Chapter Ten Regret
Travis starts trying to win me back on a Monday. He does it the only way he knows how, which is with gestures designed to be noticed.
I arrive at the bank to find a bouquet of red roses sitting on my teller station.
No card, but I don’t need one. The only person with a key to the building who would leave flowers on my counter before the doors open is Travis.
I pick them up and carry them to the break room and set them on the counter next to the coffee maker.
Melissa walks in five minutes later and sees them.
"Somebody has an admirer."
"They’re not from who you think they’re from."
She looks at me. "Travis?"
I nod.
"Oh." She pauses. "Do you want me to throw them away?"
"Leave them. Someone might as well enjoy them."
By noon the roses are distributed among four different desks. Becky took two for her station. The new teller, a girl named Sarah Weston, took three for her apartment. Melissa kept one and put it in a water glass next to her keyboard. I didn’t keep any.
Travis watches this happen from his office doorway.
I can see him in my peripheral vision, standing there with his arms crossed and his jaw tight.
He thought the flowers would mean something.
He thought they would remind me of the Travis who brought me coffee every morning and kissed my forehead before meetings.
He doesn’t understand that those memories are exactly what I’m trying to leave behind.
The flowers are followed by a note. Two days later I find a folded piece of paper tucked under my keyboard. His handwriting is neat and precise, the penmanship of someone who learned to write thank-you cards as a child and never lost the habit.
*Kaitlyn, I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness. But I want you to know that I miss you every day. I’m sorry for what I did. I was wrong. You are the best thing that ever happened to me and I was too blind to see it. Please let me try to make this right.*
I read it once. I fold it back up and put it in my purse. Not because I want to keep it but because leaving it on the counter feels like an invitation for questions and I’m tired of answering questions about Travis Miller.
He tries again the following week. I’m walking to my car after work when he appears beside me in the parking lot.
"Kaitlyn, wait. Please."
I stop. Not because I want to hear what he has to say but because ignoring someone you work with in a parking lot feels unnecessarily dramatic and I’ve had enough drama.
"What is it, Travis?"
"I just want five minutes. That’s all. Five minutes to say what I should have said weeks ago."
"You can talk. I’m not promising I’ll respond."
He takes a breath. "I was selfish. I know that now. What I did with Kendra was wrong and there’s no excuse for it.
Nothing happened between us but that doesn’t matter because the intent was there and the intent was enough.
I pursued your best friend behind your back and I did it while you trusted me completely and that makes me the worst kind of person. "
He pauses like he expects me to argue with him. I don’t.
"I’ve been doing a lot of thinking since you ended things.
About who I am. About the kind of man I’ve been.
And I don’t like what I see. I was so focused on my own ego that I couldn’t appreciate what was right in front of me.
You are kind and you are loyal and you are beautiful and I took all of that for granted. "
His voice cracks slightly on the last word.
I watch his face and I see real emotion there.
I see regret. I see pain. And I believe it’s genuine because Travis is many things but he’s not emotionless.
He’s capable of feeling. He just chose to prioritize his own feelings over mine for the entire duration of our relationship.
"I’m not asking you to take me back right now," he says. "I know it’s too soon. But I’m asking you to consider it. To give me a chance to prove that I can be better."
"Travis, I appreciate you saying all of that. I really do. But I’m not going to give you that chance."
"Why not?"
"Because you didn’t make a mistake. A mistake is something you do once without thinking.
You texted Kendra for weeks. You called her nine times.
You planned and calculated and pursued her while looking me in the face every single day.
That’s not a mistake. That’s a choice you made over and over again. "
"People change."
"Maybe they do. But I don’t have to be the person who waits around to find out."
"Is this about Kyle?"
I look at him. "Don’t do that."
"I’m just asking. Because if you’re with him now, I understand. But if this is about punishing me by choosing someone else..."
"Travis, I’m going to say this once and I need you to hear it.
My relationship with Kyle has nothing to do with you.
I’m not with him to punish you. I’m with him because he’s a good man who treats me with respect and never once made me feel like I was a stepping stone to something better.
If you want to believe this is about punishment, that’s your choice.
But it’s not. It’s about me finally choosing someone who chooses me back. "
He stares at me. I can see him trying to find the angle. The argument. The leverage. But there isn’t one. I haven’t said anything unkind. I haven’t raised my voice. I’ve just told him the truth and the truth doesn’t leave him anywhere to go.
"I’m going home now," I say. "I’ll see you at work tomorrow."
"Kaitlyn..."
"Goodnight, Travis."
I get in my car and I drive away. I watch him in my rearview mirror standing in the parking lot with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slightly slumped.
He looks smaller than I remember. Not physically.
He’s still tall and well-dressed and conventionally handsome.
