Chapter 21
RACHEL
Rachel pressed herself against Travis’s body.
She adored the feeling of his strength as she nestled against him.
The way her curves seemed to fit. How her body didn’t feel like something she should change or improve upon when they were together.
Instead, her curves were something he enjoyed. Therefore, she enjoyed them, too.
Neither of them was even pretending to sway to the music at this point. Standing together, bodies molded to each other, was perfect.
She shuddered a breath. This brand of perfect had the power to ruin everything.
“I’m not ready to tell everyone about us,” she said, letting the words out before she had time to think and then overthink them.
“Okay.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “We don’t have to do that right now.”
“I don’t…I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.” She worried at the lipstick on her bottom lip. “What would we even say?”
“That things are good between us.” He traced her neck with his thumb, the path warming. He had a way of touching her that made her muscles release years of tension. The man’s hands were magic.
The tension building in this conversation was starting to make her whole body tighten up. He caught it. He remedied it.
This was life with Travis.
“We’d say that this is going wherever we want to take it,” he continued with that mesmerizing quality of his voice. “We don’t want it to end.”
“That makes it sound so simple,” she said, whispering into the cocoon they’d built around each other.
The muscles in her back continued to release with his touch.
“We can take the next step,” he said. “Just for us. The rest will fall into place when the time is right.”
“We’re doing this.” She couldn’t help it, she pulled herself up on her toes, so her nose brushed against his.
He smiled. “We’re doing this.”
“Are we going to give each other keys and stuff?” she asked.
She vaguely knew where his apartment was downtown, but she’d never been there. The boys had been, though. Their comments about the space all revolved around his video game setup. It was, apparently, amazing.
“My apartment has a doorman. You’re already on the list of people with clearance to be let in whenever you want,” he said against her hair.
Her eyes went wide. She was on the doorman list?
Wait…he had a freaking doorman?
“Since when,” she asked, “am I on the list?”
“Since you became part of the family.”
“Oh.” She glanced at his palm, still practicing magic in the muscles at her shoulder.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said, but it sounded like it was actually a pretty big deal to him.
“Even after the divorce?” she asked carefully, unsure if she wanted to know the answer.
“You’re still part of the family.” His sincerity pierced through the sadness that came whenever she thought about those times. “Divorce doesn’t change that.”
The divorce wasn’t contentious, but it was still a divorce. She still mourned what her boys had lost when their parents split. Knowing they’d never remember a time when Mom and Dad were together as a couple, not just a parental unit.
“Seriously?” she asked, not fully believing him.
He nodded.
“A doorman is so fancy. I have only a keypad,” she said, making the silly face that usually worked to make the boys laugh.
Travis didn’t laugh. But his lips twitched, so she’d call it a win.
“I usually just use the garage opener,” she said, as they dance-moved closer to the edge of the dance floor. “But the keypad works on the front and back doors. It’s, uh, four-zero-six-nine.”
“Four, zero, six, nine,” he repeated.
She’d given him the code before—the night he brought her margaritas and she’d crashed on the sofa. This time, though, when she gave him the numbers, it felt like more.
They were, somehow, a promise she was making.
“I can write it down for you,” she said. “Or the boys know. They’re sworn to secrecy, though, so they probably won’t say anything, even if you ask.”
He grinned.
Knowing Travis, he’d test them on that later.
“And…uh…just to be clear,” she chattered on. “We’re not seeing other people while we’re seeing each other, right?”
“Do you want to see other people?” he volleyed back.
He looked as though he absolutely did not want that.
“No,” she said, remarkably fast. “I was hoping this was exclusive.”
“Me too.” He spoke against her forehead.
“Good. Exclusive is good.” She did the whacky face thing again.
Gah, she had to stop doing that when they were talking about serious stuff.
“Exclusive is the best.” He gave her a squeeze.
“I’m clean, too,” she said. “And I have the birth control thing covered. I mean, uh, I really do this time. Not like when I was in college. And I had a physical right before we left Denver. All good on that front.”
She might as well have given him two perky thumbs up to top off that morbidly embarrassing data dump.
The song stopped, but they stayed together, holding each other until the next song started. The band played a new rendition of a Bellamy Brothers song she recognized about a man holding a woman against him.
“I’m clean, too, Rach,” he said. “If this is your way of asking.”
Well, it was. A very uncomfortable way of asking.
He hummed along to the song, apparently waiting to see if she had anything else she wanted to add.
She did, more embarrassing data she needed to dump.
Get it all over with in one night.
“If you want to, uh, not use a condom,” she whispered so only he could hear. “Then we…we can just not do that.” She met his gaze. “If you want to,” she added as a quick addendum to her declaration.
“Is that what you want?” he asked, and his words were remarkably neutral given that she’d just embarrassed the hell out of herself.
For a moment, she stood still, not moving to the music.
“Sorry?” she asked, seeming to not understand his question.
“What do you want, Rach?” he asked. “Whatever you want, we’ll do that. I believe you when you say you’ve got it covered. If you want me to cover it, just let me know.”
“You don’t have an opinion on this?” She pulled back from him, earnest. Do you just not care?
“Rach.” His lips brushed hers. “I care about everything when it comes to you. You know I don’t like it when you let people walk all over you, so I’ll speak up about it.
I want you to make time for us, so I’ll make sure that happens—even if it means your schedule gets a little fucked in the process.
And I want dinner invitations with you and the boys, so I hope we can figure out a way to make that happen for me.
” He drew a long breath. “That’s the shit that matters.
