Finding Refuge (24 page)

She went to the kitchen, and he followed, settling on a
chair at the table while she reached into the refrigerator for drinks. “Rach,
it pains me to see you sitting home alone.”

She met him at the table and handed him a bottle of beer. “I
don’t mind. Beats the dating meat market.”

“You’re amazing, you know. You’ll find someone.”

Her gaze flickered, exposing a cloud of confusion for just a
moment before it cleared. “It’s just a matter of time.” Then she waved a hand
at him, moving on. “But, you’re not here about my lack of a love life, you’re
here about your own.”

He stared at her for a moment, realizing in a flash how much
more he’d gotten from their friendship than he’d given over the years. “I’m
sorry, Rachel.”

“For what?”

“Being such a selfish friend.”

“Travis.” She leaned across the table and squeezed his hand.
“You’ve always been there when I’ve needed you. We’re cool.”

“You sure?”

“Yep. Cool enough to tell you that Andri is out of town.”

“I thought she might be. On business?”

“Nah. She had the day off today, some company thing, so she
flew to New York last night to see her brother for the weekend.”

Fear rattled his insides. What were the chances that she’d
decide to stay there? “Everything okay?”

“She needed a little change of scenery.”

He nodded, staring at the table. Damn. He really didn’t want
to wait until she came back. He needed to see her now. He’d worked through so
much of the crap he’d hauled around inside of him. Now, it was down to her. To
them.

He had two choices. Stay where he was, apprehensive, worried
about the possibility of another relationship crumbling in his hands. Or move
forward. Go for broke and possibly end up miserable, or not move and be ripped
to pieces anyway.

It had to be forward.

He stood, then leaned down and grabbed Rachel in a tight
hug. When he kissed her on the cheek and released her, she looked stunned.

“What was that for?”

“For you being you. For being my friend. For putting up with
all of my bullshit over the years.”

“Um. Okay. Not sure who you are or what you’ve done with
Travis, but okay. You’re welcome.”

Travis started toward the door. She called after him, “Where
are you going?”

He pulled the door open and tossed a grin at her over his
shoulder. “Where else? New York.”

Chapter Fifteen

Andri went into the kitchen and washed her hands at the
sink, looking out over the expanse of lawn and trees that made up her brother’s
back yard. This was the first time she’d visited since he bought the gorgeous
colonial in Hyde Park last year, and a part of her never wanted to leave. She
loved the hardwood floors and the ten-foot ceilings and the acre yard just
begged for someone to garden. The fact that it was practically walking distance
to the Hudson was a major plus.

“Andri?” Dmitri’s deep voice carried through the house from
the entry.

“I’m in the kitchen.” The house was far too big for her bachelor
brother, but she knew he intended to spend his life here, so he’d planned ahead
for the needs of an eventual family. He was a man who deserved to be happily
married, raising a couple of kids, enjoying weekends running the boat on the
river.

They’d been out on the boat all afternoon, she and Dmitri
and a couple of his friends. The trees on the hills overlooking the Hudson had
just started changing color for autumn, and the beauty did her soul some good.
She’d make another trip in a few weeks, maybe, to see everything in full color.
For now, she needed to clean up before her brother took her to dinner.

She heard him enter the kitchen behind her and she turned.
“So what’s the proper dress for this restaurant?”

Anything else she might have said fled at the sight of
Travis standing behind Dmitri. Heart pounding, she focused on her brother. He
wore his lawyer face, completely impervious to interpretation.

“Andri, you have company. I’ll be upstairs if you need
anything.” Dmitri turned, nodded once to Travis, then left the room.

She shifted to look at Travis, her pulse thumping hard and
loud in her ears. He wore gray jeans, a white t-shirt under an open red flannel
shirt, and a bit of scruffy stubble shadowed his jaw. He looked yummy without
even trying, and she clamped down on her cell-deep response, crossing her arms
in a desperate need to protect herself from his draw on her heart. The magnetic
pull made her lean back against the counter to balance herself, to keep herself
from falling into his arms. It had only been a few weeks since she’d seen him,
but oh, God, she’d missed him like she’d miss water, or sunlight, or warmth, if
similarly deprived. But the situation was delicate and she had to keep her
brain firmly in charge here. “Hey.”

