Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
“Did you sleep with him?”
Someone is going to end up six feet under today. His name starts with Char and ends with lie .
“Stop it,” I hiss, glancing over my shoulder to make sure Travis isn’t listening. “Nothing’s going on between us.”
Charlie arches a blond eyebrow. It’s past closing time, so it doesn’t surprise me that he waited until now to interrogate me. “I literally saw you sucking face last night.”
He keeps going, not waiting for an answer because we both know what he saw. “You can’t tell me nothing’s going on between you when his hands were on your ass and your legs were keeping him hostage. Hostage , Allie.”
I let out a deep breath. “I know, but that was all that happened. We aren’t… together.”
He searches my gaze. “You like him, don’t you?”
“I… may or may not have a tiny crush on him.”
“A tiny crush?”
“All right, maybe a medium-sized one.”
“A medium-sized…” He shakes his head. “You know what? As long as he doesn’t have a medium-sized di?—”
“ Charlie .”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with medium-sized dicks, but looking at how big he is, I would assume?—”
“I’m done with this conversation,” I blurt out, hoping my cheeks don’t look as flustered as I feel. Yet heat swirls in my lower area all the same, recalling the feeling of Travis’s strong body against me last night. Of the definitely not tiny or medium-sized bulge pressing against my stomach.
A piercing stab goes through my chest only a moment later. It’s not difficult to sober up again when I remember Travis has been ignoring me for the past twelve hours.
I try not to take it personally. He told me about his past and how difficult it is for him to open up, so I get it. Really. The blame for this radio silence isn’t entirely on him—I could’ve always brought up our kiss last night or this morning, but I didn’t. Because if intimacy is tough for him, being brave is also hard for me.
Shaking my head to clear it of all sorts of distracting thoughts until I’m done with my shift, I turn away from Charlie.
And come face-to-face with a wall.
No, not a wall—a chest. A chest so hard, it can only belong to one man.
“Allie. Can we talk?”
Despite the confusion and nerves that have barely let me function throughout the day, I follow him to his small office at the back. I haven’t spent much time here in the past few months. He doesn’t either. There’s not much in his office but a desk, a single chair, and tall bookshelves where he stores his accounting books. I don’t close the door behind me, and he doesn’t ask me to.
“What do you need?”
“You, Allie.”
Our eyes lock.
I don’t move an inch. I don’t give him a reaction because I don’t even know what to say.
This isn’t how I expected this conversation to go, considering we didn’t speak last night when he came home. And when I woke up this morning, his truck was already gone.
“Last night, I…” He runs a hand through his short hair, a telltale sign that he’s overwhelmed. “I’ve never done this before, and I’m a fucking mess. Give me a second.”
Panic grips at my chest, and I hate myself for it. Because if Travis is about to say what I think he’s about to say, I don’t deserve to hear it.
I don’t deserve his love, not when I’ve been feeding him lies since the day we met.
“All right,” he starts again, the intensity of his gaze almost unbearable. “What I meant to say is that you are my?—”
“Travis,” I interrupt him gently.
My heart is beating too fast, my head is screaming too loudly, and I’ve had enough.
Enough with the lies.
Enough with hiding a past I can’t fix no matter how much I’m ashamed of it.
Enough with hiding my authentic self from the one man I want everything with.
I take a deep breath and hope my voice doesn’t shake as I say, “Before you say anything, I need to tell you something important.”
His expression remains open despite his slight frown. “Okay.”
The thing about waiting too long to do something—something you know you should do—is that you risk running out of time to do it on your terms. You risk never getting the chance to explain things slowly, properly, allowing the other person to ask questions.
Every time I pictured telling Travis about my parents, my siblings, my kidnapping, and everything else, I imagined us having a private, calm conversation, after which he wouldn’t hate me for having lied for so long.
I never pictured this.
“Allie?” Charlie calls out from outside the office. “Some people came asking for you, and they’re, um, very insistent. I think you should come out.”
There’s a strange edge to his voice I don’t have time to overthink. Travis gestures to the door with his chin. “Go. We’ll talk later.”
“But—”
He closes the distance between us and presses a gentle kiss to my forehead. Heat climbs up my neck as one of his hands places a strand of brown hair behind my ear.
“Later, all right?” he asks softly. “I’ll wait.”
“Allie.” The urgency in Charlie’s voice makes my stomach turn.
With one final look at the man who is willing to give me everything without asking for anything in return, I follow Charlie.
If I had to pinpoint the exact moment my soul dies, it would be the second I step outside Travis’s office.
Standing in the middle of The Lair—a place that has been exactly that, my refuge, for the past sixteen months—a vicious shiver runs through my body and locks it into place.
“Allison.”
No matter how much time passes or how far I run, I will never forget the voice I still hear in my nightmares.
My mother’s voice.
A tremble runs through me, making my voice and my hands shake. “W-What are you doing here?”
I blink, just in case I’ve hit my head and I’m seeing things. But the seconds pass, and my mother is still here, at The Lair. And so is my father behind her and my brother, Johnny.
I can’t look away from him. I haven’t seen him since he was fourteen. Now at twenty, it shouldn’t surprise me that he towers over our father. He looks so much like him, too, with his dark hair and tanned skin, I almost do a double take.
