Chapter Four
Travis
I can't stop thinking about her.
It's been a week since I fixed the sink, and I've found at least four other reasons to go over to the main house.
The porch light was flickering. The back door was sticking.
There was a branch hanging too close to the roof that could've been a problem if we got ice.
All legitimate things, all things that needed doing, and if I happened to see Kelly while I was doing them, that was just a coincidence.
I'm full of shit and I know it.
She's different from what I expected. Mrs. Dawson talked about her granddaughter like she was fragile—overworked, overwhelmed, running herself into the ground for a job she didn't even like.
I pictured someone brittle, someone who'd show up here and fall apart.
But that's not Kelly. She's sharper than that, funnier, with this quiet steadiness underneath everything.
She's figuring things out. You can see it happening in real time, the way she's settling into the house, making it hers.
Yesterday I saw her on the porch with her laptop, typing fast, completely lost in whatever she was working on.
She didn't even notice me walking to my truck.
Her face had this look on it—focused, intense, like the rest of the world didn't exist. I stood there longer than I should have, just watching.
That's when I knew I was in trouble.
I'm at the rink now, running drills I could do in my sleep, trying to wear myself out enough that my brain will stop circling back to her.
It's not working. I skate until my legs burn and my lungs ache, and all I can think about is the way she laughed when I told her the porch light just needed a new bulb.
Like she was embarrassed, but also like she didn't mind being embarrassed in front of me.
"You're pushing too hard."
I look up. Frank, the rink owner, is leaning against the boards with his arms crossed, watching me with that look old hockey guys get when they think you're being an idiot.
"I'm fine," I say.
"You're going to blow out your knee skating like that. What's chasing you?"
Nothing. Everything. A woman with dark eyes who makes me want to be someone I'm not sure I can be anymore.
"Just working off some energy," I say.
Frank grunts, unconvinced. He's been around long enough to know when someone's lying, but he's also been around long enough to know when not to push. That's why I like him.
"Your agent called the office yesterday," he says. "Looking for you."
I stop skating. "What?"
"Said he's been trying to reach you. Wanted to make sure you were still alive." Frank raises an eyebrow. "Seemed pretty worried. Or annoyed. Hard to tell with those types."
Dave. Of course. I've been dodging his calls for a week, ever since the conversation about the team wanting me back.
He's left six voicemails that I haven't listened to and sent about a dozen texts that I've only glanced at.
Words like opportunity and career and don't blow this jumping out at me before I put the phone away.
"I'll call him," I say.
"Uh huh." Frank pushes off from the boards. "Whatever's going on with you, figure it out. You're too good to waste yourself on some rink in the middle of nowhere."
He walks away before I can respond, which is probably for the best. I don't have a response. I don't know what I'm doing here, what I'm waiting for, what I think is going to happen if I just keep hiding long enough.
The team wants me back. That should be good news. Six months ago, I would've given anything to hear those words. But six months ago, I didn't have a reason to stay.
I skate a few more laps, slower this time, letting my body cool down. Then I grab my bag and head for the showers.
I call Dave from the parking lot, sitting in my truck with the heat running, because I know if I put it off any longer he's going to show up in person and that's the last thing I need.
He picks up on the first ring. "Finally. I was starting to think you'd died."
"I'm not dead."
"Could've fooled me. You know how many times I've called you this week?"
"I've been busy."
"Busy." He says it like it's a foreign word, something he doesn't understand. "Travis, the team wants you back. This is what we've been working toward for six months. What could possibly be more important than that?"
I don't answer. Outside the windshield, a mom is loading hockey bags into a minivan while two kids chase each other around the parking lot. Normal life. The kind of life I used to think I'd have someday, back before everything got complicated.
"Talk to me," Dave says, his voice softer now. "What's going on?"
"I don't know if I want to go back."
Silence. A long one. I can picture him on the other end, pinching the bridge of his nose the way he does when I'm being difficult.
"You don't know if you want to go back," he repeats. "To the NHL. To your career. To the thing you've been doing since you were five years old."
"Yeah."
