Finding Refuge (22 page)

Andri separated herself from the emotions breaking over her,
then processed the situation, calculating her options. There were only so many
choices. Stay and do nothing, hoping he eventually pulled himself free of his
baggage. Stay and nag him to change, and she knew better than to think that
might actually work.

Suddenly, the pieces clicked into place and she knew what
she had to do. Once it dawned on her, she realized it was really the only
choice. The only thing she could do that might help push Travis to find his way
out of his prison. Her heart ripped in two the moment she accepted it, and the
pain sucked the air from her lungs. She waited for a few seconds until she had
enough self-control to proceed. It had to be now. Before she found a way to
stop herself.

She walked back into the chalet, coming to a stop a few feet
in front of where he still sat on the couch.

“Travis. You’re letting yourself stay anchored in a dark
place in your world. You’re not ready to move forward. If I stick around,
you’re never going to be ready, and I’ll keep making excuses for you and trying
to help you without really being any help at all. I can’t allow myself to do
that. For both our sakes.”

She watched as panic infused his gaze. “Andri, what are you
doing?” He rose, crossed the distance between them. He reached for her, but she
shook her head, taking a step back.

Panic crossed into desperation. “Andri, please.”

Completely calm now, she stepped forward and put a hand on
his chest, the other bracketing his face. “Listen to me, because I want you to
remember this. I love you, Travis. I will always love you. But you need to get
yourself in a better place. You need to learn to let go and not assume
responsibility for your entire sphere of existence. Heal yourself,
kardia mou.
When and if you do, come to me.”

She rose on her toes and pressed her lips to his. He might
have been granite for all he responded. She picked up her laptop and purse and
left, never turning back.

There was one thing of which she was completely certain.
When the calm wore off, she was going to second-guess every word she had just
spoken.

The calm carried her into the car. Tears began rolling down
her cheeks before she got her seatbelt on.

Her strength gave out halfway to Park City. She pulled off the
next freeway exit, onto the shoulder at the bottom of the hill, and turned off
the car just as the first wave of sobs sliced through her, cutting her to
ribbons. The anguish bent her forward, crushing her under the intense pressure.

Andri cried until her throat grew raw, until her muscles
ached from being clenched, until her stomach threatened to empty itself under
the brute force of her pain. The storm finally subsided, leaving her drained,
body and soul.

She waited until her breath smoothed out, until she regained
enough composure to be safe on the road. Then she pulled her car around and
headed for Rachel’s house, avoiding thoughts of Travis and how much he might be
hurting right now.

****

Travis’s feet unfroze moments after Andri walked out of his
home. He raced out onto the front steps in time to see her swipe a hand across
her cheek, wiping away tears, then drive away. Dazed, he went back inside. He
kicked the door shut, cursing, and slammed his fists against the wall.

And then the onslaught hit, driving him to his knees. His
heart shattered, the intense sorrow ripping his soul, searing him from the
inside out, until he felt like ash on the wind.

He knew it. He knew it would end badly, damn it, and he
pursued her anyway. She tilted his world on its axis and pulled him free from
the morass so he could breathe. She was everything he wanted, everything he
needed her to be, but what he knew from the beginning held true. She, with her
warm heart and kryptonite smile, was the last thing tossed on the pile, the
rock that pushed him under.

She’d said she loved him, and, God, that was the worst part.
She’d given him everything, body, soul, heart, mind. He’d betrayed her in his
own way, unable to show her all of his failures, unable to tell her how much
she meant to him. He’d broken her heart, after he’d sworn never to do to
another person what Melody had done to him. But he had done it to Andri. She’d
given him her whole heart. He’d held his back, and kept his darkest secrets.
He’d unbalanced their relationship, and it had crashed.

 Travis stripped off his clothes and tossed himself
onto his bed, staring at the ceiling, seething inside. What in the hell was
wrong with him, that he couldn’t just let go and love her? Nothing about her
resembled his mother, or Melody, or any other woman, for that matter. She came
to him with an open heart, offering him the world on a string, and he couldn’t
reach out and take it.

