Chapter 3
When I slide to a stop in front of Chief’s house, my lungs seize.
The place, lined with Harleys, is exactly as I left it.
My hands shake on the wheel. I blink back tears, trying to steady my breath.
I can’t break down here. Not now. I have to face this, I can’t run any longer.
Reagan is back at our hotel room; she told me I should do this one alone and I know she’s right, but having her by my side would make me feel a little better.
I get out of the car and begin crossing the street, staring at the house, waiting for my world to explode.
Then, he’s there. As if he could sense me.
As if he knew I was coming. He stands on the porch, his eyes shocked, locked onto mine.
I pause, and then a car honks, screeching and noise swirls around me—a scream of tires.
The driver yells profanities at me, but I don’t move. I just...flinch.
Chief is moving though, he is already down the stairs, boots thudding as he charges toward me.
His face is twisted with a mix of fear and an unbearable pain I can’t bear to look at a second longer.
He looks unchanged, still that rugged jaw, those dark waves flecked with gray, his body as large as it always was.
I take a step back.
My chest tightens so much I can’t draw air. My throat feels like I swallowed sandpaper. I want to run—away from this moment, away from all the guilt. But before I can turn, he’s closing the gap between us.
“I—” My voice shatters.
I can’t.
I can’t do this.
I spin away and break into a run, legs trembling as they carry me down the hill toward the beach, toward the shore where Travis and I once hid from thunderstorms. Where we dreamed, unafraid.
He reaches me before I get there. Strong arms—familiar warmth—fold me in from behind.
The scent of grease and tobacco hits me hard.
Chief’s chest presses against mine as he holds me in a hug that, when I was a little girl, I craved.
He holds me so tight I can barely breathe—and I don’t want to.
I’ve missed him so badly. After two long years, this is the first time I have felt safe.
I forgot how he could make everything bad in the world just disappear.
He always could. He took away the bad. He made me believe nothing could hurt me.
He was wrong, of course, because he was one of the people who hurt me the most.
He doesn’t say anything. He just hangs onto me.
I let him.
“Daddy,” I whisper. My voice cracks under the weight of every long night I missed him. “I...I’m sorry.”
He spins me around, eyes glassy, voice low and rough. “No, you did nothing wrong, baby. I fucked up. I did this. I have paid for every fucking broken second without you.”
“I should’ve stayed,” I whisper. “I should have at least let you say goodbye...”
“You ain’t the one who fucked up. We did. You don’t owe us that apology.”
I close my eyes, leaning into his chest, trying to memorize the solid comfort of him. “I hate that he’s hurt.”
“I know, but you’re here now.”
Silence stretches between us, thick with unspoken fear. “Is he going to—” I can’t finish. My voice is raw.
Chief exhales slowly. “He’s tough. He’s fighting. Travis doesn’t give up easily.”
“I don’t know how to face him.”
Chief just takes my face in his hands. “One minute at a time, that’s all you do. Just one fuckin’ minute.”
We stay like that for a minute, broken fragments of our old selves and the weight of the present pressing in—but finally, together.
The parking lot of the hospital is half-empty, cordoned with yellow plastic fencing for some minor construction.
Workers stare at me as I walk past, my sandals crunching on the dried leaves on the ground.
My hands are shaking, no matter how much I frantically wipe them against my jeans to stop them.
I keep my bag close to my chest all the way to the glass doors, as if it can stop the memories swirling in my mind.
Inside, the AC is so cold it hits my sweat-coated skin so hard I suck in a breath.
It takes me a moment to adjust to the difference in temperature.
A woman sits behind the front desk scrolling a touchscreen, her face impassive.
I try to speak, but the knot in my chest tightens, and I have to cough once to get my voice working. “I’m here to see Travis Phoenix.”
She looks up at me. “So is every girl in this city, and like I told all of them, family only.”
“I am family.”
She narrows her eyes. “Oh yes, prove that please.”
Shit. How the hell do I prove that? I would assume Chief is his emergency contact, considering he’s the only family he has, so I pull out my phone and call him.
“What’s happening?” he answers, his voice gravelly.
