Finding Refuge (12 page)

Ian:
Moving
day for A tomorrow. Starts @ noon.

He sent a quick note of thanks back. No matter if they were
on speaking terms or not, whether the apology went well or not, he’d be there.
His inner Boy Scout would never let him live it down if he failed to show up.

When he arrived at Rachel and Ian’s house, the work van had
been cleaned out and loaded to the brim. He backed his truck into the driveway.
Rachel closed the van doors and raised an eyebrow at him.

“I promised.”

Rachel gave him a slight nod of approval. “Good. Get to
work.”

He lowered the tailgate on the truck, and as he turned
toward the garage, he caught sight of Andri through the living room window. She
was on the phone, pacing, and by the stressed expression on her face, it wasn’t
a good conversation. His heart twinged a little at the sight of her. She’d
upset him, but that didn’t mean he liked seeing her distressed.

He and Ian loaded a floral print sofa and a disassembled
platform bed into his truck before Andri came out of the house, twisting her
hair into a ponytail. Her eyes were tinged with red, and the strength of the
instant rage to punish whoever made her cry shocked him.

She glanced up at him and managed a weak smile, merely a
shadow of the one that had captured him the first day. “You didn’t have to do
this.”

“Yes, I did.”

Before he could ask about the phone call, Rachel said,
“Maybe you should change your number and not tell your mother.”

Andri laughed a little, waving the suggestion away with one
hand. “Sometimes I forget that listening to her when she gets on a tear is
optional. But if I cut her off too soon, she really gets annoyed, and then I
get all sorts of crazy voice mails and she calls to pester Dmitri.”

“You can’t get a word in edgewise anyway,” Rachel said,
picking up a smaller box and heading for Andri’s car. “Just set the phone down
somewhere and leave the room. She can rant all she wants and you don’t have to
hear it.”

 Travis didn’t get another chance to talk to Andri
through the rest of the move, other than asking directions on where she wanted
certain things at the apartment. He was a little surprised that the four of
them managed to do the move, including getting the heavy, bulky furniture up to
the second floor.

Afterward, Andri offered pizza as a reward, but Ian and
Rachel begged off, each claiming other plans for the evening. One look at
Rachel told Travis it was a lie, but it would give him a chance to make his apology
without an audience, and for that, he was grateful.

When the Garrett siblings left, Travis found Andri standing
in the open doorway of her apartment. She watched him approach, her expression
unreadable as she stood back and waved him in.

He stood in the entry, glanced into the living room. She’d
already pulled out her laptop, which sat on a small glass end table, a notebook
beside it and sticky notes on the edges of the screen. “Notes for the job
hunt?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, I owe you dinner for helping me move, but
unless you feel like a Mickey-D’s run, then it will have to wait.” Her tone was
cool, tired, matching the expression in her eyes. She reached up a hand to
massage one of her shoulders, and he forced back the flash of desire to rub the
kinks out of her muscles for her.

He leaned back against the door. “I didn’t stay because you
owe me food. I wanted to apologize.”

Her brows lifted. “Okay.”

“I bit your head off the last time we talked, and it was
uncalled for. I know you meant to help.”

Andri watched him, clearly waiting for more. Okay, so maybe
he did need to offer more than a simple apology.

He shifted and swallowed hard. His ability to walk away from
her had fled, so he reached for the words to try to smooth their friendship
out. “I could blame it on being stressed out of my damn mind, or being
sensitive about my efforts to help Danny, or whatever, but I won’t. There’s
really no excuse for my behavior. I had no right to take anything out on you. I
acted like an ass, and I’m really sorry.”

She appraised him for a moment, then nodded slowly. “Nicely
done.”

He couldn’t resist her. After an afternoon working near
Andri, catching her inviting scent as he moved her belongings, the way the
sleeveless blue top and shorts she wore hugged her curves, thoroughly
imprinting his brain, his resistance had fled completely. He never wanted to do
anything to take her smile away again, and he desperately needed to see it now.
He glanced again at the sofa, ignoring the wisp of a dream that popped into his
head. A dream where he’d found a number of ways to make her smile, to fill her
with pleasure.
Nope. Not going there.
“Mind if we
sit?”

