Chapter Twenty-Four
His mom answered the door in her bathrobe. The stern but surprised look in her blue eyes told him that she hadn’t been expecting him tonight.
His bow tie was gone, his shirt’s top two buttons were undone, and all he wanted was his dog. Henry raced down the stairs and greeted Travis at the door, tail wagging. “Hey, buddy,” he said, bending down to scoop him up in his arms.
Henry licked his cheek. Travis understood his dog. Henry made sense to him, Henry was easy to take care of, he responded, he listened, and Travis knew exactly what Henry needed at any time during the day. When the dog paced at the door, he needed to go outside; when he nosed the cupboard in the evening, he was hungry for dinner; when he pawed at his leash it was time for a walk.
Women, on the other hand, were more confusing than astrophysics.
“I didn’t expect to see you until tomorrow morning,” his mom said. As she shut the door behind him, Travis crumpled onto the couch in the living room, slumping into a tuxedoed mess.
“Sorry. I thought I was going to be somewhere tonight but it didn’t work out.”
His mom sat across from him in a chair, studying him as if she could find in his expression the answer to his much-earlier-than-expected appearance. “Translation: You mean you were going to spend the night with Cara and now you’re not, probably because you said something stupid.”
His jaw dropped. “Mom! Why would you assume I said something stupid?”
“Because you’re my son, and I know you. And I know Cara. And that means I can put two and two together.”
He slouched deeper into the well-worn couch. He ran a hand through his hair. “It’s not that simple. She wants a relationship and that’s not what I do.”
His mom nodded several times, then she narrowed her eyes. “What is it that you do, then?”
“Mom, don’t act surprised,” he said, scrubbing a hand across his jaw. “You know they’re not my thing. Never have been. Not after what they did to you and Dad.”
She arched an eyebrow. “What they did to your dad and me? Travis, does that even make sense to you?”
“Of course,” he said, quickly before he could even think about the question.
“Well, think about it more seriously. Because it doesn’t make a bit of sense to me. Relationships didn’t do anything to your father and me. He died in an accident in the line of duty. Not because of a relationship. And I know you made a decision long ago, because of how deeply his death affected me, that you would protect yourself from relationships. All I can do is say the same thing to you that I said to your sister. I am sorry that his death took such a toll on me when you were younger.”
She sat up tall in her chair, keeping her gaze firmly fixed on him. “But you know what? I got over it. And I’m glad I’m here. I’m glad I have my heart to love again.” She tapped her chest, reminding him that her ticker still worked. “My heart is strong. Robert is amazing, and I am unbelievably happy with him. Yes, I was devastated when your father died, and for many years after. And yes, if I could redo those years, I would change many things. But the one thing I will not regret is that I didn’t shut off my heart. If I had, I wouldn’t have the life I have today,” she said, sweeping her arm out to indicate her home and, down the hall, her sleeping husband. “When your father died, I had a hole in my heart, and missing him was terrible. But then, time healed it. Because that’s what time does. I could have closed myself off from ever loving again. But that’s the real death. I hope you realize that. It is so much worse to live without love.”
Those last words were a sharp punch in the chest, stronger than the stinging slap he suspected Cara had wanted to give him when he chased after her in the limo and still couldn’t reciprocate.
He looked at his mom, and then his eyes roamed the house, cataloguing all the evidence of how his mother had taken a chance on love again, even when she’d been dealt the worst hand of all. She still had the photos of their father, the pictures of their younger years, and then she had new images on the tables and the walls — ones of her family now. Of her and Robert, of Megan and Becker, even of Travis and Henry. He flashed back on the lean years, then the ones that followed, remembering all the times he’d spent with his mom and his stepdad, from the barbecues, to the dinners, to even just the average, ordinary days now when they took care of his dog.
He could feel something shift in his chest, like a brick moving to let sunlight into a darkened room. “I’m glad you have Robert now,” he said softly. “I’m glad you’re happy.”
“I am, and maybe you can be, too.”
“I am happy,” he said, straightening his spine. “I have everything a man could want. Friends, family, a dog, a good job.”
