Chapter Nine
Kelly
The back door closes behind him and I stand there staring at it like it might open again, like he might come back and explain, like the last five minutes didn't just happen.
"Kelly." Nicole's voice is careful. "You okay?"
I don't know how to answer that.
"I'm going to—" I gesture vaguely toward the door. "I need a minute."
"Do you want me to come with you?"
"No. Stay. I'll be right back."
I push through the door onto the porch, but he's already gone. The cottage door is closed, no lights on that I can see. He's in there, in the dark, probably thinking I hate him.
Do I hate him?
I don't know what I feel. My brain is still trying to catch up, trying to reconcile the Travis I know—the one who fixes my sink and helps with my book and looks at me like I'm something worth looking at—with the man in that photo on Brit's phone.
The headline she read out loud before I could stop her. NHL enforcer assaults photographer.
Assaults. That word keeps echoing.
I pull out my phone and type a message before I can overthink it.
Can we talk?
The response comes faster than I expected.
Not tonight. Enjoy your party. I'm sorry.
I stare at the screen, frustrated. He's sorry. He's been lying to me for weeks and he's sorry. That's supposed to make it okay?
This isn't over, I type back.
I don't wait for a response. I shove my phone in my pocket and go back inside, where three of my closest friends are sitting in my grandmother's kitchen looking at me like I might shatter.
"So," Nicole says. "That was something."
"I don't want to talk about it."
"Kelly—"
"I mean it. Not tonight." I grab my wine glass from the counter and take a long drink. "This is Galentine's Day. We're supposed to be celebrating friendship and sisterhood and all that crap. Not dissecting my—whatever he is."
"Your whatever he is is a professional hockey player who beat up a photographer," Brit says. She's got her phone out again, scrolling. "There's a video, Kelly. Do you want to see it?"
"No."
"Are you sure? Because it's pretty—"
"Brit." Nicole cuts her off with a look. "She said no."
Brit puts her phone down, but I can tell she wants to keep going. She's always been like this—a dog with a bone, unable to let anything drop until she's turned it over from every angle.
"I'm just saying," she mutters. "If I had a man living in my backyard, I'd want to know if he had a history of violence."
"It was one incident," Mona says quietly. She's been scrolling on her own phone, reading something. "According to this article, anyway. He'd never been in trouble before. And it was outside a hospice."
"A hospice?" I look at her.
"That's what it says. He was visiting someone and the photographer followed him there. Asked him some questions and..." She trails off, shrugging. "Doesn't say what the questions were. Just that Howe attacked him."
A hospice. He was visiting someone dying, and a photographer followed him there.
Something in my chest shifts.
"I still think it's messed up that he didn't tell you," Brit says. "You've been living next to him for weeks. He should have said something."
"Yeah." I take another sip of wine. "He should have."
But I'm thinking about the note my grandmother left.
He just needs somewhere to be invisible for a while.
I'm thinking about all the times he almost told me something, all the times I saw him holding back, choosing his words carefully.
I'm thinking about the way he looked at me right before he admitted it—tired and resigned and braced for impact.
He knew this was coming. He'd been waiting for it.
And he stayed anyway.
I think about the past few weeks. All those mornings he came by for coffee.
All those conversations at the kitchen table.
The way he helped me with my book, the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention.
Was any of that real? Or was he just playing a part, pretending to be someone he wasn't?
But that doesn't make sense either. He didn't have to come over.
He didn't have to fix things or help me or spend hours unpacking boxes and listening to Motown.
He could have stayed in the cottage and kept his distance and waited for me to sell the house and move on.
Instead he kept showing up, kept finding reasons to be near me.
Why would he do that if he was just trying to hide?
"Can we please talk about something else?" I ask. "Anything else. Tell me about your jobs. Tell me about your love lives. Tell me about that weird rash Mona had last month."
"It wasn't a rash, it was an allergic reaction," Mona says. "And I'd really rather not."
"Too bad. We're talking about it. Nicole, you start."
Nicole gives me a long look, the kind that says we're going to discuss this later whether you like it or not. But she lets it go for now, launching into a story about a coworker who's been stealing her lunch from the office fridge.
I try to listen. I laugh in the right places. I pour more wine and pass around the cheese plate I made and pretend to be present.
But my mind is across the yard, in the dark cottage, with a man who's been lying to me since the day we met.
The party winds down around eleven.
Brit and Mona head to bed first, claiming exhaustion from the drive. Nicole lingers in the kitchen, helping me clean up, which I know is just an excuse to get me alone.
"So," she says, drying a wine glass. "You want to tell me what's really going on?"
"There's nothing to tell. You saw what happened."
"I saw a man who looked like he wanted to disappear into the floor. I saw you look at him like your heart was breaking." She sets down the glass. "How long have you had feelings for him?"