Andri waved her fingers at him to follow as she walked over
to the sofa. She sat, pulling one leg beneath her. Travis joined her, taking
care not to position himself too close. She’d let him off the hook a little too
easily, though maybe that was payment for helping with the move. Rachel would
have kicked his ass and then called it good. Melody would have left him in the
doghouse for weeks.

She pushed her dark, wavy hair back over her shoulder, a
movement that filled him with a sharp craving for the silky feel of her hair in
his hands, tangling his fingers through the thick strands— Travis jerked his
wandering thoughts back to the moment and focused.

Andri said, “Travis, I understand why you went off like you
did, but you’ve owned it, and I appreciate that.”

That was it? “So…apology accepted?”

She nodded. “While we’re at it, I’ll apologize too. Not for
what I said, because it needed saying. But I am sorry for the effect it had. I
know it hurt you. You already feel awful. I didn’t want to add to it.”

Her advice had stung, abraded his pride, and undercut
everything he’d been working so hard to accomplish with Danny. “You definitely
said things I didn’t want to hear. But, just because I don’t like something
doesn’t automatically make it wrong.”

She tilted her head slightly, her gaze holding his. “I speak
from experience, you know.”

His confrontation with Rachel burst into his thoughts.
Ask. Her. Why.
The pieces clicked into place. Of course.
Why would she tackle a sensitive and difficult subject to give him advice
unless she had some experience to back her up? Wow, he really was clueless.
“Now that my brain is engaging instead of my emotions, I think I get it. You
really do understand, don’t you?”

A slight, sad smile crossed her lips. “Yes, I really do.”

“Who?”

“My mother. She’s an alcoholic.”

His angry words came back to him.
You
don’t have any idea what it’s like.
Another thought overlapped the
first, the memory of her reddened eyes, her sadness earlier, after talking with
her mother. Oh, yeah. She did know what it was like. Damn, he was an ass. “You
know what I’m going through.”

“The dynamic is different, but yes. My dad did all the heavy
lifting as Dmitri and I grew up. My mom was always a bit of a diva, and even
now she swings from lively and happy to a screaming, crying terror. It was
much, much worse when she drank. Dad protected us from the worst of it. But I
spent my whole life watching him try everything to fix her. He argued, he
ordered, he bribed, he begged. He tried to sweet-talk her into doing the right
thing. He’d threaten to leave her until she clung to his leg and begged him to
stay.”

As hard as it was to watch his brother wallow in addiction
over the years, he could only imagine the desperation he’d feel to fix a wife
or a parent. “Is she sober now?”

“Yes. She finally got help a couple of years ago.”

“Your dad never saw her whole.”

A fresh wash of tears flooded her eyes, but she blinked hard
and pushed them back. “No. And it cost him so much. Dmitri and I spent a lot of
time at a support group when we were teenagers, and it was the only thing that
kept us from being dragged under by the weight of Ma’s problems. Dad never understood
that he had to take care of himself until it was too late.”

He glanced around her apartment, not really looking, but
needing to free himself from her gaze, her intensity. “I can’t let Danny fall,
Andri. My parents have already given up, so without me, he’s on his own.”

“Have they given up? Or have they realized that they’re
collateral damage if they don’t save themselves from his ruin and wreckage?”

That snapped his attention back to her. Was that what his dad
had done? Pulled himself out of harm’s way? For a moment, his thoughts whirled.
What would that be like, to let go, to live each day without a rock of terrible
speculation in his stomach, wondering what trouble his brother would find next?
The allure of self-preservation beckoned to him, but his sense of honor and
duty thickened around his battered heart.

She leaned forward, placed her cool hand over his where it
rested on his thigh, and his heart jumped a little. He’d missed her touch.
“Travis, you can offer support. Love him, unconditionally. But the rest has to
be up to him. You can’t do it for him. And it’s painfully clear that you’re
trying to.”