Three little words he’d not said to a woman in a long, long
time. Three little words that had torn holes in his soul every time he’d used
them. He tried to say them, and his throat constricted, his heart pounded
behind its cage.

It broke him to know he had failed her, like he failed
everyone else. Now it was over. She’d learn to hate him. It wasn’t that far
from loving him, after all. She’d find her way there.

Why couldn’t he say it? He wanted to say it, to tell her he
loved her more than anything, that he needed her more than he needed air. He
wanted her here, wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

He didn’t know how to break free. And it had just cost him
everything.

Chapter Fourteen

Andri pulled into Rachel’s driveway on her way home from
Travis’s place. Rachel answered the door, her expression darkening as she took
in Andri’s appearance, and ushered her in to sit at the kitchen table. Rachel
grabbed two spoons and a carton of moose tracks ice cream then dropped into the
chair beside her.

She handed Andri a spoon. “What the hell happened? You look
awful.”

Andri smiled weakly. “Thanks so much.”

The ice cream really didn’t appeal to her until she’d
swallowed a spoonful. Once she started eating and talking, the words gushed out
of her. She told Rachel everything that had gone on and how she’d responded. “I
feel terrible, Rach. You know how I feel about channeling my mother, but I
couldn’t help it. The whole situation made me so angry!”

Rachel swallowed and shook her head. “Andri, I have never,
ever heard you yell at someone, unless they were ten rows down at the football
stadium and you were trying to get their attention.”

Andri thought about that for a moment. As much as she didn’t
want to turn into her father, she even more vehemently did not wish to turn
into her mother. She’d worked hard to excise the urge to scream while arguing
from her system, but that urge had surfaced with a vengeance with Travis. She
sighed. “I did raise my voice. I managed to not scream at him, though.”

“Well, a raised voice he had coming. Probably had screaming
coming too, but I know how much that bothers you, so I’m glad you held it
back.”

“Thanks.”

Rachel’s brow furrowed. “Did you come straight here from the
showdown?”

Andri shook her head. “No. Pulled off the road for a
world-class collapse and cry.”

Rachel’s expression grew sorrowful. “I thought so. You look
like you fell apart.”

“I did. I’m just kind of numb inside now.” Andri sat back in
her chair, setting her spoon on the table. “Did I do the wrong thing?”

Rachel considered the remainder of the ice cream. Andri
could practically see the wheels turning in her head. “You know, I think there
wasn’t much else you could do.” She looked at Andri for a while, then sighed.
“He wasn’t always this bad. I mean, yeah, carrying the weight of the free world
on his shoulders? He’s done that as far back as I can remember. But everything
that happened in his life added something to his burdens that he never let go.
Danny’s issues hurt him. Melody hurt him and sort of shut him down, but I don’t
think she did much more to him than any other painful event in his life.”

“What happened? What did she do?” She needed to know, though
gathering yet another piece of the puzzle that was Travis made her heart start
to ache a little again.

“To be honest, I don’t know. No one does. Travis refused to
talk about it. I asked him once, and he just said, ‘She left.’ Knowing him,
though, knowing how he throws his heart and soul into everything he does,
that’s really all she had to do, especially with all the other shit he keeps
bottled up inside. The fact that she walked away, on top of a pile of things
he’s never let go, was enough to push him under.”

Andri nodded slowly. That made sense. Especially if the
correlation she’d put together before, between his mother and his ex, held
true. “I love him, you know.”

Rachel reached over and ruffled her hair. “I know.”

“I believe that he wants to be with me.”

“I’d be shocked if he didn’t.”

Andri couldn’t shake the feeling that Rachel was hedging,
holding back on something in this discussion. “I’d give anything to get to the
bottom of Travis’s mind and understand why he puts so much on himself. There’s
a genesis to all of this, I know there is.”

Rachel looked away and shrugged. “It’s the mystery of the
ages.”

Andri’s eyes narrowed, reading her friend’s body language.
“You know more than you want to tell me.”