"I don't have feelings for him."
"Kelly."
"I don't know." I lean against the counter, suddenly exhausted. "A few weeks, maybe. It just kind of... happened. He was here all the time, fixing things, and we started talking, and..." I shake my head. "It doesn't matter now."
"Why not?"
"Because he lied to me. For weeks. He let me think he was just some guy, and the whole time he was hiding this huge thing. He beat someone up, Nicole. Bad enough that it made the news, bad enough that he had to hide in my grandmother's backyard."
"Did you ask him why?"
"What?"
"Why he did it. What happened. Did you ask, or did you just watch him leave?"
I don't answer. We both know I didn't ask.
"The article Brit found doesn't say much," Nicole continues. "Just that he attacked a photographer outside a hospice. That's weird, right? Why would he be at a hospice?"
"I don't know."
"Maybe you should find out." She picks up another glass. "I'm not defending him. If he's dangerous, you need to know. But I'm just saying—there might be more to the story than what's in the headlines. There usually is."
I think about my grandmother's note. He's a good one. He just needs somewhere to be invisible.
My grandmother wasn't naive. She'd lived eighty-three years, raised kids, buried a husband, seen enough of the world to know what people were capable of. If she let Travis stay, she had a reason. If she called him a good one, she meant it.
But did she know? Did she know what he'd done, who he was? Or did he hide it from her too?
"I should talk to him," I say.
"Tonight?"
"Tonight. I can't just leave it like this. He's over there thinking I hate him, and I don't even know what actually happened. The article just says he attacked a photographer. It doesn't say why."
"Maybe there wasn't a why. Maybe he just snapped."
"Maybe." But I don't believe that. The Travis I know doesn't snap. He's the most controlled person I've ever met—careful with his words, careful with his movements, always holding something back. For him to hit someone, there had to be a reason. "Or maybe there's more to it."
"Only one way to find out."
I think about the past few weeks. All those conversations where he almost told me something and then pulled back. All those times I saw the weight he was carrying and chose not to ask about it. I told him I wouldn't push. I told him he could tell me when he was ready.
Well, he wasn't ready. And now I'm finding out from Google instead of from him.
That hurts more than I expected.
"Do you hate him?" Nicole asks.
I consider the question seriously. Do I hate him?
I consider the question seriously. Do I hate him? He lied to me. He let me develop feelings for him while hiding something huge. He could have told me any time in the past few weeks—all those mornings over coffee, all those conversations at the kitchen table—and he didn't.
But I think about the way he looked at me.
The way he helped with my book. The way he almost smiled sometimes, like he'd forgotten he was allowed to.
I think about how tired he looked when he admitted it was him, how he didn't try to lie or make excuses, how he just said yeah, that's me and waited for the blow to land.
"No," I say. "I don't hate him. I'm just... confused. And hurt. And I need to hear his side of it."
Nicole nods slowly. "You want me to come with you?"
"No. I need to do this alone."
She pulls me into a hug, tight and brief. "Be careful. And text me if you need anything. I'll be awake."
"Thanks."
I grab my jacket from the hook by the door—the coat rack Travis built this morning, the one that started this whole mess—and step outside into the cold.
The yard is dark except for the light from the kitchen window behind me. The cottage is a shadow against the trees, no sign of life inside. My breath clouds in the air as I walk across the dead grass, my heart beating faster with every step.
The night is quiet. No wind, no traffic, just the crunch of my boots on the frost-stiff ground.
I can hear my own breathing, too loud in my ears.
I think about turning back. About waiting until morning, when things might feel less raw.
But if I wait, I'll lose my nerve. I'll talk myself out of it, convince myself it's better to let things lie.
I don't want to let things lie. I want to understand.
The cottage looks different at night. Smaller, somehow. More fragile. The porch Travis swept clean, the welcome mat still by the door. All these little signs that someone lives here, someone who cares about the space, someone who's been making a home in my grandmother's backyard.
I think about what it must have been like for him.
Hiding out here, away from everything, watching me move into the main house and wondering when the other shoe was going to drop.
Knowing that eventually I'd find out, that someone would recognize him or he'd slip up or the truth would come out the way it always does.
He must have been so lonely. He must have been so scared.
I climb the porch steps and knock on the door.
For a long moment, nothing happens. I count my heartbeats—one, two, three, four—and I'm about to knock again when I hear footsteps. Then the door swings open, and Travis is standing there in the dark, looking at me like he can't believe I'm real.
He's still wearing the same clothes from earlier. His hair is a mess, like he's been running his hands through it. His eyes are red around the edges, and I wonder if he's been crying or just not sleeping.
"Can I come in?" I ask.
He doesn't say anything. Just steps back to let me through.
And for the first time since I inherited this house, I walk into the cottage.