“My dad told me something very similar a few weeks ago.” He
sighed and drummed the fingers of his free hand against the arm of the sofa. He
sat silent for a moment, relishing the sense of comfort he often felt in her
company. He focused on the softness of her skin against his as she stroked his
wrist with the pad of her thumb, all his nerve endings on high alert for more
of her touch.

Then his thoughts tumbled past his lips before he could stop
them. “I’m not sure I know how to stop fighting his addiction for him.” For a
sharp moment, he desperately wanted to stop, to just let go. But what kind of
brother did that make him?

Andri pulled him back to her with a squeeze of her hand.
“You’ve been doing this a long time?”

“Not long enough. I took good care of him for a while when
he was young.” After Jacob died, Travis had taken his responsibility seriously.
He’d tried so hard to shield his little brother from everything painful and sad
in life. But once he’d entered middle school, he’d avoided carrying the weight
of Danny’s happiness. It was too much, and he’d wanted freedom.

Though he’d hidden that part of himself all these years, he
couldn’t resist the urge to release this particular failing into her care.
Somehow, he thought Andri would understand this, too. “When I got older, I
stopped letting him hang out with me and my friends because he was my lame
little brother and he’d get in the way of having fun. By the time I was
seventeen or so, I realized that he needed me. I started trying to protect him.
I think he was struggling with depression, even then. He tried to be bigger
than life, always out doing crazy skateboard tricks, getting in trouble with
his buddies, stuff like that. I thought he was acting out because he wanted
attention from our mother, but maybe there was more to it.”

“He’s still battling depression?”

“Yes. He doesn’t like the meds, though, so I think he
self-medicates in his own way. It doesn’t make sense to me, but, there it is.”
He turned his hand under hers, catching her fingers, threading their hands
together. “Are we still friends?”

He half expected her to say no, but she smiled, cutting a path
through the darkness shrouding him. “Of course.”

God, he really loved that smile. “Then I think you should
let me take you out tomorrow. Maybe give me a chance to prove to you that I
really am a nice guy.”

She laughed. “Travis, I know you’re a nice guy.”

The compliment flowed easily from her lips, but it warmed
his heart anyway.

Chapter Eight

In her nearly month long job search, Andri scored five job
interviews, three of which turned her down because she was overqualified. Two
invited her back for a second interview, and one a third, but no job offer yet.

She saw Travis every day after she moved into her apartment.
They met for lunch or dinner. They caught a couple of movies, hiked, explored
the aviary and the zoo. Sometimes she tagged along while he ran errands. He
wasn’t a fly fisher, which she was willing to temporarily overlook, but they
did get out on the water, spending an evening at the reservoir with a few of
Rachel’s friends. They attended one night of the Pioneer Day rodeo to cheer on
a bull-riding cousin of his. Throughout it all, she found herself growing
closer and closer to him, though she reminded herself constantly they were just
friends, that they had fun together, nothing more.

She and Travis exchanged texts often. Usually goofy things,
but she enjoyed them. On a Friday night near the end of the month, he sent a
text.

Travis:
Pick you up at 7 tomorrow night? We’ll be fashionably late.

Tomorrow night? What did they have planned—

“Oh, no.” She’d forgotten his mother’s fundraiser event. She
dashed off a quick message, lying through her teeth.
Sounds
great, looking forward to it.

She didn’t bother to look in her closet. She’d attended a
couple of formal events with Peter, but once they broke up, the dresses and the
pathetic memories they held went to Goodwill. Not that having them now would
have helped. The extra three inches on her hips meant they wouldn’t have fit
anymore. She sent an SOS to Rachel.
HELP. Holt fundraiser
tomorrow, formal, nothing to wear.

She paced for five minutes, waiting for a reply, nearly
ready to call instead when the response came.

Rachel:
Relax, off work by 10, call u then 4 shopping.

The next day, after four stops, Andri found herself in a
boutique that held some promise. There was no time for alterations, so finding
a dress that looked good and didn’t drag on the ground unless she wore platform
stilettos proved to be a challenge.