Chapter Ten
Travis
She's standing on my porch.
I've been sitting in the dark for two hours, convinced I'd never see her again, and now she's here. Knocking on my door. Asking to come in.
I step back and let her through.
The cottage is dark except for the light from the kitchen, which I turned on a few minutes ago to get a glass of water I never drank.
Kelly looks around as she enters, taking in the space—the sparse furniture, the duffel bag in the corner, the books on the shelf.
I try to see it through her eyes. A man who never unpacked. A man who was always ready to leave.
"You can sit," I say. "If you want."
She chooses the armchair by the window. I sit on the couch across from her, keeping distance between us. The silence stretches out, heavy and uncomfortable.
"So," she says finally.
"So," I say back.
She almost smiles, but it doesn't reach her eyes. "Well. What was that about?"
I've been dreading this conversation for weeks.
Months, really. Ever since I got here and started to realize that hiding wasn't going to be as simple as I thought.
But now that it's happening, I feel almost relieved.
The waiting is over. Whatever comes next, at least I don't have to pretend anymore.
"What do you know?" I ask. "From the article."
"Not much. That you're a hockey player. That you beat up a photographer outside a hospice. That you settled out of court and got suspended." She pauses. "It didn't say why you were at the hospice. Or why you hit him."
"No. It wouldn't."
"Why not?"
"Because I never told anyone." I lean forward, elbows on my knees, looking at my hands. "The team wanted me to do a statement. Explain my side, get ahead of the story. But I couldn't... I didn't want to talk about her. Not to reporters. Not to anyone."
"Her?"
"My grandmother." The word catches in my throat.
"She was dying. Stroke, back in January.
She held on for a few months, but..." I shake my head.
"I was visiting her every day I wasn't traveling.
Two hours there, two hours back. I'd sit with her for as long as they'd let me, and then I'd drive home and try to sleep and get up the next day and do it again. "
Kelly is quiet. I can feel her watching me, but I can't look at her yet.
"The team knew. They had to—I was missing practices, showing up exhausted, playing like shit. It was the worst season of my career, and everyone knew why, but nobody talked about it. That's how it works. You don't hassle a guy whose grandmother is dying."
"But someone did."
"Yeah." I take a breath. "The photographer. He'd been following me for weeks, trying to get a shot of me looking miserable. I don't know how he found out about the hospice—someone on staff, probably, selling information. But he tracked me there. Waited in the parking lot for hours."
I can see it so clearly. The gray afternoon, the exhaustion sitting heavy in my bones. Walking out of the hospice after watching my grandmother stare at me like she didn't know who I was. And there he was, camera in hand, moving toward me like he'd won the lottery.
"He started asking questions. About the season, the trade rumors, all the usual shit. I tried to ignore him. I was so tired, Kelly. I didn't have anything left. I just wanted to get in my truck and go home."
"What happened?"
"He followed me to my truck. Kept pushing. And then..." I stop. Close my eyes. "He asked me how it felt to be losing my season and my grandma at the same time. Asked if I thought God was trying to tell me something."
The silence is absolute. I can hear my own heartbeat in my ears.
"I don't remember deciding to hit him. I just remember my hand on his collar, and then I was swinging, and then someone was pulling me off.
A nurse. She came out for a smoke break and saw what was happening.
" I open my eyes. "He pressed charges. We settled.
I got suspended. And my grandmother died three days later, while I was in a meeting with lawyers. "
"Travis."
"I wasn't there." My voice cracks. "I spent months visiting her every day, and when she actually died, I wasn't there. I was sitting in a conference room explaining to a bunch of suits why I wasn't a danger to anyone."
Kelly doesn't say anything. She just sits there, looking at me, and I can't read her face. I don't know if she's horrified or sympathetic or something in between. I don't know if anything I've said makes a difference.
"I'm not sorry I hit him," I say. "I know I should be. I know it was wrong. But he followed me to a hospice where my grandmother was dying and asked me if God was punishing me. I'm not sorry he bled."
"I wouldn't be either."
I look up. She's leaning forward now, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes steady on mine.