“Hey. You look great.”

“I’m all windblown. Smell like the river, too.”

“I like a girl who smells like the river sometimes.”

Damn, he always made her stomach flip. “What are you doing
here, Travis?”

“I heard you’d gone to see your brother. I figured I’d come
out and meet him.” He didn’t move toward her, instead choosing to tuck his
hands in the pockets of his jeans and lean against the door jamb.

“What did you think of him?”

“Nice guy. I like him.” Now he did move, taking a single
step toward her, ratcheting her pulse up another notch. “He did give me a bit
of grief outside, but I had it coming.”

“Oh really? And what did he say?”

Another step closer. “I introduced myself and he said, ‘oh,
you’re the reason my baby sister is upset.’ And that hurt. I never want to be
the person who upsets you.”

She appreciated this little reminder that the brother who
had picked on her in their youth still refused to let anyone else in the world
give her grief. She loved Dmitri more than ever in that moment. “You’re a guy,
I’m a girl,
upset
is going to happen sometimes. Comes
with the territory.”

“True. But I’d rather it be little, momentary upsets.
Because I forgot to take the garbage out or I missed the tenth anniversary of
our third date or something.”

Another step placed him directly in front of her, and her
pulse soared, her breath coming faster. She licked her dry lips and his focus
zeroed in on her mouth.

“We’ve had some much bigger upsets,” Travis said, his voice
softening. “And those I don’t ever want to repeat.”

“Neither do I.” If he touched her, she feared she’d collapse
into his arms like some silly little girl. The very air around them crackled
with the feeling of something momentous, and she needed her brain fully engaged
before her heart agreed to something foolish. “Did my brother say anything else
before he unleashed you on me?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. A few things. Standard big brother
language, requirements, conditions, that sort of thing.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Conditions?”

“Well. One condition. But I’m getting ahead of myself. There’s
a lot to catch you up on since you smacked me in the head with the verbal two
by four.”

She winced. Yeah, that was accurate. “I’m sorry.”

He chuckled. “If I recall correctly what you said once
before, no you’re not. Not for what you said, anyway, because it needed saying.
It really did. You’re incredibly adept at telling me what I don’t want to
hear.”

“Then I’m sorry for the timing. It was a lot to hit you with
at that moment. I’m ashamed to admit that I do have some of my mom’s temper.”

“If that’s as pissed off as you ever get, I’ll consider
myself a lucky man.”

His expression grew serious, his eyes turbulent but without
a hint of the wall she’d grown accustomed to seeing inside him. “How are
things, Travis?”

“Improving. I had a legitimate, heartfelt conversation with
my mother. Well, as much of one as I could ever hope to have. It was good. I
did the same with my brother. That was even better. He and I are hanging out.”

Relief swamped her. “Oh, really?”

“Yeah. Climbing another mountain next week. It’ll be fun, if
it doesn’t kill me. The last one nearly did.” He stepped back, giving her a
moment to breathe. “Now, there’s something important I want to tell you about.
It’s kind of a long story, so maybe we could sit down somewhere?”

Her insides twisted in response. So far he’d offered good
news, but this sounded more serious. Now that she’d seen him and realized just
how deeply she’d missed him, she wasn’t sure she could take something bad. Her
lingering sense of  inadequacy surfaced, anticipating the worst. Luckily,
her good sense beat back the pathetic, whiny voice shouting scary
what ifs
and reminded her that he wouldn’t bother to come
all the way to New York to permanently break up with her. She needed to rise to
the occasion and listen to his story.

She waggled her fingers at him to follow and she led him
into the formal room near the front of the house where Dmitri housed his baby
grand piano. She sat on one of the damask love seats and patted the burgundy
cushion beside her.

Travis joined her, but, thankfully, he didn’t reach out for
her. Their knees touched, and that warm connection reminded her just how deeply
she’d missed him, but didn’t distract her entirely.