“I need to prove I am Travis’ family, because of all the insane fans trying to get in. Can you confirm with the nurse that I am allowed in?”
“Yeah, put her on.”
I pass the phone to the nurse and she takes it, her hand hesitant. She answers the call, and listens for a moment before nodding, her cheeks growing red, and handing me back the phone.
“You can go through.”
“Oh,” I squeak, as if I was kind of hoping she would send me out and I didn’t have to face this.
She explains to me how to reach the ICU.
She then tells me she will call the nurses up there, and they will explain how I can go in.
Nodding, I turn and head to the lift, stepping in and pressing the button for the third floor.
I hold my breath the entire time up, and when I step out, it is all empty corridors.
Taking a breath, I can smell the bleach and cleaning products they have tried to use to make sure nobody gets any sicker than they already are in this damn place.
I remember these halls as a child, coming to retrieve Chief after another bar fight, or to bring soup to a neighbor laid up with stitches.
I hated every inch of it. The way the walls seemed to close in, how the lights were always too bright.
It’s the same, except now all the bad things in the world are waiting for me behind one room number.
The nurses at the ICU are far kinder to me than the receptionist, talking a million miles an hour as they put me in a set of clothes, boot covers, a hair net and mask, then lead me to the room where Travis lays.
I feel physically sick, and no matter how much they talk, I just can’t seem to answer more than a simple nod, or whisper.
I have never been so afraid of anything in all my life.
The moment they open the door and I step in, I feel my world close in.
He’s on the bed, tangled in tubes and wires, and his dirty blond hair is messy and unkempt, grown far longer than I have ever seen it, curling around his ears and falling over his forehead, giving him an almost boyish look.
His face is bruised, his lip swollen and his chest is bandaged, along with his right arm.
There’s no one else in the room, only the steady machine beeping in time to a heart that keeps beating whether he wants it to or not.
Travis Phoenix, the boy who once scaled the side of my house just to get through my window, is now just laying here weaker than I have ever seen him.
He looks nothing like the space-filling, loud-laughing hurricane I ran away from, but everything in me recognizes him anyway.
I press my hand to my face, trying to make myself go closer.
The nurse who let me in taps me lightly on the shoulder. “You can go over to him, honey. He’s in a medical coma to let his body rest but you can’t hurt him.”
I step closer, every sense screaming at me to run.
The air in here is clean, too clean, and it burns my nose.
My legs tremble as I approach the bed, and the closer I get, the more human he looks, the more I want to crawl out of my skin.
Two years is a long time to be angry, longer to be scared, but even longer to be broken.
When I reach out and touch his hand, my knees nearly give out beneath me.
His knuckles are scabbed, layered with clear tape and adhesive, but the heat of him thrums under my palm.
He always ran hot, even in winter. My throat closes around a sound that isn’t quite a sob, just a gasp, and I squeeze his fingers gently, hoping somewhere in that tangled place where he lives now he knows I’m here.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch.
I grip his hand tighter, afraid if I let go, he’ll disappear for good.
There is so much I want to say—every apology, every why, every curse—but my jaw just locks and my teeth ache.
I bring his hand up to my cheek, feel the prickle of tape and the warmth, and let the tears fall, silent and bottomless, until my face is wet and the only thing tethering me to this moment is the rough skin of the man I ran from, the only one I ever truly loved.
“Hey,” I finally croak, my voice pathetic and empty. “It’s me. It’s...Violet.”
Nothing.
As if he can hear me.
“He can hear you.”
I flinch and glance over my shoulder at the nurse, still standing in the doorway, watching me.
“He can?”
She nods. “Yeah, he can.”
Great, so now he knows I’m here, awkwardly talking to him.
I exhale, turning back.
“Listen, I know it has been a long time, and a lot has changed but...you still matter to me, Travis. I hope you know that. I hope you pull through this, no,” my voice cracks, “I need you to. Do you understand? Please don’t die.
I can’t handle it if you do. At least give us the chance to talk about what happened all those years ago. Can you do that for me?”
Nothing.
Well, at least he knows.
Knows I’m here, knows I came, knows I’m trying.
What comes next, well, I have no idea.