CHAPTER FOURTEEN
TRAVIS
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I walk into the club on Wednesday afternoon and look around.
It’s a different place during the day with the cleaners doing their thing and all the lights on bright.
Bar staff carry boxes past me and start restocking the fridge while a maintenance guy is drilling in the opposite corner—probably changing out some cameras for the voyeur kink customers.
Everyone who walks in knows they’re being watched.
Which is why I’m not inviting Brook to the club. No one is getting their eyes on her beautiful pussy...unless it got her off. Then I’d consider it.
Maybe.
When did I stop sharing?
Multiple lovers is a kink of mine. I don’t cross swords, as they say, but when the girl is sucking off another guy and I’m sinking deep inside her—or vice versa—you bet that makes my cock turn to granite.
I let my mind imagine Brook sucking off Killian or Zayne. No. It’s a hard no.
Pun not intended.
So what the hell does that mean?
My phone rings.
I pull it out of my pocket and answer without looking at the screen. Few people have this number, so whoever it is, I want to talk to. Plus, I’m glad for the distraction. I don’t like the image of her mouth around any other cock but mine.
“Hola, darling.”
Shit. Mama!
Think about baseball.
“Hey Mama. Everything okay?” I walk back toward the exit. There’s something about being inside the club when I’m talking to her that feels wrong.
Even if it is outside open hours.
I cross over to the golf course main building and down the hall while we talk and step into my office. One of them anyway.
“Yes, but I haven’t seen you for over a week, so I’m checking in on you,” Sofia replies.
“Sorry, I’ve been busy,” I reply. “I’ll pop by tonight.”
“It’s okay. I...I heard about that bastardo in the news. You okay, baby?”
I close my eyes and soak in her love and caring tone. I was hoping Mama wouldn’t hear about it. Which is dumb. She likes being on Facebook, so it was going to reach her, eventually. If I have my way, it will blow up and the whole world will know. So it was inevitable.
I should have warned her, but was hoping I could do it in person.
“I am. You?”
“ Psst , it’s not about me.”
Yes, it is, and she knows it. We were both impacted by the evil inside him. She lost her job and me. Not to be narcissistic about it, but she loved me. And I returned that love.
I know she’s protected me from the full truth of what happened to her after leaving my father’s employment. It took her months to find a new position, and it wasn’t as lucrative—I use that word lightly—as it was working with us.
She struggled, from what I know, and I wonder if that’s why she got married.
Despite the fact that he died ten years after their first of three kids was born, she never talks about him.
I think he was cruel to her, but she won’t talk about it, and I think if I knew the details, I’d dig up his fucking grave and piss in it.
The stress has impacted her health. She’s not even sixty yet, and the doctor is warning her to take measures to look after her heart. Meditate. Exercise. Make improvements in her diet. Take these pills.
She takes the pills.
Sometimes.
I sit at my desk and tap my keyboard, making my screen come to life. It’s where I left it, on Brook’s podcast. Her stunning face staring back at me, frozen.
I fucking miss her.
That’s new .
I don’t think I’ve ever missed a woman before, and it makes me uncomfortable. Yet there is a fuzzy feeling in my stomach when I think about the weekend I have planned for us. Lancelot stealing his Genevieve and riding off into the sunset.
Temporarily.
Before I can second guess myself, I say to Mama, “I went on a date last weekend.”
What am I doing?
“What? Who with? What’s her name? Or him. No judgment zone here,” she asks, the eagerness in her voice making me laugh.
Still, I’m smiling as I remember all the times Sofia has tried to marry me off with almost every daughter she knows these past years. She even sat me down and told me she’s okay if I’m gay or any of the other letters.
I was very pleased she didn’t know about the club during that conversation. It would have made my reassurance that much harder.
“It’s a her and it’s nothing serious. We had one date. I just thought it would make your day.”
“Bring her over for dinner this weekend.” Mama has so much excitement in her voice that I laugh again, surprising myself with how happy I sound.
“Can’t. We’re going away.”
Shit.
There’s silence, then a tut, tut, tut. “Not serious, my back end.”
“It’s for work.” I lie.
“Is she one of your employees?”
Good lord. I’m digging myself a hole.
“No, it’s...a project I’m working on. It’s complicated, Mama. Don’t worry. But you would like her. She’s a strong and bright woman.”
“Be careful, mi chico. ” She warns me, calling me her boy despite having two sons and a daughter of her own. Sofia adopted me as one of hers the moment we reconnected, and I had no say in the matter.
She is one of the most important people in my world.
“Always. I have to go, Mama . Ignore the news. Karma will get that man one day. I promise you.”
More silence.
“Don’t do anything to destroy the life you’ve created, Travis, please. You have a good life. A good heart.”
She knows me.
I try to hide my darkness, but how could she not see it, when she was there in the room watching the monster who had, years ago, ravaged my soul. Trampled on it. Torn my innocent heart into tiny pieces and chewed it while laughing at me.
Made me feel as if I was nothing but a tool for his sexual pleasure while filling me with fear and threats.
He didn’t encourage me to grow as a person, thrive, be brave or creative. Simply paraded me in front of his fans while I died a little more inside, hiding the secret I believed the world would blame me for.
I was the one, after all, who gave him ideas and caused his cock to grow big and erect. He told me so.
I was the one who had the mouth he dreamed about while at work and raced home to stuff with his dick. He told me so.
I was the one who teased and tempted him...
None of it was true.
It was his sick as fuck mind that created all his depraved fantasies. I was simply an innocent child with no one to protect me. No power to defend myself.
Until Sofia saved me.
My angel.
At Phillips Academy, when I met the guys, we eventually shared our stories, and the horror of what we went through with our fathers bonded us.
The weight off our individual shoulders a little lighter knowing we weren’t alone. That we had each other to understand, even if we didn’t say all that much.
We didn’t need to.
We all knew.
As we navigated our teenage years and we began to heal—due to being away from those monsters—things got messy.
People think healing looks like therapy and singing kumbaya surrounded by crystals and candles.
No, it doesn’t.
It looks like nightmares, screaming, and smashing away unwanted tears. It looks like an acknowledgment of the pain and what you’ve lost. It looks like staring your monster in the eyes and admitting he’s the devil and that he deserves a painful death.
It looks like getting up off the ground, brushing off the dust, and walking away knowing you’re a survivor, and that creating success far greater than that piece of shit is the best revenge. One he won’t be able to look at because he knows you’re a better person. That you always were.
That when his time comes, and he has to look himself in the mirror, he’ll see the devil inside him and feel the one thing I can’t make him feel.
Regret.
And in that moment, when he seeks my forgiveness, I will smile.
Then walk away.
Because everyone has a choice and he made his every single day. With every word, every touch, and every time he didn’t love me.
Parker and Travis have put their demons to bed.
Now it’s my turn.