"If someone said that to me," she says quietly, "outside a hospice where my grandmother was dying, I don't know what I would do. But I don't think I'd be sorry either."
Something loosens in my chest. Something I've been holding tight for months.
"That doesn't make it okay," she continues. "You still should have told me. You've been living here for weeks, letting me think you were just some guy, and the whole time you were hiding this."
"I know."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
The honest answer is complicated. The honest answer is that I liked who I was when I was with her—just Travis, not Travis Howe, not the guy from the headlines. The honest answer is that I was scared.
"Because you looked at me like I was a person," I say. "Not a story. Not a cautionary tale. Just a guy who fixed things and helped with your book and showed up for coffee in the mornings. I wasn't ready to lose that."
"You thought you'd lose it if I knew?"
"Everyone else did." I spread my hands. "My teammates, my friends, my family.
Once they saw the video, once they read the headlines, that's all I was.
The guy who snapped. The guy with anger issues.
Didn't matter that I'd never been in trouble before.
Didn't matter what he said to me. All anyone saw was the violence. "
"I'm not everyone else."
"I know that now."
She's quiet for a moment, processing. I watch her think, watch her turn it over in her mind. I have no idea what she's going to say next. I have no idea if this is the end of something or the beginning.
"There's more," I say. "About why I'm here. About your grandmother."
"Okay."
"My grandmother and yours were friends. For decades—they met at some church thing in the seventies and stayed in touch ever since.
When I needed somewhere to go, somewhere to disappear, my grandmother gave me this address.
She said Eleanor would take care of me. That she didn't ask questions and didn't judge. "
Kelly's face shifts. "Your grandmother sent you here?"
"Before she died. When things were falling apart and I didn't know what to do.
She told me to come here, and I did." I pause.
"And then she died, and your grandmother was all I had left of her.
So I stayed. I told myself I was honoring a promise, keeping an eye on Mrs. Dawson the way my grandmother would have wanted.
But really I just... I couldn't leave. This place was the last connection I had to her. "
"You stayed for your grandmother."
"At first. And then I stayed because of yours. And then..." I meet her eyes. "And then I stayed because of you."
The words hang in the air between us. I didn't mean to say them. But they're true, and I'm tired of hiding things.
Kelly doesn't respond right away. She just looks at me, her dark eyes searching my face for something I hope she finds.
"Why didn't you tell the press?" she asks. "About your grandmother, about what he said. If people knew the whole story—"
"It wouldn't matter. The video is the video.
People see what they want to see." I shrug.
"And I didn't want to drag my grandmother into it.
She was private. She would have hated being part of some media circus, having her death used as an excuse for what I did.
It felt wrong to defend myself with her story. "
"So you just let everyone think the worst."
"Yeah."
"That's..." She shakes her head. "That's either really noble or really stupid."
"Probably both."
She laughs, just a little, and the sound breaks something open in me. I didn't know how much I needed to hear her laugh until right now.
"So what happens now?" she asks.
"I don't know. That's kind of up to you."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean you own this property. You've got a guy living in your backyard who beat up a photographer and made national news for all the wrong reasons. If you want me gone, I'll go. I should have left months ago."
"But you didn't."
"No. I didn't."
She's quiet again, looking around the cottage. At the duffel bag that's never been unpacked. At the books on the shelf. At me, sitting on this couch in the dark, waiting for her to decide my fate.
"My grandmother's note said to let you stay," she says finally. "She said you were a good one. She said to trust her."
"Your grandmother didn't know everything."
"Maybe not. But she knew enough." Kelly stands up, and for a second I think she's leaving. But she doesn't go to the door. She walks toward me, stopping a few feet away. "I'm not going to kick you out, Travis. I'm not going to pretend everything's fine either. You should have told me. That hurt."
"I know. I'm sorry."
"But I understand why you didn't. And I..." She takes a breath. "I don't think you're a monster. I don't think you're dangerous. I think you're a guy who went through something terrible and made a bad decision and has been punishing himself for it ever since."