Johnny and I have never been close. He either enjoyed our parents’ social media circus or didn’t care, while I fought to escape it with every fiber of my being. I was always deemed the difficult child, the problematic one, and eventually he started seeing me as such too.
Now, as his dark eyes pierce through mine, emitting nothing but hatred, it hits me that my own brother is a stranger.
“You know why we’re here,” my mother snarls, inching closer to me. “You thought a little hair dye and a change of name could hide you forever? Please .”
“Who’s this, Smith?” Jude’s voice joins in from behind me.
My pulse jumps.
“ Smith ,” my mother spits out, as if the word disgusted her. “You have these people fooled, don’t you? Don’t worry, sweetie, I’ll let them know exactly who they’re dealing with.”
“What are you doing here?” I ask her again, stepping closer in an attempt to make her forget we’re not alone. I’m not brave enough to look at my co-workers and friends, at the damage behind me. “How… how did you find me?”
It’s my father who says, his voice as cold and detached as I remembered, “We hired a private investigator a while back. You might have hidden from the world, but you can’t hide from your family. We knew where you were all along.”
“W-What?” I stammer. Then, as if stuck by lightning, I count the people in front of me again. Three, not four. “Where’s Cindy?”
“Your sister is at home,” my father says. “We didn’t want her to?—”
Johnny cuts him off. “Stop giving her explanations. She left us and is about to sell us out for dirty money, for fuck’s sake. Let’s just take what we came for and get the hell out of here.”
The fact that my younger brother seems to outright hate my guts doesn’t escape me. But his words are what set off a loud alarm in my head.
I wrap my arms around myself because my body can’t stop shaking. “I have nothing that belongs to you.”
“You do,” Johnny accuses. “We searched for it and didn’t find it, but you’ve always been sneaky. You must have kept a copy for yourself. We want it gone.”
My heart gallops. “What do you mean you searched for it? What is it ?”
It hits me—the car, the break-in next door, the almost break-in in my apartment that made me move in with Travis.
But no . It would be insane to think my brother or my parents were behind that. It would mean they have been in the area for months, and that’s simply not possible. I would’ve seen them.
“The video,” my mother snarls, interrupting my thoughts. “You had no right to spew such lies about our family.”
Lies?
“Delete your copy of the video at once and sign an NDA,” my mother continues. “You may be our daughter, but we won’t hesitate to take you to court if you so much as breathe a word to George Eden or his social-justice-warrior wannabes.”
They think I’m going to expose them on TV?
Unlike the rest of me, my voice doesn’t shake when I say, “I want nothing to do with you or George Eden.”
Then I turn to my brother. To the boy-man I barely recognize anymore. “My car, my apartment…” My throat closes up. “Did you have anything to do with it?”
He doesn’t need to admit it. And he won’t, either, because we’re surrounded by witnesses. But the furious, arrogant look he gives me is more than enough.
“We want the video,” my father says. “Tell us where it is, delete it, sign the NDA, and stop this charade.”
A weird calmness takes over me, like that day at the warehouse. And before I know it, I blurt out, “Or what?”
The air shifts from tense to downright hostile. For a moment, I wouldn’t put it past my mother to throw herself at me and try to maul me like a wild animal—but then a heavy weight lands on the small of my back.
“What’s going on?” Travis asks behind me, tension radiating off his body.
I take a small step closer to him, my body acting on instinct. It’s only now, with Travis by my side, that I muster the courage to glance around.
Charlie’s eyes pinball between me and my family as if recognition has finally dawned on him. When his look of betrayal becomes too heavy a burden to bear, I have to look away.
Unsurprisingly, seeing Jude and Sandra doesn’t make me feel better. Jude is behind the bar, while Sandra is standing by the kitchen, their eyes on me. Jude can’t stop frowning, and Sandra looks a second away from crying.
I did this. I never told them the truth despite my multiple chances. I’ve ruined everything.
“Who are these people, Allie?” Travis asks, his voice low.
“ These people are her parents and her brother,” my mother starts with no short amount of venom in her voice. “Don’t think we haven’t looked you up, Travis Ward .”
“Let’s talk outside,” I manage to let out, panic dulling my senses. They won’t get Travis involved in this mess. They have no right to.
“Wouldn’t you like that,” Johnny sneers at me before sliding his gaze to Travis.
The two stay locked in a cold, cruel stare off, and my heart betrays me. For a moment, it folds in on itself, forcing me to conjure an ideal future in which my parents never put me at risk, in which my brother doesn’t hate me, in which he only stares down Travis as part of an overprotective act because he doesn’t trust anyone to take care of his older sister.
But then reality sinks in, slicing my chest open as it does.
“Get out of my bar.” Travis doesn’t need to raise his voice. It drips authority on its own. “Or I’ll throw you out myself.”
My mother snarls, “Are you threatening a woman ?”
“ Stop ,” I lash out, feeling like the world is about to collapse on me any minute now.
Pressure builds in my chest, and I know there’s no getting out of this. There never has been a happy, calm life in the cards for me. And the worst part is, I can only blame myself for it.
