Chapter 24 #2
By the time I reached the door, my teeth were still clenched.
My eyes were burning with it. The calm I put on wasn’t peaceful; it was a lid pressed down over something that wanted very badly to boil over.
I was done being afraid of this man. Done.
But what was underneath the fear, now that I was finally looking at it, didn’t feel like freedom yet.
It felt like fury.
I opened the door.
Travis stood on the step in his navy blue jacket and expensive boots, hair neat, expression arranged into earnest concern. But it was a mask. He didn’t care about me, not really. He opened his mouth.
I looked at him and felt my eyes narrow, slow and deliberate, and said nothing. “It’s early.” The words came out flat and bitten off, harder than I intended, or maybe exactly as hard as I intended. My jaw was still tight. I could feel it in my temples.
“I know.” He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. It never had, and I’d spent years telling myself I was imagining that. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
“Travis—”
His name in my mouth enraged me. I heard the way I said it—clipped, almost a warning, the kind of tone I’d heard and swallowed down for years because I’d been so careful, always so careful, not to give him anything to work with.
Not anger, not tears, not the satisfaction of knowing he still got under my skin.
But he was under my skin right now. I could feel it like a splinter, hot and buried deep.
“I heard your podcast last night.” His voice was warm, reasonable, and certain he had the upper hand. “Someone sent me the link and told me it was you. You were talking about someone who keeps showing up. Someone you’ve been circling for years.” He paused, bait dangling. “I know that was about me.”
The audacity hit like a slap.
He took my silence as permission to keep going.
“I know things got bad,” he said, dropping into that soft, confessional tone he’d always used when he wanted to rewrite reality and make me fall back into line. “I made mistakes. But what you said last night—that’s us. That’s always been us, Becca. You know it.”
“No,” I said. Calm. Clear. Final.
He blinked.
“It wasn’t about you,” I said. “It was never about you.”
Something flickered. He was surprised, then his expression hardened. “You’re still angry.”
“Yeah, I’m angry,” I said. “I want you to know that. I am so angry at you, I can barely look at you right now.”
His expression shifted, something flickering behind the concern—surprise, maybe, that I wasn’t doing what I always did. Smoothing it over. Making it easier for him.
“Becca—”
“No.” The word came out harsh. “You don’t get to say my name like that anymore.
Like you’re worried about me. Like you showed up here because you care.
” I felt my voice trying to climb and dragged it back down, not to softness but to something colder, more deliberate.
“I’m angry. I’m furious. And I am also done.
All of those things are true at the same time, and I need you to hear me.
I am done with you. Not taking space, not needing time, not something you can wait out.
” My hands weren’t shaking anymore. “This isn’t a door,” I added.
“It’s a wall. And I built it, and it’s mine, and you don’t get to knock on it and smile at me like that and think anything is going to open. ”
“Becca—”
“We fought all the time. I couldn’t take it anymore.
” I kept my voice level. I was calm, in the way you get when you’ve finally stopped being afraid.
“You knew I had nowhere to go and you counted on that. You used my financial situation as a leash and called it love. You proposed to me while you were still lying to me, and when I finally left—when I finally said enough—you treated my decision like a temporary inconvenience you could wait out.” I looked at him without flinching.
“I’m not going to feel differently. I’m not going to come around.
What we had is over, and it should have been over a long time before it was. ”
His jaw flexed. The mask cracked. “So who is it then? Who are you fucking?” Not a question. A demand. “Is someone in there with you?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“It is if it’s someone I know.” Eyes narrowing. “Is it Barrett?”
I didn’t answer. Silence was answer enough, and he didn’t deserve anything else from me.
His face changed completely. The performance vanished. Possessive rage rose underneath. “Levi fucking Barrett,” anger rolled off him in waves. “You threw away everything we had for—”
“I threw away nothing,” I cut in, sharp. “You threw it away. I stopped pretending.”
“After everything I did for you.” Voice dropping, turning colder. “After everything I put up with. Your job. Your money. The way you needed—”
“You used that against me. All of it,” I said. “Don’t rewrite it.”
“I loved you,” he snapped.
“Yeah, at first maybe. But in the end, you controlled me,” I said. “And you called it love because it was easier than looking at what it actually was.”
Something moved through his face—fury, humiliation, the kind of rage of a man who has never been told no by someone he thought he owned—and he stepped into the doorway. Into my space. Deliberate and slow, the way he’d always moved when he wanted me to feel the size of him.
I held my ground. “You need to step back,” I ground out.
