Chapter 13
IT’S RAINING.
Of course it’s raining. It’s as if the universe knows what’s coming.
The flight home isn’t quite as enjoyable as the flight there.
Travis and I sit the entire time, both of us staring out the window, lost in our thoughts.
By the time we get an Uber to Chief’s house, we’re both swallowing way too rapidly, our breathing heavy.
We know this isn’t going to end well, not when it comes to Chief.
Not when he loves Travis the way he does.
This, right here, is my biggest fear.
The Uber slows at the driveway, and we both look out to see Chief already standing on the porch, arms crossed, black leather announcing to the world that he gives no fucks and will stand there all night if he has to. I swallow and look to Travis. “It’s going to be fine, we’ll work it out.”
I wish that were true.
The second we open the car doors, Chief is storming toward us.
Not a word. Not a warning. He barrels down the stairs, fist cocked.
Travis barely gets two feet toward him before Chief slams him backward into the muddy grass.
I scream his name, slip hard in the run-off, just as Travis’s back hits the ground with a sick, dull thud.
Dad is a blur above him, face so twisted it doesn’t look like the man I love.
“You motherfucking—” Chief roars, each word a punch as he swings again and connects so hard I hear cartilage crunch. Travis doesn’t block it. He takes it, spits out a mouthful of rain and blood, and stays down.
I fling myself at Chief, all arms and hair and screaming.
I claw at his shoulder, shouting, “Stop, you’re going to kill him.
” But Chief is pure momentum, hurling another punch.
This time Travis rolls to the side, pops up, staggers to his feet.
He’s dazed, bleeding under one eye, but he grins.
He spits again, red, then laughs, which only makes Chief wilder.
He’s goading him, which is a very bad fucking idea.
“You coward. Hiding behind my fucking back, around my daughter like a goddamn snake.” He lunges, grabs the collar of Travis’s shirt, rips him toward him. “This is how you repay me? I gave you everything, Phoenix. Without me, you’d never fucking be where you are.”
My chest feels caved in. I throw myself at them both, wedge between their bodies, press my palm to Dad’s chest, and push with all I have.
Enough to slow him. “Stop, right now. I mean it. If I matter at all, you will stop.” The words are sandpaper in my throat, lost under the clatter of rain on the mailbox, the porch, the world.
Chief glares down at me. The fury is there, but so is the betrayal, deep as an open wound. “Get inside.” He jerks his chin toward the door. “Now, Violet.”
“No, I’m not leaving. You’ll kill him.” My legs are trembling, but I hold my ground, make my voice go cold. “You don’t get to do this. I love him.” The words come out huge, bigger than I planned. They ring in the air, echo off the driveway.
For a second, no one moves.
Chief drops his fist. Just lets it hang, loose, like the fight got wrung out of him in a single breath. The rain has plastered his hair to his head, made him look scarier. He takes a step back, just a small one. “You love him?” The words are nothing, not even a question.
It’s almost like he’s horrified.
“I have always loved him.” My voice cracks.
Travis is breathing hard, but he straightens, wipes the blood from his chin. “I love her too. I always have. I’d die for her, Chief.”
Chief just looks at him.
I can feel the weight of it, the years behind that stare, how many times I watched it freeze grown men where they stood. It lands on Travis like a chain.
“Bullshit.” Chief’s mouth is curled, split where his lip hit Travis’s tooth. “You lied to me. Played me both like I was just... nothing. Years in my house, at my table, and you didn’t even fucking flinch.”
Travis stands his ground, but I can see his hands shaking. “It wasn’t like that. I fucked up, yeah, but none of this was fake. Not for me. I never meant to—”
Chief spits blood out like it’s poison. Then he looks at me, and everything slows to a crawl.
There’s nothing about his face that’s soft, not like when he used to hold me after nightmares, or when he’d pat my hair and call me baby girl.
This is a hard man, looking at the wreckage of his own goddamn heart.
“You think I wanted any of this for you?”
He’s talking to me now, not even pretending otherwise.
“You think I wanted you with someone like him? You were supposed to get out. Get away from all this. And you pick the one scumbag who could ruin you the fastest?”
Travis flinches.
“Dad, please.” I taste rain, salt, and fear.