"Travis." He takes a breath. "I'm going to ask you something, and I need you to be honest with me. Are you okay? Like, mentally? Because this doesn't sound like you."
I almost laugh. "I don't know what sounds like me anymore."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
More silence. Then Dave sighs, the fight going out of him.
"Okay. Look. The team's giving you two weeks to report.
That's not a lot of time, but it's enough to figure out what you want.
Take a few days. Think about it. But Travis—don't throw this away because you're scared.
You made a mistake. You paid for it. That doesn't mean you don't deserve a second chance. "
A mistake. Is that what it was? Sometimes it feels like the only honest thing I've ever done.
"I'll think about it," I say.
"That's all I'm asking."
I hang up and sit there for a while, watching the kids in the parking lot. They're playing some kind of game now, arguing about rules, completely absorbed in something that won't matter in an hour. I wonder what that feels like, to care that much about something so small.
My phone buzzes. A text from a number I don't recognize.
Hey, it's Kelly. Got your number from the emergency contact list my grandma left. Hope that's okay.
I stare at the screen for a second, my heart doing something stupid in my chest.
That's fine, I type back. Everything okay?
Yeah, all good. Just wanted to say thanks again for the help this week. You've been really great.
No problem.
Three dots appear, then disappear, then appear again. I watch them pulse for what feels like a long time.
I made chili, she finally says. Way too much for one person. If you want to come by for dinner, there's plenty.
I should say no. Every smart part of my brain is telling me to keep my distance, not to get more tangled up in her life than I already am. In two weeks I might be gone. In two weeks everything might be different. Getting closer to her now is just going to make it harder to leave.
I type back before I can stop myself.
What time?
Her chili is good. Really good. I'm on my second bowl before I realize I've barely said anything, just sitting at her grandmother's kitchen table shoveling food into my mouth like I haven't eaten in days.
"Sorry," I say, setting down my spoon. "I didn't realize how hungry I was."
Kelly's across from me, her own bowl barely touched, watching me with an expression I can't quite read. "Don't apologize. It's nice to cook for someone who actually eats."
"You don't eat?"
"I eat." She shrugs. "I just forget sometimes. When I'm working on something."
"The book?"
"Yeah." She picks up her spoon, pushes a kidney bean around her bowl. "It's going better, actually. Since we talked. That thing you said about the wife—I've been thinking about it a lot."
I remember. The wife who sees things but doesn't want to look. I'm not sure where that came from, what made me say it out loud. It just felt true.
"Glad it helped," I say.
"It did. More than you know." She looks up at me, and something in her expression shifts, gets more serious. "Can I ask you something?"
Here it comes. The question I've been waiting for, the one I've been dreading. Who are you? What are you hiding? Why did my grandmother let you live here?
"Sure," I say, because what else can I say?
"What do you do? For work, I mean. You're gone in the mornings, you have that nice truck, but I realized I have no idea what you actually do."
It's not the question I expected. It's easier and harder at the same time.
"I'm between things right now," I say. "Figuring out my next move."
She nods slowly, like she's filing that away. "That makes two of us, I guess."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah." She takes a bite of chili, chews, swallows. "I quit my job to write a book. Everyone thinks I'm crazy. Maybe I am. But I couldn't spend another year of my life optimizing click-through rates and pretending to care about quarterly projections."
"So you walked away."
"I walked away." She says it simply, but I can hear the weight underneath. "Scariest thing I've ever done. But also kind of the best? I don't know. Ask me again in six months when I'm broke and crawling back to corporate America."
"You won't."
She raises an eyebrow. "You sound pretty sure about that."
"I've seen you work." I think about her on the porch, that look on her face, completely lost in her own world. "You're not going back."
She doesn't say anything for a second. Just looks at me, really looks, like she's trying to figure out how I see so much when I say so little. I hold her gaze because I can't seem to make myself look away.
"You're not what I expected," she says quietly.
"What did you expect?"
"I don't know. Not this." She gestures vaguely at me, at the table, at the space between us. "My grandmother left a note saying you needed to be invisible. I thought you'd be... I don't know. Weirder. More damaged."