“I need you to stop being dramatic and listen to me—”
“Hey.” Levi’s voice came from right behind me, carrying the quiet authority of a man who walked into fires for a living.
He filled the doorway behind me, stepping out from behind the door, dressed now in sweatpants and a T-shirt, hair tousled, arms loose.
Six-foot-four inches of immovable certainty.
He looked like he’d just woken up and found a minor inconvenience on the porch—completely unbothered as he slipped in front of me.
Travis stared. Then stepped backward down the porch stairs to the gravel lot as Levi forced him down with a hand on his shoulder, boots crunching when he stopped at the bottom.
Travis shoved both hands against Levi’s chest.
Levi didn’t move.
Not an inch.
He absorbed it like a mountain absorbs wind. Arms relaxed. Expression unchanged.
Travis’s face went scarlet.
“Feel better?” Levi asked, almost pleasantly.
Travis’s face went red. “Get out of my way.”
“No.”
“I said, get out of my way. I need to talk to Becca—” He shoved again, harder this time, using both hands, and Levi still did not move, did not change expression, did nothing except stand there, immovable, making Travis much more furious than any retaliation could have.
Levi didn’t budge. “You’re embarrassing yourself,” he said mildly.
“You think this is funny?” Travis’s voice cracked. “She was mine, Barrett. We had a—”
“She’s not yours,” Levi cut him off, quiet and final. “She was never yours. And she asked you to leave, so get the fuck out of here before I make you.”
Travis wheeled toward me, eyes blazing. “You think he’s going to be different? You think because he plays hero—”
“I think,” I said, “you should be very careful right now.”
“Careful? What are you going to do?” Travis sneered.
“You’re in a trailer, Becca. Working at a gas station.
You’re living in a campground that will be—” He cut himself off mid-sentence, the words dying abruptly in his throat.
His mouth snapped shut like he’d bitten down on something bitter.
“You have no idea what you’re losing if you let me go. You’re nothing without me.”
Levi stepped forward. Just one step. “I’ll happily beat the shit out of you right now if you don’t shut your fucking mouth.” His voice stayed level, making the promise hit harder. He glanced up at me. “Can I?”
I almost said yes.
“Oh, that is quite enough out of you, Travis.” Aggie burst from her Airstream in a bright purple track suit, duck boots on her feet, mug of tea in one hand, and her phone in the other.
Rosemary followed, in hot pink, walking shoes, eyes sharp and unimpressed.
Aggie leveled her mug at Travis like a gavel.
“I’ve known who you were since the first time I saw you standing next to Becca with that proprietary smile.
She doesn’t belong to you. Never did.” Sip of tea.
“I’ve seen your car here four times this week.
This morning’s car is new. I photographed the plates.
Sent them to Matt. He texted back, and he’s on his way. ”
Rosemary assessed Travis calmly. “You should go,” she said. “Before you piss Levi off even more.”
Travis looked at Aggie. Rosemary. Levi—still immovable. Did the math.
“The thing about men like him,” Aggie said, “is their bullshit only works in private. They count on you being alone.” She gestured at the campground. “We are never alone here.”
Travis turned. Walked to the car. The engine started. Taillights disappeared.
Rosemary tilted her head. “He parked crooked, too, the dipshit.”
A hysterical laugh burst out of me, and I pressed a hand to my mouth.
Levi stepped forward, cupped my face gently, thumb brushing my cheek. “You were amazing,” he said.
“I am pissed. That’s hardly amazing. He knows something,” I muttered. “He knew about my podcast. He said someone sent him a link, but that’s bullshit.”
“I heard.” Jaw flex. “He stopped himself from saying more.”
“Which means someone told him to keep quiet.”
We looked at each other. Same thought. Someone was in this with him.
“Matt’s coming,” Aggie said. “He’s on his way.”
“Good.”
Rosemary glanced at Levi. “You need a comb, honey. Your hair is a disaster. Looks like someone has been running their hands through it all night.” She shot me a wink.
“Good morning to you, too, Gram.” He let out a low chuckle.
“It is now. Come inside. Breakfast is ready.”
Aggie paused, looked at me. “You did good. Come eat. I made bacon and eggs, and there’s plenty to go around.”
They disappeared inside.
Levi held out his hand.
I took it.
His fingers closed warm around mine. We crossed the gravel toward Aggie’s bright Airstream, where Rosemary was already telling Aggie that Levi was holding my hand, and Aggie was saying she could see that, and Rosemary was saying she knew, she just wanted to say it out loud.
Travis was gone.
And whatever came next, we’d face it together.