My legs are trembling so badly I can barely stand.
Chief laughs, but it’s just a snap of air, no joy in it at all. “Don’t.” He turns on Travis again. “I trusted you. I let you into my family. I saved your fucking life.”
“I never wanted to hurt you.” Travis glances at me, like I’m the only thing holding him up. “I’d do anything to fix this. I appreciate everything you’ve ever done for me.”
Chief snorts, the noise savage. “You can start by getting the fuck off my property. Out of my sight. If you ever come near her again, I swear to God—”
I step in front of Travis, my arms out. “No. Absolutely not. You don’t get to just erase him. I love him. I want him. That’s my choice, not yours.”
He looks at me, and for the first time in my life, I see my father’s hands start to shake. “You want to go with him?” His voice is quiet, deadly. “Go.”
Wind blows the rain straight into my eyes. I blink, but I can’t clear my vision. “Daddy,” I rasp. “Please don’t make me choose, because I will choose him.”
I don’t even recognize my voice, cracked and small.
Chief flinches, and I can see the hurt wash over his face, like I have just taken his heart and ripped it into a thousand pieces. “If you leave now, Violet, don’t come back.”
The words land like a bullet.
Travis’s hand finds my arm, but he says nothing.
I look at my father and all I see is a man standing before me, daring me not to break his heart. “Please, Daddy.” My eyes burn. I can’t breathe, can’t move. If I blink, I’ll fall apart. “Don’t do this.”
Chief doesn’t flinch, doesn’t blink.
The tiniest twitch in his jaw, and then he’s done.
He turns and walks inside, the slam of the door rattling the windows.
I drop to the ground, knees in the mud, sobbing so hard I think my chest might actually cave in. Travis kneels beside me, wraps his arms around me, presses his forehead to mine. “I’m sorry,” he says. “God, I’m so fucking sorry.”
We stay like that for a long time.
Just two ruined pieces, trying to glue each other back together in the rain.
“OH, HONEY.”
I rush into my mother’s arms, crumbling into her.
Behind me, Travis stands under the porch light, his face bloody, his eye swollen.
She ushers us inside, not a single question asked.
She wordlessly points Travis to the dining room, and he obeys, dropping into the nearest chair like the fight has scrubbed all the bones out of him.
“You stay right there. Violet, go get towels and the hydrogen peroxide from above the sink,” she says, and I move because I can’t not. My hands are trembling so badly that I have to press the towels to my chest, so I don’t drop them.
Travis is holding a tea towel to his face when I come back, spots of blood soaking through over his cheekbone. My mother, goddess among mortals, grabs his chin so gently I can’t help but smile. “You always did know how to get yourself into trouble, Travis.”
He huffs a tiny, grateful laugh. “Yeah, so I’ve heard.”
She dabs the wound, batting away his protests. Travis flinches as she pours hydrogen peroxide onto a washer and wipes it against his wounds. “Jesus.”
“Do you want an infection?” she says, not even smiling, but nothing about her is cruel.
She’s the kindest woman I know.
She tapes a butterfly bandage over the worst of it and finally looks at me and asks what went down.
I had called her on the way here, telling her Chief and Travis got into a fight, but now I give her every single detail, feeling like I don’t take a breath until I am done.
She listens without a single ounce of judgment.
“He said we can’t ever go back,” I whisper at the end, and tears burst forth again.
Mom’s eyes soften. “He doesn’t even know how to live a life without you, honey. But you might have to give him a minute to remember that.”
“She’s right,” Travis says, voice hoarse. “But I should have told him. I fucked up.”
It’s quiet then. So quiet that I hear a car engine grumble past, slowing at the curb, tires sending up a swan song of rainwater. My mother’s eyes flicker to the window, but she doesn’t move.
“He hates us both.”
“No, he doesn’t. He’s a good man, under all that noise,” Mom says. “He wants what’s best for you. It’s just—he doesn’t know what that is anymore.” She gives me a look that finds every hidden child in me. “He loves you more than life itself.”
I know it’s supposed to help, but hearing it only sharpens the ache. Because I love him too.
The doorbell rings, catching us all off guard.
