Chapter 22
Me: Miss you too.
She reacts with a middle finger.
Perfect.
I pocket my phone and head out.
The ride takes me toward a shopping center not far from her neighborhood, one of those massive Florida strips where everything is shoved together under glowing signs.
Grocery store. Pharmacy. Liquor store. A couple restaurants. Some home decor place nobody has ever willingly gone into without being dragged.
I park near the grocery store entrance and pull off my helmet.
Flowers first.
Because I might be reckless, but I’m not fucking stupid.
Inside, the air-conditioning hits cold against my skin. Saturday evening has the place busy enough that carts keep cutting across aisles, kids are whining near the bakery, and somebody’s abandoned one of those motorized scooters directly in front of the flower display like they died mid-shop.
I grab two bouquets.
One is bright as fuck—pink, purple, blue, and way too much going on. Perfect for Cece.
The other is simpler. White flowers mixed with some green shit that looks classy enough to convince her mother I do have at least some manners.
Well, fuck. Look at me.
All domestic and shit.
The guys would never let me live this down.
Wine, however, is harder.
I stare at an entire wall of bottles like one of them is supposed to introduce itself.
Eventually I choose something expensive enough that it looks intentional without being obnoxious. Red. Her mom cooks a lot. Red feels right.
I have flowers tucked under one arm and the bottle hanging from my fingers when I turn toward the checkout.
That’s when I see him.
At first, my brain doesn’t place the face.
Why would it?
He belongs twenty years ago.
Different house. Whole different fucking life.
The man standing near the end of the next aisle is older now. A lot older.
His hair mostly gray, shoulders softer, stomach pushing against a faded and stained polo shirt. He has reading glasses hanging from the collar and a basket hooked over one arm with bread, milk, and some frozen bullshit dinners.
Normal shit.
Ordinary old-man shit and yet, I stare anyway.
Something cold crawls through my stomach.
There’s no fucking way.
Everything inside me locks up the second I see him.
Travis.
One of the foster dads Lena and I got stuck with growing up. One of the men who was supposed to be safe, supposed to be the adult in the house, and somehow managed to turn every room he walked into something you had to survive instead.
The flowers crush slightly beneath my arm before I even realize I’m squeezing them.
The store keeps moving around me like nothing happened. Cart wheels squeak across tile, a kid laughs somewhere near produce, somebody drops a bottle a few aisles over and an employee comes over the speaker calling for cleanup.
None of it processes properly, because for half a second I’m thirteen again, standing barefoot in a dark hallway listening through a wall, trying to figure out whether whatever was happening on the other side meant I needed to step in or stay the fuck out of the way so I didn’t make it worse for Lena.
My hand tightens around the wine bottle.
Travis turns.
His eyes slide over me at first, casual and blank, then jerk back a second later.
I watch recognition hit.
His face changes slowly, confusion giving way to something uglier as he stares at the grown man standing where that scared kid used to be.
“Revel?”
Hearing my name in his mouth makes something violent pull tight in my chest.
For a long second, neither of us moves.
Then the bastard smiles.
Actually fucking smiles.
“Jesus. Look at you.”
I don’t answer. My heartbeat is pounding hard enough that I can feel it high in my throat, but Travis seems completely fucking comfortable as he sets his basket down beside his shoe and looks me over like we’ve bumped into each other at some family reunion instead of a grocery store twenty years too fucking soon.
“Been a long time.”
Yeah.
Not long enough.
Memories I’ve spent years burying start crawling back up before I can stop them.
That house always smelled like cigarettes even though nobody was technically allowed to smoke inside, with brown carpet, white walls stained yellow around the vents, and a lock on the pantry because Travis liked telling people foster kids stole food.
Lena’s room was across the hall from mine, the bathroom at the end of it. I still remember brushing my teeth beside her that first week, both of us watching each other through the mirror because neither of us knew if the other one was safe yet.
She was younger, small and way too fucking quiet, always checking where the adults were before she let herself relax.
I understood that.
We got good at understanding each other without needing to say much.
Then Travis started paying attention to her.
At first, I thought maybe he was just nicer to girls. He gave her extra snacks, sat too close beside her on the couch, volunteered to drive her places alone and called her sweetheart in this voice that made something inside me crawl long before I was old enough to understand exactly why.
Then one night, I heard her crying through the wall.
Quietly.
Lena never cried loud. Kids in the system learn pretty fucking fast that making noise brings adults, and adults don’t always make things better.
I reported him. More than once.
Told a caseworker I didn’t like the way he went into her room, told another adult Lena didn’t want to be alone with him, and watched them ask all the right questions while doing absolutely fuck all with the answers.
Nothing changed.
There wasn’t enough proof, apparently.
Funny how there’s never enough until somebody gets seriously hurt and everyone starts asking why nobody fucking noticed sooner.
Travis is still talking, but I haven’t heard a word of it. My attention snaps back when his eyes drop to the flowers tucked beneath my arm, and somehow his smile gets wider.
“Got yourself a girlfriend?”
Cold turns hot in my stomach so fast it makes my jaw clench.
“Don’t.”
His smile slips. “What?”
“Don’t fucking talk to me like we know each other.”
My voice comes out lower than I expect, enough that a woman pushing her cart past us glances over. Travis notices too. His eyes flick around the store before his whole expression changes into one I remember way too fucking well.
Calm and patient.
Reasonable foster dad dealing with a difficult kid.
I fucking hated that face.
“Revel, I know things were complicated back then. You kids had already been through a lot.”