But something about him has diminished. The polish is duller.
The confidence is quieter. He looks like a man who is beginning to realize that charm has limits and that the people he took for granted aren’t contractually obligated to wait for him to come around.
The apology attempts continue over the following weeks.
Not every day. He’s strategic about it, spacing them out so each one feels like a fresh effort rather than a repetitive campaign.
Flowers arrive at my apartment. A gift card to my favorite restaurant shows up in an envelope with my name on it, slipped under the break room door.
He sends me a text on a Sunday night that says *I know you don’t want to hear from me but I just wanted you to know I’m working on myself. For real this time.*
I don’t respond to any of it. Not the flowers.
Not the gift card. Not the text. Responding would give him what he wants, which is a thread to pull.
Even a rejection is a conversation, and a conversation is a connection, and a connection is an opportunity.
Travis understands this instinctively because manipulation isn’t something he does intentionally.
It’s just how he navigates the world. He reads people.
He identifies what they need. He positions himself as the person who can provide it.
And when that stops working, he recalibrates and tries a different approach.
The difference now is that I can see it. All of it. Every move. Every angle. Every carefully worded apology designed to make me feel guilty for not giving him another chance. I see it and I am unmoved by it because I am no longer the woman who needs his attention to feel valuable.
Kyle never asks about Travis. He never brings him up.
He never asks me what Travis said or what Travis did or whether I’m tempted to go back.
He just shows up. He takes me to dinner.
He calls me in the evenings and asks about my day.
He cooks for me on weekends and walks with me in the evenings and remembers every small detail I share with him.
One Thursday evening we’re sitting on his porch and I mention that Travis left another note on my keyboard.
"Do you want me to say something to him?" Kyle asks.
"No. Absolutely not."
"Are you sure? Because I can be pretty intimidating when I want to be." He flexes one arm and grins. He’s joking. Kyle is possibly the least intimidating person in Sugar Ridge despite being built from years of physical work.
"I appreciate the offer, but this is my thing to handle."
"Okay. But if it gets to the point where it’s bothering you at work, you should tell Linda. That’s not romantic persistence. That’s harassment."
"It hasn’t crossed that line yet. He’s being sad, not threatening."
"There’s a line between sad and controlling and it’s thinner than people think."
I look at him. "When did you get so wise?"
"I’m a farmer. We spend a lot of time alone with our thoughts. Eventually something useful comes out."
I lean against his shoulder and he puts his arm around me.
We sit there and watch the sun go down and I think about how different it feels to be with someone who doesn’t need to control the situation.
Kyle doesn’t try to fix things for me. He doesn’t take over.
He doesn’t position himself as the hero of my story.
He just asks me what I need and then he gives it to me.
And when what I need is to handle something myself, he respects that without feeling threatened or diminished.
That’s the difference between Travis and Kyle in one word. Travis needed to be needed. Kyle is content to be chosen.
The next day at work, Travis walks past my station and stops.
"I got the message," he says quietly. "I won’t bother you anymore."
"Thank you, Travis."
He nods. He looks at me for a long moment and I can see him memorizing my face, storing it away in whatever place men store the faces of women they lost. Then he turns and walks back to his office and closes the door.
I stand behind my counter and I feel something loosen in my chest. The constant pressure of his attention and his guilt and his attempts to reclaim something he threw away. All of it is over now and I can feel the difference immediately.
Melissa glances over. "You okay?"
"I’m great, actually."
"You look great. You’ve been looking great for a while now. Whatever you’re doing, keep doing it."
"I plan to."
I help the next customer. Then the next. Then the next. The morning passes and the afternoon follows and by five o’clock the only thought in my head is that Kyle is making chili tonight and I get to sit in his kitchen and steal bites while he pretends to be annoyed.
I drive to his farmhouse with the windows down. The evening air smells like grass and warm earth and something sweet from the honeysuckle that grows wild along the county road. I pull into his driveway and he’s already on the porch with two glasses of iced tea.
"Long day?" he asks.
"Not anymore."
He hands me a glass and we go inside and I sit on the counter while he chops onions and tells me about a delivery truck that broke down on Route 12 and blocked traffic for an hour. I eat a piece of cornbread that he baked earlier and it’s so good that I close my eyes while I chew.
"That good?" he asks.
"Better than good."
"My mom’s recipe. Don’t tell her I finally got it right. She’ll stop making it for me."
I laugh and take another bite and the kitchen is warm and the chili is simmering on the stove and this man is standing in front of me with a wooden spoon in his hand and onion tears on his cheeks and I think this is it.
This is what love looks like when it’s not trying to be anything other than itself.
I don’t say it out loud. Not yet. But I feel it. All the way through.