I look at my mother, my father, my brother, and say goodbye to the people behind me for good. Because, after this, The Lair will no longer be my home.
“You ruined my life,” I snarl, turning to my parents, tears gathering in my eyes. I hate it. I hate them. I hate myself. “You made money off me without my consent for years, exposed me to millions of strangers, and got me kidnapped . And you have the nerve to barrel into my life six years later, demanding I give back the only thing that protects me from you? How dare you?”
Through the tears, I think I see my mother flinch. But experience has shown me empathy isn’t part of her emotional range, so I’m certain I’m only seeing what my inner child has always longed for—a caring mother who’s capable of apologizing and righting her wrongs, no matter what it took.
My mother hesitates, but she picks herself back up quickly enough. “We know you stole that money. We saw it on the cameras and have it on tape. Ten thousand dollars is no joke, Allison. If you delete the video and sign the NDA, we won’t press charges or reveal your new identity to the press. We’ll consider us even. Your choice.”
“I didn’t steal that money because I earned it.” My lungs feel incapable of taking a full breath. “You pimped me out on the internet for years, selling my image to publicity campaigns I never agreed to participate in. You used me, and I never saw a cent. I didn’t want your money, couldn’t care less about it when you’ve scarred me for life. I only used it to get away because I had no other choice. You didn’t leave me any other choice.”
She huffs, turning to my father. “Are you hearing this?” When she looks at me again, I don’t see a mother. All I see is a monster. “You privileged, ungrateful bitch . We gave you an easy life, influence, privileges. More than a brat like you could’ve ever strived for, and this is how you thank us?”
My heart can’t take any more beatings, so I let that word slide.
But Travis doesn’t.
“What did you just call her?” He keeps his voice low, reminding me of the military man he once was even though I never knew him.
“You don’t get it. You still don’t get it.” I turn to my mother before she can answer Travis. Unlike his, my voice has turned meek, quiet, as the fight leaves me for good. “I never asked or wanted to grow up with a camera in my face. And I never…”
I wipe at my tears, deciding that I’m done wasting my time with a mother who won’t listen. With a father who never cared. In one last hopeless attempt at clinging to that stupidly idealistic dream of a real family, I turn to Johnny.
“I know you hate me.” My voice breaks, and my throat hurts when I speak, but I push through. Because when it comes to my past, not giving closure to my siblings is the only thing I regret. “I know we’ve never been close, but I hope one day you’ll understand my choices. I hope you will forgive me for the pain I’ve caused you and Cindy by leaving like that, without giving you an explanation. For never reaching out because I… I couldn’t, Johnny. I hope you realize they’ve used you too. All three of us. You may hate me, but I don’t hate you. Despite everything, I don’t. I can’t. You’re victims too. Victims of greed and harmful decisions?—”
“ Enough .” My mother cuts me off, her words bouncing off the walls. “Enough of playing the victim, Allison! Sign the damn NDA.”
I’d almost forgotten Travis’s presence at my back until he steps in front of me, blocking me from my family’s view.
“You have ten seconds to get the fuck out of here before I call the cops.”
I hear my father’s voice. “You wouldn’t?—”
“The press would love to know you caused a scene in a bar. That tends to be good for the reputation, I’m sure.”
I’m not surprised that , a threat to their public image, is what makes my mother sidestep Travis until she’s facing me again and say, “Our lawyer will be in touch soon with the NDA, Allison Smith . Make a smart choice for once in your life. You have one week.”
Nothing feels real for the next few minutes as my family exits The Lair, leaving behind nothing but the broken pieces of my future mixed with the shattered remains of my past.
The ground beneath my feet isn’t sturdy anymore.
My vision blurs with tears, dizziness. Both.
My ears ring, but I still hear his voice.
I think it’s Travis.
I think he’s calling my name.
What must be his hands land on my shoulder. My eyesight focuses long enough to see his moving lips, but my hearing hasn’t caught up.
It’s like there’s a flat line inside of me. Like everything my heart had started beating for in the past year is now gone.
Video. NDA. Lawsuit.
The words swirl in my head. Everything turns black again.
I have to get out of here.
I think I say something. I don’t know. My mouth is open. I know it because it’s so dry, it hurts. I’m not sure if any words come out.
“Allie.”
Travis.
“Allie, talk to me.”
Everything comes back at once. The sounds, the smells, the feeling of Travis’s hands on my shoulders that I shrug off.
My head pounds with embarrassment and regret as I look around and find everyone I’ve grown to love in the past year staring back at me, shock written all over their faces.
I lied to them. I betrayed their trust, smashed it to pieces. For nothing.
I try to breathe, but my lungs won’t fill up. Moisture runs down my cheeks, and sweat clings to the back of my neck.
Travis tries to stop me. Charlie says something, but I can’t…
I can’t.
I give up.
There’s no point in fighting anymore when everything I’ve tried to build for myself has never been real. And it’s all my fault.
“I-I’m sorry.”
An apology is the only thing I can offer them. They deserve so much more than the words of a liar.
Using the last of my strength, I exit The Lair for the last time, knowing I can never come back. Not after what I’ve done.