You kids.
Like we were the fucking problem.
Like Lena and I arrived broken and he was just another poor adult trying his best.
I set the flowers and wine down on the nearest display before I crush one and smash the other across the floor.
Travis watches me put the flowers and wine down, and whatever fake patience he was wearing finally cracks.
“You always were a fucking problem,” he mutters. “You and that lying little bitch.”
Everything in me goes still.
“What did you call her?”
His jaw tightens, like now that the nice-guy act is gone, he can’t be bothered putting it back on. “Lena. Always crying, always making shit up when she didn’t get her way. You both knew exactly what to say to those caseworkers.”
I step toward him before I even realize I’m moving. “She wasn’t fucking lying.”
“Oh, please.”
“I heard her.”
That shuts him up.
“I was right across the hall, remember?” My voice drops, but there’s nothing calm about it. “I heard her crying through those walls while you did shit to her no adult should ever do to a kid. I heard her trying not to make noise because she was fucking terrified of you.”
His face changes, but he covers it fast with anger.
“You don’t know what the fuck you heard.”
“I heard enough.”
“You were thirteen. You were a fucked-up foster kid looking for someone to blame.”
My hands curl into fists at my sides.
“And you were the grown fucking man who was supposed to protect us.”
Travis steps closer now, defensive and pissed instead of pretending to be reasonable.
“Watch your fucking mouth.”
I almost laugh.
As a kid, that voice could freeze me in place.
Now I’m six-three, standing over him, and all I can see is how fucking small he actually is.
“Or what?”
His nostrils flare.
I lean closer. “Go ahead. Call Lena a liar again.”
“Fuck you.”
“Say it.”
Travis’s face twists, and whatever restraint he had left finally drops.
“Fine. She didn’t lie.” His mouth curls. “I went into her room. I touched her. I hurt her. I knew exactly how scared she was, and I did it anyway.”
Everything inside me goes dead quiet.
He keeps going, almost sneering now.
“You wanna know the worst part? I knew nobody would believe her. Or you. You were foster kids. Angry, damaged, always causing problems. I knew exactly what I could get away with.”
My grip tightens.
“You raped her.”
Travis barely flinches.
“Call it whatever the fuck you want. Didn’t change anything then, did it?”
That’s the moment something in me snaps.
Not because he admits it.
Because all these years later, Lena is still just something he thinks he got away with.
My fist hits his face before he can say another word.
People scream somewhere behind me, but the sound barely registers. Travis stumbles into the shelving, blood already running over his mouth, and for one second I just stare at him while every fucking memory I’ve spent years trying to bury tears its way back to the surface.
Then he looks at me like I’m still that kid he used to scare.
Wrong fucking move.
I hit him again.
And again.
There’s no rhythm to it, no thought beyond the rage that has been sitting inside me since I was thirteen years old and too fucking small to do anything useful with it.
I grab the front of his shirt when he starts to fold and slam him back against the shelving hard enough to rattle the whole aisle, cans crashing around our feet while people scatter and somebody starts yelling for security.
I don’t care.
All I can see is Lena.
Lena sitting on the bathroom floor with her knees pulled tight against her chest. Lena flinching when footsteps stopped outside her room. The dresser I helped shove against her door because we didn’t have a fucking lock.
Me sleeping with a kitchen knife under my pillow because every adult I told decided forms and interviews and waiting were somehow more important than making sure she survived another night in that house.
I was thirteen years old staying awake until two, three in the morning, listening for floorboards and trying to be a fucking guard dog when I was still just a kid too.
Travis tries to swing back, catches me across the cheek, and it barely fucking registers.
A laugh rips out of my chest.
Not that any of this bullshit is funny.
But because this is the man who used to fill entire doorways in my head.
The monster who made both of us scared to breathe too loudly, and now he’s bleeding on the floor beneath me.
Security finally gets there before I can hit him again.
Hands hook under my arms and drag me backward while I fight against them on instinct, still trying to get to him even after they’ve put several feet between us.
Travis is sprawled beside the shelving, blood smeared over his face and shirt, trying to push himself upright while someone crouches near him.
I’m still shouting.
Don’t even know what anymore.
Lena’s name.
What he did.
How everybody fucking knew enough to ask questions and somehow nobody did enough to stop it.
Then the cops come.
Everything after that moves too fast and not fast enough at the same time. My wrists are pulled behind me, metal closes around them, and suddenly I’m being walked through a grocery store with half the place staring while Travis stays on the floor behind us.
I should feel better.
I don’t.
The cruiser door shuts beside me and the silence inside hits harder than anything else has.
My hands are cuffed behind my back. My knuckles are split and throbbing. My cheek is starting to ache where he caught me.
None of it matters.
All I can think about is Lena.
How young she was.
How fucking young we both were and how many times I told someone.
All the nights she had to survive something because the adults around us fucking failed.
Then another thought punches straight through everything.
Cece.
Dinner with her mom.
I twist enough to see the time on the dash through the divider.
Fuck.
I promised her.
Not just dinner.
I fucking looked her in the eyes hours ago and told her I’d always come back. Told her I wasn’t going anywhere.
“Fuck!”
I drive my heel into the back of the seat hard enough to rattle the partition, then let my head fall back against the headrest and stare up at the roof of the cruiser.
Because this isn’t just me missing dinner.
I looked Cece in the fucking eyes and told her I’d be there. Told her I wasn’t going anywhere. Told her she could count on me.
And now I’ve done the exact thing I promised I wouldn’t.
I let her down.