sexy, not like a tramp that should be ashamed."

His good mood vanished at her words. "I don't like it when you say shit like that about yourself."

She shrugged, still grinning. "It's how my mind works. That's my past. It's always going to be a part of me. My point was that you made me think different last night, about myself, and about men...or you in particular."

"It better be just me." He frowned, tangling his fingers in her hair.

Her smile faded. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." He didn't like the idea of her being with anyone else. Ever. Yeah, he'd made love to her last night knowing that he had to leave in a few days, knowing that it was just temporary. He'd understood that he was healing her for someone else, but after last night, he didn't want there to be a someone else. He wanted her for himself. For the first time, he began to understand why his brothers had fallen for their wives, why they'd cared enough to stick around. But he wasn't like that. He couldn't do it. "I can't stay. I can't make this forever."

Her eyebrows went up. "I know that. I don't want forever. I can't do it either—"

"No, you don't understand." His fingers wound tighter in her hair as tension mounted in his body. He didn't want her to ever regret giving herself to him. He didn't want her to
ever
think she wasn't worthy of everything he had to give her, even if it wasn't much. "My mom wasn't the only shitty mother. My brothers and I have eight different mothers. Nine boys. Eight women. Some of them married my dad, and they were as much of a nightmare as he was. It was fucking hell growing up there, and the only reason we survived is because we protected each other against my dad and the women. We learned that women bring only hell with them. My brothers and I made a pact that we would never let a woman come between us."

Sadness flickered across her face. "I'm so sorry, Travis. That's a terrible lesson to learn."

He shook his head. He didn't want to talk about his childhood. He'd already wasted too much energy on it in his life. It wasn't worth his time. "Three of my brothers have found women. Great for them, right?"

She frowned. "It's not great for them?"

"No, it is." He swore, tension coiling even tighter in his body. "I have been very careful not to get involved with any woman. Not to trust them." He took a deep breath. He wasn't sure why he was telling her this. Maybe because he wanted to make sure there was no way she could blame herself for his inability to commit. It wasn't her, it was him, but he wanted to be damn certain she
knew
he wasn't feeding her a line. "Last year, though, I was in rough shape. I was losing my shit, and I had decided to quit the band. I was done. I told my band. They were shocked, my lead guitarist in particular. Mariel said she wouldn't let me give up on my dream. She hounded me, until I finally started to listen. I thought she cared. I thought she was doing it for me, and that felt good. No one had ever given a shit about me, like really given a shit, except my brothers, and that was more to make sure I didn't get my head bashed in by our dad. The touchy-feely stuff didn't happen much between us."

He remembered how he'd felt after those late night sessions with Mariel, where she'd sat in his tour bus and talked endlessly, trying everything possible to change his mind, refusing to let him give up on what had once been a dream.

He'd been such a fool.

"You were wrong, though? She wasn't doing it for you?" Lissa was absently tracing her thumb over the underside of his wrist, so casually, he was pretty sure she wasn't even aware she was doing it, which made it better. It was natural, not contrived.

He was sick of contrived. "I wanted to be the guy Mariel was trying to make me into. It felt good to have someone believe in me. Somehow, those late nights turned into something more, and then we were dating. I hadn't dated anyone since I left here when I was nineteen. I still wasn't sure about her, but I was so fucking desperate that I didn't fight what she offered. I knew I was crashing, and I had to try something. She'd been with my band for three years. I thought I knew her. I thought it was safe."

Lissa's brows knit, and she went still, watching him. "What happened?"

"She got pregnant." He looked past Lissa, to a spot on the wall, grinding his jaw at the memory of it. "I was psyched when she told me she was pregnant. I was actually psyched. I should've been scared shitless about being a dad, but I thought it was my chance to break the cycle. I wanted that kid." He looked at Lissa. "I wanted that kid more than I'd wanted anything in my entire life, including getting out of Rogue Valley. I went to doctor appointments with her. I picked names I liked. We talked about hiring a nanny to travel with us. I even..." Fuck. "I went against every value I have, and I asked her to marry me, because I wanted that kid to grow up with a secure family. She said she wanted to have the baby first, so that neither of us ever felt like we'd gotten married because we
had
to. I was relieved, even though I did want to be married for the kid. I mean, marriage sucks, from what I've seen in my life."

Lissa encircled his wrists with her fingers, a simple gesture that seemed to ground him. She was watching him steadily, her face full of empathy. He knew she understood betrayal. She'd lived enough of it. "What happened? Did she lose the baby?"

"No. I did the math a second time." At first, he hadn't even done the math. It hadn't even occurred to him to doubt her story. He'd had faith. Blind, stupid faith.

She frowned. "The math?"

"Yeah. When she was six months pregnant, I realized that six months before that, I'd gone to Rogue Valley for a few nights when Chase and Mira first arrived. I figured out the days." He took a deep breath. "The baby wasn't mine." God, he'd never forget the shock when he realized that. How many times had he gone over the calendar that night, thinking that he had to be wrong? Ten? Twenty? Thirty?

Lissa stopped rubbing her thumb over his wrist, her face tense. "You just assumed she was sleeping with someone else, just because you were apart for a few days? You based it on that? Things happen with timing. Just because—"

Travis swore at the betrayal on Lissa's face, understanding her instinct to take offense, after the way she'd been judged. "No, babe, it wasn't like that. I was sure I was wrong. I tried every possible way to manipulate the calendar, but there was no way. I didn't think there was any chance she'd lied to me. I'd known her for three years. Yeah, things had kind of cooled off between us, but she said it was because of the pregnancy. Said she didn't feel like being intimate." He shrugged. "I'll never forget sitting there with my phone in my hand, staring at the calendar. I must have sat there for five hours. I just couldn't believe it."