She nodded. “Right. You do. And you could have something even more amazing if you’d get out of your own way.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She yawned, rose, and rumpled his hair. “It means, young man, that it has not gone unnoticed for the last ten years that you’ve been in love with one girl.” She stood up and walked to her bedroom, waving once along the way.
His jaw hit the floor. He rubbed his knuckle against his ear. Surely he was hearing things. “What the hell was that about?”
Henry cocked his head to the side, one ear shooting up in answer. “Now I know she’s crazy,” he said to the dog, then leashed him up and headed to his truck. His mom was nuts. That was the craziest thing he’d ever heard. Besides, he didn’t need anything more. He was blessed already, and life had treated him well lately. He didn’t need to push his luck and ask for more. That’s what always got his clients in trouble. That’s where people got hurt in a fire, too, when they went back in to save the family photos, the mementos, that precious little thing they thought they couldn’t live without.
He settled Henry into the passenger seat, then buckled himself in. He backed out of the driveway, turned onto the street, then drove out to the main drag.
As he headed home through the dark and quiet night, the calm descending over Hidden Oaks, he rewound to his mom’s words, then returned to the things Cara had said to him, and finally he replayed the look on Becker’s face. His chest tightened as all these thoughts and images collided in his head, and he tried to detach them from each other, and make sense of them.
But was there any way to truly make sense of all these bizarre feelings? Especially the way he felt when he was near Cara, that strange, funny sensation that was like his heart trying to do cartwheels. He shook his head as he turned onto the main street through town.
Man, he was going crazy trying to dissect this.
A yellow light streaked past him. His skin prickled, and his muscles tensed all over. A horn blared from another car. He slammed on his brakes, and the rear of his car fishtailed as he swerved out of the way of a white hatchback that had been hurtling toward him.
What the hell? Where had that car come from? The driver wasn’t paying attention at all.
Then he noticed the light at the intersection.
His pulse sped to sprinter levels when he realized what he’d just done. He’d run the red light at the town square.
Henry cowered on the floor of the car. The near-collision had knocked him out of the front seat and onto the floor. The poor guy was shaking. Quickly, Travis pulled to the side of the road and cut the engine. He reached for Henry and held him close. “You okay, buddy?” he asked, stroking Henry’s fur. The dog’s heart was beating fast, but he was otherwise fine.
Travis, however, was not fine. Not fine at all. He could have hurt his dog. All because he hadn’t been thinking.
He hadn’t been paying attention.
He was so goddamn distracted by the mess that was in his head and his heart that he hadn’t followed the simplest rules of the road. He heard the familiar sound of a siren, then a few seconds later there was a knock on his window. He rolled it down.
“Hey, Johnny,” he said to the cop he knew well.
“Hey, Trav. I know you weren’t drinking and driving. At least you better not have been.”
“No sir,” he said, shaking his head.
“What got into you then, running a light?”
That was a good question. Travis had never so much as had a ticket before. He never sped. He was careful behind the wheel at all times. He glanced at his dog. He thought of his talk with his mom. What had gotten into him?
That’s when all the colliding thoughts, all the supposedly foreign feelings, untangled themselves from each other. All the threads, all the knots, all the messy snarl of emotions—they crystallized into something clear. The strange notions that had been rattling around in his brain for last few weeks took hold in his heart, and he was left with one feeling—he missed her.
He knew the answer to Johnny’s question. The answer was in the way he felt when he was with Cara.
“A woman,” he said, with certainty in his tone. “I was thinking about a woman, and I have no clue what to do about her or how to get her back.”
Johnny smiled and nodded. “Know the feeling well. You be more careful next time, you hear?”
“I will,” he said, and it occurred to him that Johnny’s warning applied both to how he drove and to how he’d treated Cara’s heart.
When he arrived home, he grabbed a beer and flopped down on the couch with his dog. “What are we going to do now?”
Henry didn’t have an answer either.
As Travis fell asleep later, he wondered if Cara hogged the sheets, and what it was going to take for him to find out.