I don't know what to say. No one has ever put it like that before. No one has ever made it sound so simple.
She sits down on the couch, closer than she was in the armchair. Close enough that I can smell her shampoo, something floral and warm.
"Can I ask you something?"
"You can ask me anything."
"After my grandmother died, why did you stay? You could have left. You should have left, probably. But you didn't."
I think about all the reasons I've told myself. Honoring a promise. Keeping an eye on the property. Not having anywhere else to go. They're all true, but none of them are the real answer.
"At first it was because of my grandmother," I say. "This place was my last connection to her. But then you showed up, and..."
"And?"
I turn to look at her. She's watching me with those dark eyes, patient, waiting.
"I like taking care of you," I say. "That's why I stayed.
I know that sounds stupid. I know you don't need anyone to take care of you.
But fixing things around the house, helping with your book, just...
being here. It made me feel like I had a purpose again.
Like I was good for something besides hitting people. "
She's quiet for a long moment. I can hear the old clock on the wall ticking, the one Mrs. Dawson left behind, counting down the seconds while I wait to see if I've said too much.
"It's not stupid," Kelly says softly. "I love having you take care of me."
The words hit me somewhere deep. I wasn't expecting them. I wasn't expecting any of this—her showing up, listening, understanding. I spent so long bracing for the worst that I don't know what to do with something good.
"Kelly—"
"I know." She shakes her head. "This is crazy. We barely know each other. You've been lying to me for weeks, and I should probably be furious, and instead I'm sitting here thinking about—"
She stops.
"Thinking about what?"
She doesn't answer. But she doesn't look away either.
The clock on the wall chimes. Once, twice—I count the tones without meaning to. Twelve. Midnight.
"It's Valentine's Day," I say.
She laughs, a little breathless. "I guess it is."
"I didn't get you anything."
"That's okay. I didn't get you anything either."
We're so close. When did we get this close? I can see the warmth in her brown eyes, the way her lips part slightly, the pulse jumping in her throat.
"Kelly," I say again, and I don't know what I'm asking for, but she seems to understand anyway.
"Yeah," she whispers. "Okay."
I lean in slowly, giving her every chance to pull back. She doesn't.
The kiss is soft at first. Tentative. I'm half-convinced she's going to change her mind, push me away, tell me this was a mistake. But then her hand comes up to the back of my neck, pulling me closer, and something shifts.
I kiss her like I've been wanting to for weeks. Like she's the first good thing that's happened to me in months and I don't know how to be careful with it. Her fingers twist in my hair and I make a sound I'm not proud of, something between a groan and a sigh, and I feel her smile against my mouth.
When we finally break apart, we're both breathing hard. Her forehead is pressed against mine, her eyes still closed, and I can feel her pulse racing under my fingertips where they've found her jaw.
I laugh. I can't help it. This quiet, disbelieving sound that comes out of nowhere.
She opens her eyes. "What?"
"Nothing. Just..." I shake my head. "I didn't think this was how tonight was going to go."
"Me neither." She pulls back just enough to look at me, and she's smiling, really smiling, the kind that crinkles the corners of her eyes. "For the record, this was better."
"Yeah?"
"Much better."
I want to kiss her again. I want to kiss her until the sun comes up and her friends start wondering where she went. But it's late, and she's had a long night, and I don't want to push my luck.
"You should probably go back," I say. "Your friends are going to think I kidnapped you."
"Probably." She doesn't move.
"Kelly."
"I know, I know." She sighs and stands up, and I immediately miss the warmth of her. "I'll see you tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Tomorrow."
I walk her to the door. She steps out onto the porch, then turns back, and before I can say anything she kisses me again. Quick this time, just a brush of her lips against mine.
"Happy Valentine's Day, Travis."
"Happy Valentine's Day."
She walks across the yard toward the main house, and I watch her until she's inside, until the lights flicker and settle. Then I close the door and lean against it, my heart pounding like I just skated a double shift.
She kissed me. She knows everything, and she kissed me anyway.
I don't know what happens next. But for the first time in a long time, I can't wait to find out.