He blew out a breath. “Did Rachel ever mention Jacob?”

“In a very cryptic way, yes. After our last, um, upset. We
were talking about the pieces of your puzzle.”

“That’s an interesting way to put it.”

“And accurate. Anyway, I’d noticed his name at the cemetery.
She suggested I ask you about him. She said to tell that you she loves you and
it’s for your own good that she mentioned it.” Her stomach flipped, and not in
a good way. Nerves kicked up, making her hands tremble until she folded them
together in her lap.

Travis gave her a half-smile. “I do love that woman. She has
a knack for doling out just the right bit of information when it’s needed.”

“She does.”

He held her gaze, his own turbulent. “Jacob was my older
brother. He killed himself when I was ten.”

Oh, damn, that was a sharp left turn she wasn’t expecting.
It sucked the breath from her lungs. As she reminded herself to breathe, she
realized that, for once, Travis wasn’t hiding a thing in his expression. He let
her see the pain. Pain that touched her soul-deep, made her ache with the
desire to soothe him. “Travis, I can’t even imagine how that hurt.”

“It did. It damaged us all. But here’s the thing. I was
convinced it was my fault.”

“How could it possibly have been your fault?”

“I found him in the bathroom, talking to himself in the
mirror. He was holding a gun he’d stolen from a friend’s dad.”

Sickness roiled inside her, leaving her unsure she wanted to
know the truth, but determined to listen if he was going to talk about it.
“What happened?”

“I knew something bad was going to happen. I could feel it
in the air. So I tried to take the gun away from him. I fought for that gun
until he punched me in the stomach and shoved me out of the bathroom. He locked
the door.” His voice grew rough and the darkness in his eyes pierced her heart.
“When I got my wind back, I pounded and kicked the door, but he wouldn’t answer
me. It finally occurred to me to call my mom and dad. They’d gone to dinner.
Jacob was babysitting us.”

Andri reached for his hand, clutching him with trembling
fingers. Understanding tore a hole in her soul and left tears streaming down
her cheeks. “By the time they got home…”

He nodded. “Too late. Every time something goes wrong now,
especially with Danny, I fight with Jacob in my dreams. I hear that gunshot
over and over.”

She wiped her cheeks and folded her fingers over his. “You
felt like you should have stopped him.”

“Yes. It took Danny to help me finally put it in
perspective, but I’ve always felt responsible. After his death, my mother
pulled away from us. Which meant I was responsible for that, too.”

The rest of the pieces rapidly clicked into place. Oh, he
made so much more sense now. “And then Danny and his problems.”

“It just kept building. I felt responsible for it all, and I
failed people who were everything to me. Then came Melody.”

Andri ached for what he’d gone through, for what he’d done
to himself all those years, all that needless suffering. She tightened her grip
on his hand. “I do have a bit of a theory about Melody.”

He squeezed her hand in return. “Oh, really? What’s that?”

She felt the strength in his grip and realized how steady,
how open he was now. His healing was well underway, and her heart lifted. “My
theory is that you married a woman a lot like your mom. To try to fix what you
couldn’t.”

“Not bad, detective. I’ve thought about that a lot lately. I
tried to make Melody happy because I loved her, and so I wouldn’t fail at being
married. About the only close personal relationship I haven’t screwed up is
with Rachel, though we’ve had our moments over the years. Even with my dad,
look where we ended up.”

Andri reached out, laying a hand against his cheek. “You
can’t blame yourself for that.”

“I know. But that’s where my brain naturally wants to go
with it. Anyway, I digress. Melody’s similarity to my mother stopped at withholding
emotional intimacy, and for very different reasons. Melody liked having all the
control, and she wielded intimacy in all its forms like a weapon to get what
she wanted. But the fact that she was never satisfied was far bigger than our
marriage. When she decided the grass was greener elsewhere, she left.”

He blew out a deep breath, his expression lighter, as if he
had finally released everything that tortured him. “So. That’s it. My litany of
failure. I’ve realized that I held onto those failures. In my own way, they
were my shield from being hurt by anything new. They were my protective armor.”