I almost laugh. "Who says I'm not damaged?"
"Oh, you're definitely damaged. But not in the way I thought." She's smiling now, just a little. "You're more like... a fixer-upper. Some cosmetic issues, but good bones."
"Did you just compare me to a house?"
"I've been spending a lot of time thinking about houses lately. It's affecting my metaphors."
I do laugh then, a real one, and her smile widens like she's won something. Maybe she has. I can't remember the last time someone made me laugh like that, unguarded and easy. It feels dangerous. It feels good.
"I should go," I say, even though I don't want to. "Let you get back to work."
"You keep saying that."
"You keep having work to get back to."
"The book will be there tomorrow." She leans back in her chair, and I notice she's finally eating, actually eating, not just pushing food around. "Tell me something about yourself. Something real."
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Anything. Favorite movie. Worst job you ever had. Most embarrassing thing that happened to you in high school." She ticks them off on her fingers. "I'm not picky."
I think about it. Most of my stories involve hockey in some way—teammates, road trips, locker room disasters. I can't tell her any of those without giving myself away.
"I broke my collarbone when I was sixteen," I finally say. "Tried to impress a girl by jumping off a roof into a swimming pool. Missed."
Kelly's eyes go wide. "You missed the pool?"
"Clipped the edge. Landed half in, half out." I shrug. "Spent eight weeks in a sling. Girl didn't even visit me in the hospital."
"That's terrible."
"The collarbone or the girl?"
"Both." She's laughing now, it’s laugh that takes over her whole face. "Oh my god. That's the most teenage boy thing I've ever heard."
"I was very stupid at sixteen."
"Most people are." She shakes her head, still smiling. "Okay, my turn. I once got fired from a summer job for reading on the clock."
"What kind of job?"
"Lifeguard."
I stare at her. "You were reading while you were supposed to be watching swimmers?"
"In my defense, it was a really good book." She holds up her hands. "And nobody drowned! Everyone was fine. The manager was just very uptight about the whole 'paying attention to the pool' thing."
"Seems reasonable."
"Seemed excessive to me at the time." She grins. "I was also very stupid at sixteen."
We trade stories for another hour. She tells me about her first apartment in New York, a place so small she could touch both walls if she stood in the middle and stretched out her arms. I tell her about the time I got lost in a city I'd lived in for three years because I never paid attention when other people were driving.
She tells me about her grandmother, little things—the way she hummed while she cooked, the specific way she folded towels, the stack of romance novels she kept hidden in her nightstand like they were contraband.
I tell her about my grandmother too. Not everything, not the end, but the good parts. Sunday dinners. The way she'd call me by my full name when I was in trouble. How she taught me to play poker and then hustled me out of my allowance every single time.
"She sounds amazing," Kelly says.
"She was."
Kelly catches the past tense. I see it register on her face, but she doesn't push. Just nods, like she understands.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly.
"Me too."
The kitchen is warm and the light is soft and I've been here for three hours without noticing. It's the longest conversation I've had with anyone in months, and I don't want it to end.
But it has to. Everything has to end eventually.
"I should go," I say again, and this time I mean it.
She walks me to the door, and we stand there for a second in the yellow porch light, neither of us quite ready to end the conversation. The air is cold and she's got her arms wrapped around herself, and I have to stop myself from offering her my jacket like some kind of idiot in a rom-com.
"Thanks for coming," she says. "It was nice. Having company."
"Thanks for inviting me."
She nods. I nod. We're both just standing here nodding like we've forgotten how to say goodbye.
"Goodnight, Travis," she finally says.
"Goodnight, Kelly."
I make myself walk away, across the dark yard to the cottage, and I don't look back. If I look back, I'll see her still standing there in the doorway, and I won't be able to leave.
I let myself into the cottage and close the door behind me, leaning against it in the dark. My phone is heavy in my pocket. Dave's voicemails are waiting. The team is waiting. My whole life is waiting for me to make a decision.
But right now, all I can think about is the way she laughed when she called me a fixer-upper.
I am in so much trouble.