Rachel left the table, silence in her wake. She tossed the
empty carton in the garbage under the sink and placed their spoons in the
dishwasher. Andri followed her out onto the back deck and stood beside her
friend at the railing, looking out over the dark yard, moonlight sparkling on
the leaves and grass still wet from the storm that had blown through earlier.

Rachel sighed and rubbed her eyes. “Andri. Has he ever told
you about Jacob?”

Her mind flashed back to the marker near Terrence’s plot.
The unmentioned son. “His older brother, right?” At Rachel’s nod, she said, “I
read his headstone at the cemetery. He died young.”

“Yes, he did. When the time comes that you talk to Travis
again, ask him about Jacob. And tell him I love him and it’s for his own good
that I mentioned it.”

A shiver ran down Andri’s spine, and at that moment, she
wasn’t altogether certain she wanted to know the story of Jacob after all.

****

Travis stared at his phone for the hundredth time. That was
an improvement. The first day without Andri, he’d stared at it for hours at a
time, willing her to call, to text. The next few days after that, he’d stared
trying to convince himself to call or text her. But she didn’t want to talk to
him right now, and he’d respect her wishes, even if it drained out every drop
of color and light and warmth in his life.

He climbed out of his truck and grabbed his tool belt. It
was hotter than hell today, but he couldn’t stomach being in the office. The
framing crew made room for him, accepting him on the team to get walls built
and lifted on this custom home.

Andri was right, he thought as he worked. He was broken.
He’d known it for a long time, deep down, but he’d used all his strength to run
from the truth, as if by ignoring it and acting as if he was fine, and making
everyone around him fine, that his own truth would change.

It hadn’t.

The biggest problem with being broken, aside from leaving
him with nothing to give Andri, was that he couldn’t go back to what he’d been.
He couldn’t be the Travis who stuffed everything away and pretended it was all
okay. He had one option at this point. He could face himself and try to find a
way to build something new.

He was at the bottom of a deep, dark pit, but fortunately,
that bottom was bedrock. No way for him to dig deeper. This was as far as he
could drop. Funny. He’d always imagined he’d shatter completely if he fell this
far. Yes, he was in pieces, but he wasn’t disintegrating. There were actual
pieces to rebuild and shape into something better. That gave him hope.

And Andri? His muscles strained as he and two other guys
lifted a wall into place. That whisper from the darkest part of him still
lived, and it said Andri’d never want him again. Not broken, not repaired. But
he examined the delicate image of her in his mind. The smile that never failed
to send a bolt of sunshine through his heart. Her intelligence, patience,
wisdom.

She understood him better than anyone had. Only now did he
realize that when someone knew you that well, they could show you truths about
yourself that you didn’t like. She didn’t do it to be cruel, but because that’s
what someone who loved you was supposed to do. Help you see your own reality
and make it better. Or appreciate what you had in the first place.

And she did love him. It startled him to realize that he
didn’t question her declaration in any way. It was a fact. Simple, pure. She
loved him, even when she saw his weaknesses. Of course, she didn’t know the worst
of his failures yet. But where he lacked faith in himself, he realized he did
have faith in her. In her love for him.

Pedro, one of his head framers, stopped on his way to the
open doorway. He looked worried, but smiled, his teeth white against his dark-tanned
skin and black mustache. “Hey, boss. Lunch time. Lupe sent me with tamales
today, but no way I’m gonna eat so many. Why don’t you come help me out, huh?”

Travis paused for a moment, then laid the nail gun on the
plywood floor and gave Pedro a half-smile. “Sounds good.” He hadn’t eaten well
in days, but if he was going to do the work to get his head on straight, he’d
need some food in his system.

And he definitely had work to do before he returned to
Andri. All he could do was pray she was still there when that time came.

****

Travis noticed Danny in the office every day, starting a
week after the funeral. With his workload, he spoke to his brother only in
brief sentences, always about work, and rarely in person. Something had to
change. One evening, after everyone else had gone and the sound of some
alternative band with a fierce beat thumped on the airwaves from his brother’s
office, Travis walked in to see him.