Chapter 5
Levi
By the time I pulled out of Riverside Pines, the rain had settled into a steady, soaking downpour.
The river ran high beside the road, dark and fast, swollen with runoff.
I caught a glimpse of the trailers tucked too close to the water, metal siding gleaming wet, porch lights already on, Becca’s teal one brightest among them.
The current pressed against the bank, as if testing how much longer it could wait.
One bad spring flood, one engineer’s report calling the lots “uninhabitable,” and someone could declare the whole place a hazard.
Or use it as a way to push people out. Travis hadn’t just come to beg Becca back tonight.
He’d come to remind her how easy it would be to take everything away.
I turned onto the main road and headed back toward town, windshield wipers thudding a familiar rhythm as Sweetbriar unfolded around me.
Holloway’s Pub glowed warm through rain-streaked windows, the neon sign buzzing faintly as I passed.
I didn’t look directly at it. Didn’t need to.
The memory lived there whether I wanted it to or not—whiskey on my breath, pavement cold beneath my knees, Becca’s face lit by the parking lot lights… Marry me.
I gripped the steering wheel harder and kept driving.
My sister Violet’s coffee shop came next, purple chairs just visible through the glass, the same place she’d stood that morning with damp hair and stubborn pride, refusing help even when she needed it.
The image of Travis in her doorway followed close behind.
He’d been too familiar, too confident, like he still had a claim on her. He didn’t.
Travis hadn’t scared me. He wasn’t bigger or stronger or worth my fear.
What he was—what he’d always been—was entitled.
Used to being let back in. Used to Becca softening, accommodating, explaining herself.
I’d watched her shoulders go tight the second she heard his voice.
I’d seen the way she held herself still, as though if she didn’t move, he couldn’t take anything else from her.
My jaw clenched.
I told myself I’d done the right thing. I hadn’t escalated the situation.
I hadn’t spoken over her. I’d stepped in only when she needed me to.
Still, the anger sat low in my chest, heavy and unfamiliar, like something I didn’t know what to do with yet.
The town blurred past. The park where we’d spent summers, the bend in the road where the river dipped close, the quiet streets lined with houses I’d known my whole life.
Sweetbriar had a way of holding onto things.
Of reminding you who you were, even when you tried to move on.
I turned into my townhouse complex just as dusk settled in, the lights inside my place with Jude already glowing warm. The building was solid, brick and wood, nothing fancy but comfortable. A place that didn’t rattle when the wind picked up. A place that stayed put.
I parked, shut off the engine, and sat there for a moment longer than necessary, listening to the rain fall against the windshield.
Inside, my life was simple. Predictable.
Safe. My family was the same. My life was settled in a way Becca’s never was.
And all I could think about was the woman living in a trailer by the river, pretending she didn’t need help, pretending there weren’t things between us that had never been finished.
Jude’s boots were by the door, kicked off in the familiar careless way that meant he was home for the evening. I shut the door quietly behind me and set my keys on the small table by the door.
“You brought her the lasagna?” Jude called from the kitchen.
“Yeah, I just dropped it off,” I said, toeing my shoes off and lining them up without thinking.
“Good,” he said. “Mom’ll sleep better tonight. She’s worried about her.”
I moved through the living room, around the couch we’d argued over for three weeks before buying, because neither of us wanted to admit we cared about fabric samples.
The place was homey and casual—a throw blanket folded just so because I kept it that way, a framed photo of us in our turnout gear hung crooked on the wall.
I leaned my shoulder against the doorframe and watched him rummage through the fridge.
“She okay?” he asked casually, like he wasn’t watching me out of the corner of his eye.
I knew better. He was always paying attention. “Yeah,” I said. “She is.”
Jude hummed. “That didn’t answer my question.”
I exhaled and crossed my arms. “Travis showed up.”
Jude went still. Slowly, he turned around.
The air shifted from easy to sharp in a heartbeat.
Jude’s concern wasn’t new. Neither was mine.
We’d all grown up together—me, Jude, Becca, Harper—four kids tangled in the same backyards and classrooms, learning early that if one of us took a hit, the rest felt it.
That rule hadn’t changed just because we were older and two of us had grown apart.
“Did he touch her?” Jude asked, voice low. “Hurt her, make more of his stupid demands that she go back to him?”
“No,” I said immediately. “He left.”
“Because she told him to?”
“And because I backed her up.”
Jude nodded once, jaw tight. “Good. Let me know if you want me to step in with you.”
I pushed off the wall and headed for the bathroom, stripping off my jacket as I went. “I didn’t make it worse. I let her handle it. But I would have stepped in if he pushed it.”
“I know,” Jude said behind me. “You never make things worse. You just absorb everything and pretend you’re fine.”
I shut the bathroom door harder than necessary and turned the shower on full blast, letting the hot water pound against my skin. I needed the heat, needed to relax. Steam filled the small space. I braced my hands against the tile and closed my eyes.
The memory came again uninvited—Holloway’s parking lot, the weight of the night pressing in, Becca’s face swimming in and out of focus.
I’d known I had no right. But couldn’t stop myself.
Because sometimes wanting her felt like drowning.