Lissa's face softened, and she lightly ran her fingers through his hair. "I'm so sorry, Travis. I know what it's like to be betrayed, and it's horrible."

He closed his eyes, concentrating on the feel of her fingers in his hair. Her touch felt so good, making him feel like he was human, keeping him from shutting down completely. "I confronted her. It was ugly. She accused me of not trusting her. I—" He swore, remembering that night. Her tears. Her devastation. The show she'd put on. "She ripped my heart out that night. I felt like a complete ass for not trusting her. She said the doctor must have put the wrong conception date on the file. It didn't make sense, but she was so devastated by my lack of faith in her..." Fuck. What a night that had been. "I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what was right. I just...I didn't know."

He'd been so lost that night. So fucking lost.

"What did you do?"

"I apologized. Mariel left in tears, saying that I'd broken her heart. I just sat there on my couch, absolutely numb with shock. It was the closest in my life I've ever come to taking a drink. I was wrecked. I had no fucking idea what to do."

Lissa snuggled up against his side, tucked herself against him, and draped her leg and arm around him, as if she were the one protecting him. He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, pressing a kiss to her tousled hair. He couldn't believe that he wanted to be here, in bed, with Lissa, after the shit he'd gone through, but something about having her wrapped around him felt right. More than right. It felt like she was holding his head above water, somehow keeping him from being sucked into the abyss of his memories. "So, how did you find out, then?"

"At six o'clock that morning, my agent started pounding on my door. He was drunk off his ass, and pissed off beyond belief. Apparently, his girlfriend had kicked him out of their hotel room, and he was blaming me."

Lissa placed her palm over his heart and rubbed small circles. "His girlfriend? What did she have to do with you?"

"His girlfriend was my lead guitarist. Mariel."

Her hand stilled. "Seriously?"

"Yeah." He took a deep breath, trying to distance himself from the emotions of that night, of when his agent had drunkenly blurted out the story. "Apparently, they both knew that it was his kid, but they thought my name on child support checks would be very profitable. So, they agreed to pass it off as mine, and then after the baby was born, Mariel was going to break up with me and marry him." The words felt dead in his chest as he spoke. Empty. Hollow. Like it had happened to someone else in another life. Not to him.

Lissa stared at him. "He knew she was sleeping with both of you? And he didn't care? I don't understand."

"Apparently, they were an item before I started dating her. They were both so freaked out that I would quit singing and take away their livelihood, that they agreed to do whatever it took to make me keep singing. As it turned out, Mariel having sex with me was the golden ticket, so he was okay with it...until she kicked him out that night because she was so upset that I was going to figure it all out."

There. That was it. The whole fucking story. The one that the press hadn't been able to get out of him. The one he hadn't even told his brothers. He hadn't told a single soul...until now.

"Oh, Travis." Lissa tugged on his shoulder, pulling him toward her. He turned, and the moment he was facing her, she wrapped her arms around his head and pulled him to her. He closed his eyes, resting his face against hers, stunned by how the simple act of her embrace seemed to loosen the grip of the past. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

"I'd been with my agent for years. He was like the dad that I'd never had. I trusted him with my career, my dreams, and my money. For months, he'd looked me in the eye, knowing that he was sleeping with the woman I thought was the mother of my child. I'd had no fucking idea." He pressed his face in Lissa's hair. "For months, I went over every single interaction with both of them, trying to figure out what I'd failed to see, trying to understand what clues I'd missed, trying to explain to myself how I'd been so fucking stupid."

"You're not stupid, Travis." Lissa's arms tightened around him, turning her head so her cheek was against his. "You're human. Despite your horrible upbringing, you still had the capacity to love someone, to believe in a second chance, to trust someone. That's beautiful. It shows that your mom and dad didn't destroy you."

He laughed softly, trailing his hands through her hair, concentrating on the silkiness of the strands. So soft. So beautiful. So pure. "That's far too optimistic, sweetheart. I was a fool, a fucking loser who was so desperate I would have believed anything to keep from throwing myself off a cliff...literally." He flexed his jaw and took her hand, winding their fingers together. "After that, I swore to myself I'd never trust anyone like that again. Not a woman, not a friend, no one."

She watched their entwined hands. "Except your brothers?"

"I'll always be there for them," he said, "but yeah, I'm not asking for a two-way street. Chase, Steen, and Zane have wives now. Kids. Their loyalty is no longer to their brothers first, and I know that. I accept that, but I don't want to get pulled into it. I haven't seen much of my other brothers. I'm all in for them, no matter what they need, but I'm not going to put myself in the position of needing to count on them. I'm done." He brought their joined hands to his lips and feathered kisses across her knuckles, one by one. "You know, for that brief time when I thought I was going to be a dad, I thought that music had finally brought me to a place of redemption by making me a father. I thought it had all been worth it, and..." He shook his head. "It was all a lie."

Lissa sighed. "It's not a lie. Music
has
changed your life. It's brought you amazing things, including betrayal, yes, but you touch the hearts of millions of people. That's amazing. Can't you see that?"

"It's a shell of an existence. I thought it would be cool, but it isn't. It has no meaning."