For a second, I think I’ve hallucinated it, but Travis’s whole body goes rigid in his seat. Mom stands, hands the peroxide to me, and tells me to stay there. Then she disappears toward the door. I hear the murmur of voices. I know that sound. I know the tone before I hear my name, “Violet!”
Chief’s in the house.
He fills the kitchen in seconds, his face still bent with rage. His boots are still caked in mud, jeans stained up to the knees, hair soaked. “I am going to speak to my daughter, alone.”
Travis stands, his fists clenched by his side. “No.”
“Don’t push me, boy. I will make that other eye so fucking black your rockstar days will be over.”
Mom steps between them. “I’m quite certain we can do this in a civil manner. Everyone needs to sit down.”
They do as she asks.
My mother has that calm control over people.
Chief turns to Travis, his jaw tight. “You want to tell her the truth, or should I?”
“I have told her. Every fucking thing.” Travis sets his jaw. “Stop making this about you, because it’s not about you. It’s about so much more.”
Chief slams his fist on the table. “You think this is about me? You think I like this? I’ve been down this road, kid.
I’ve seen what it turns people into.” He jabs a finger at Travis.
“I have pulled you out of the darkest fucking moments in your life, moments she doesn’t even know about.
Maybe your girl here believes your shit, but I don’t.
I’m not going to let her get dragged through your dirt. ”
“What are you talking about?” I whisper, shaking my head in confusion.
“He ever tell you he was a full-blown fucking addict?”
I look at Travis. I’m looking for a denial, a flinch, a protest. Anything.
He exhales, running his hand through his hair before looking at me. “I went through a dark time.”
Chief growls, “You almost died, asshole. Your little rockstar life, your little party-boy dreams. You think she wants that?”
“Stop,” I breathe. It’s all coming loose inside me. “That’s not fair. He’s—he’s been trying. We have all had difficult times. I believe he is doing the best he can.”
Travis looks to me, his eyes full of so much love it almost hurts to keep eye contact.
“‘Trying’ isn’t enough,” Chief says. “He might be doing well now, Violet, but what about two years from now? Five? When he’s more famous and the entire world wants a piece of him. Do you think you’re going to be enough to keep all those demons away?”
I don’t know what to say. The air in my lungs feels like it’s suffocating me.
Travis finally speaks, his voice gravelly. “I’m not you, Chief. I won’t fucking destroy the woman I love.”
The room goes silent. Mom shifts uncomfortably, looking down.
“What did you fucking say to me?” Chief growls, so low it’s terrifying.
“I didn’t stutter,” Travis bites back. “I’m not you, and I’m not going to hurt her.”
It seems to be taking everything inside Chief to hold it together. His eyes flick to my mom, and they make eye contact for a long, long time. It’s hard to read what is being exchanged between them, but eventually, she shakes her head, just slightly. She’s telling him to stop, to leave it alone.
I take my chance to speak. “You can’t protect me from everything. You can’t choose for me. I have to start learning my own lessons.”
His jaw ticks. “I’m done here.”
He turns, walking toward the door.
“Daddy,” I whisper, and he pauses but doesn’t turn back. “Please.”
He leaves without another word, and my heart breaks a little more.
Mom comes over, taking my face in her hands. “He’s angry, but he will get through it. He is going to calm down. You just need to give him time to wrap his mind around this. His opinion matters, Violet. Perhaps you need to hear him out too.”
I nod, but I’m not sure Chief will ever be okay with this.
Some things are already broken past repair. All you can do is hold the biggest pieces together and pretend it doesn’t hurt.
Travis looks at the ceiling for a good long while, like maybe the answers are up there. “I’ll go. If you want me to go.”
It’s the way he says it. Like he means it.
I stare at him. “Why didn’t you tell me you were an addict?”
“Because I am a fucking idiot,” he exhales, running his hand through his hair. “I don’t know, Violet. I didn’t want you to have to think about me like that. It was a dark time.”
“My dad has a point, though. The more famous you get, the more temptation there will be. That is something I... we... have to consider.”
He glances at my mom. “I think it’s best I just leave you ladies to it tonight. Everyone needs space.”
My heart aches, but I can’t bring myself to argue.
Tonight was... it was chaos.
We all need to come down from that.