I shut the water off and stood there in the quiet, heart hammering.
By the time I stepped back into the living room, hair damp and pajamas on, Jude was waiting with two beers, offering one without a word. I took it, the cold bite grounding me.
“Harper said she was okay,” Jude said, casual but certain. “I just got off the phone.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Good. She showed up, too. After he was gone.”
“She’s not as okay as she pretends,” Jude added.
“No,” I agreed. “She isn’t.”
Jude studied me for a long moment. “You going to do something about it?”
I stared down at the bottle in my hand, the question heavier than it sounded. “I don’t know what I should do,” I said honestly. “But I’m not going to do nothing. I know that much.”
Jude took a long pull from his beer, then set the bottle down a little too carefully. “Harper heard something weird tonight,” he said.
That got my attention. I looked up. “What kind of weird?”
“The kind that starts with ‘this probably means nothing’ and ends with ‘it definitely means something.’” He leaned back against the counter.
“Her Aunt Eileen. Apparently, someone made her an offer on her trailer. Cash. No contingencies. More than double what the assessor’s office has it listed for. ”
I set the beer down harder than I meant to. “Who?”
“Didn’t give a name. Just a business card with a phone number and a handshake. But Eileen recognized the cardstock—thick, embossed. Same kind the mayor’s office uses for ‘official correspondence.’”
My stomach turned. “Travis works for Whitaker.”
Jude nodded once. “Exactly. And Eileen’s offer is really about the land, don’t you think?”
Dad had been warning us about Whitaker’s “revitalization” pet project for months—pretty brochures, town-hall smiles, and a quiet push to rezone anything with a water view.
Riverside Pines sat on prime river access.
Aggie owned the parcel. Eileen owned one of the deeded entry strips.
It seemed as if Aggie’s late husband had made the land ownership complicated on purpose.
Both needed to sell the land to make it usable.
You needed Eileen’s portion to get to the road, and Aggie owned the rest. Control the access, control the whole campground.
“Seems like they might be testing the waters,” I said quietly. “Seeing who’s willing to fold first.”
“Or who’s vulnerable enough to pressure,” Jude added. “Eileen’s on a fixed income. Double the value is hard to walk away from when your trailer is getting older, and you can’t afford to replace it.”
I pictured Becca’s trailer again. How close it sat to the water, how easily someone could call it a hazard. How Travis had stood in her doorway tonight, looking like he already knew the next move.
“I’m going to look into it,” I said. “Don’t tell Cade. Or Dad. Not yet.”
He smiled, just a little. “I won’t. Let me know if you need help.”
I reached for my phone, thumb hovering over Becca’s name before I stopped myself. She hadn’t asked for help. Hadn’t asked for anything. Charging in now would only prove her point—the one she’d been making for years—that everyone else decided things for her.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t be ready when she needed me.
I locked the screen and slipped the phone back into my pocket.
“I’m not saying anything yet,” I said. “Not to her. Not to Aggie. I just want to know what we’re dealing with.”
Jude nodded. “I’ll keep an ear out.”
Later that night, the townhouse settled into its familiar rhythms—pipes knocking softly, Jude’s footsteps pacing the upstairs hall, the muted sounds of a game murmuring from his bedroom. Normal. Comfortable.
I sat at the kitchen table with my laptop open, the overhead light casting a warm circle over scattered mail and my abandoned beer. The screen glowed back at me, blank and patient.
I didn’t start with Becca’s name. I started with Whitaker’s public calendar—easy enough to pull from the town website.
There it was: three meetings in the last six weeks labeled “Riverfront Opportunity Stakeholders.” Attendees listed in the minutes included “T. Reynolds, Special Projects Coordinator, Mayor’s Office.
” Travis Reynolds. The same asshole who’d stood in Becca’s doorway tonight, acting like he still had the right to speak to her.
I clicked deeper. An attached memo—buried under “miscellaneous correspondence”—mentioned “preliminary interest in acquiring deeded access parcels along the Sweetbriar River to facilitate mixed-use development.” No names, but the date matched the week Eileen got her offer.
I leaned back, pulse loud in my ears.
This wasn’t random. This was coordinated.
Travis wasn’t just harassing Becca because he couldn’t let go.
He was doing his job. And if he was pressuring her, he’d pressure Aggie next.
Or worse, he’d use Becca to get to Aggie.
I stared at the screen until the words blurred.
I couldn’t tell her yet. Not without proof, she’d believe.
Not when she’d spent years learning to distrust anyone who tried to “fix” her life.
But I also couldn’t sit on this. Because if Travis was using his position to threaten her home, then this wasn’t just personal anymore. This was war. I closed the laptop and sat in the dark, rain drumming the roof.
I knew Becca. She was still pretending she could handle everything alone while Travis was still insisting he had a right to her future. And Whitaker was there in the background, claiming this was all just “progress.”
I wasn’t going to wait for them to make the next move.
Forget keeping this quiet. I scrolled to her brother Matt’s number and sent him a text.
If all of this pointed where I thought it did, Travis wasn’t the only one who was going to learn what happened when you tried to take something that wasn’t yours.