It’s what I have an opinion about. When it comes to the rest, I’m willing to take your lead. ”
“Oh.” She pressed her temple against his chest as he led, but they mostly stayed in a two-foot square holding on to each other.
“Anything else you want to get off your chest tonight?” he asked. “Or should we start heading back?”
They had a little more time before the boys were due back at the house. But she needed to check her email and follow up with any late-night Cassie crises.
She didn’t stir. Didn’t move.
There was more. More she needed to say.
“I didn’t call Gavin back.” This came out as a confession, a choked confession that she whispered into the air at his chest.
“Gavin’s not here.” He traced his fingers up and down her spine and held her tighter, her cheek against his chest. “It’s just you and me.”
“After we hooked up, I wasn’t going to call him back,” she confessed—the confession she’d never told anyone.
Travis stilled. Blood started to thrum in her ears.
“I don’t need to hear this.” He started to step away, but she held firm. “You know how before I said that I’d have some things that mattered to me? This is one of those times where I don’t need to know the details.”
“I need you to hear them, though,” she said, because she really, really did.
The earnestness in her voice apparently made him pause.
“Please,” she continued.
She did her best to relax, ready to give only the abbreviated version of events.
“I wasn’t going to call him back, even though he called me, like, four times afterward. I ignored the calls until I found out about the pregnancy. Then I called him,” she said. “By that point, he’d moved on. As he should have, since I wasn’t interested.”
Travis hardly moved, but she sallied forth.
“I explained everything, and he said he wanted to get married. I didn’t want to. I mean, I wasn’t even going to call him back, so why would we get married?” She had pulled away a little and was talking with her hands.
“Why did you get married?” Travis asked, that mask of neutrality covering his expression.
“Gavin and I are friendly. Friends, even. Sometimes. Mostly, before Dakota. She didn’t really like that we were friends.
” She waved away the thought. “This isn’t about her, though.
All of this is in the past. I don’t want to ruin where Gavin and I are as co-parents.
But you need to know what happened because it… it affects what we are together.”
“Why did you get married?” Travis asked again.
“He made it clear who your family is. Explained to me that you would all support us as a family.”
“If you got married.” Travis filled in the blank for her.
She nodded. When the divorce had finalized, she swore this was the first and last time she’d ever accept help like that. Owing Gavin cost her more than she was even willing to admit to herself—a whole heap of pride.
“My parents were angry I was pregnant. They were even less thrilled that I decided not to end the pregnancy,” she pressed on.
“I convinced myself I could be a good mom on my own. But then there were two babies. How was I supposed to raise two babies? Even if Gavin shared custody.” She swallowed against what felt like a rising tide ready to sweep her away.
“Gavin was my nuclear option so my world wouldn’t implode.
He stepped in. He offered an alternative.
He made it so I didn’t have to make a decision that I really, really didn’t want to make. ”
And it cost her only her dignity.
“It’s not his fault we didn’t work out.” Rachel gripped Travis’s arms to hold him in place.
“He just…he didn’t forgive me. For not calling him back.
For not wanting him. Eventually, I thought we forgave each other for everything.
We were both doing the best we could. The divorce wasn’t angry or anything.
He took care of the boys, wanted to ensure we stayed comfortable—but I didn’t want alimony. ”
“You should’ve taken the money,” he said through gritted teeth, because there was more than enough of the stuff to help her out. She didn’t have to work so hard all the time.
She gulped. No, she wouldn’t do that. She’d spent the last years rebuilding her self-esteem. Proving she could make it herself.
“The thing is…I would’ve called you back,” she said, pressed against his chest. “I had to tell you about what happened, so you’d know what a big deal that is to me.”
His hand pressed against her hair. His breaths jagged pieces of glass slicing through any hardening of her heart she’d used as armor.
“I would’ve called you first,” she whispered again. “I think Gavin will know that. I think he’ll know it if we tell everyone. And I think it’s going to hurt him.” She drew a deep breath. “If it hurts him and he lashes out, it could hurt the boys. I can’t let that happen.”
He pulled away from her, ran a hand through his hair, and paused as he saw the expression on her face. “We should go.”
Her lower lip trembled the smallest amount, a small bit of wet appearing at the edge of her eyelids, but no tears fell. She crossed her arms under her breasts, doing that thing she did to hold herself up.
“You wouldn’t have had to call me, because there’s no way I would’ve been able to walk out the door the next morning. I would’ve ordered pancakes—scratch that, I’d have made you pancakes myself. From scratch. We would’ve spent the whole day together. That’s what we would’ve done.”
She smiled a watery smile. “Are you really that good of a guy, Travis Frank?”
“Don’t let the word get out. I have a reputation to uphold.”
The tear that she’d been holding back finally fell, but it didn’t make it past her cheekbone because he wiped it away with his thumb.
Another fell. He repeated. Another.
Another.
“Don’t cry, sunshine,” he said, still swiping as she hiccupped. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth.
She smiled then.
The fact that she was smiling—really smiling, not one of those fake ones she’d gotten so used to using—the smiling was a good thing, but that didn’t change that there was a whole bucket of water falling out of her face.
“What’s going on right now?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, wiping at the tears herself. “First guess, then?”
“I think because I’m happy,” she said on a throaty laugh. “I’m happy, and I don’t know what to do with that when it could ruin everything for my kids.”
“We’re going to figure this out.” He sounded like he really believed that.
For now, for that moment, she decided to focus on the happy instead of the laundry. The dirty, messy, daily chore kind.