“She’s not scared,” Matt said. “Or she says she’s not. And maybe she isn’t—Becca’s got more spine than anyone I know, and Travis knows it too, which is its own kind of problem because it means he has to be careful about how he—” He stopped. Picked up the mug again. Put it down. “I just want her somewhere I can account for her. Somewhere I know there’s somebody nearby if something changes.”
I turned my own coffee mug in my hands and thought about what he wasn’t saying. Because there was definitely somethinghe wasn’t telling me. Matt was worried about Travis, which was real and legitimate, but the edges of this conversation were ragged in a way that suggested Travis was only part of it.
“What else?” I said.
He looked at me.
“Matt. There’s something else going on, right?”
He was quiet for a moment, the kind of quiet that meant he was deciding something. Then he let out a slow breath and leaned back in the booth, and something in his posture changed—the careful, contained version of Matt Hartford giving way to something more tired underneath.
“She had a hard stretch before she came back,” he said. “Harder than she’s told me, I think. I get pieces of it. The job ending, which was apparently—it wasn’t just the job ending, there was more to it, I mean, you know our parents. Travis was already—even before the breakup, he was—” He pressed his mouth together. “She moved to that trailer with practically nothing, Levi. I mean that pretty literally. And she won’t talk about it, not the way I need her to, and I can see her holding it together by sheer force of will every time I look at her, and I know she’s not sleeping, and I know she’s barely eating, and I know she sits out there in that trailer alone and?—”
He stopped.
“I can’t force her to come stay with me,” he said. “She’d never forgive me for pushing that hard. She needs to feel like she’s standing on her own. I understand that. I just—” He looked at me directly, and there was something raw in his expression that I knew he rarely let anyone see. “I need someone I trust close to her. Someone who’ll actually tell me if something’s wrong. Someone who will step in like she won’t let me do.”
The booth was quiet for a moment. Outside, the rain had started again, tapping at the window in that patient way it had in Sweetbriar, like it had nowhere particular to be.
“My parents have a trailer,” I said. “Sitting empty at their place.”
Matt looked at me.
“It’s in good shape,” I said. “I could borrow it. Move it into Riverside Pines for a while, take the lot next to hers if Aggie’s got it open.” I paused. “I’ve been meaning to get out of the townhouse anyway.”
I hadn’t been meaning to move out of the townhouse, but apparently, I’d do anything for Becca.
Matt was still looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Something that moved between gratitude and something more complicated. “This is good. A good idea. Just don’t make her feel?—”
“Matt.” I met his eyes. “I’ve known Becca since we were kids. I know how to handle this.”
Relief spread across his face as he visibly relaxed into the booth’s cushioned seat. He nodded, slowly and once, and then he picked up his coffee and finally drank some of it. The tension in his shoulders didn’t leave entirely, but it shifted, redistributed, the way it did when a man handed part of a weight off to someone else he trusted to carry it.
“Thank you,” he said. Quiet and direct, and meaning it completely.
“Don’t mention it.”
“I mean it, Levi.”
“I know you do,” I said. “Don’t mention it.”
We sat there a few minutes longer, the way you did after a conversation like that, letting the air settle back into something ordinary. Savannah came by and refilled both mugs without asking and didn’t linger.
Matt drained the last of his coffee and set the mug down with the finality of a man closing something up. He looked steadierthan he had when I’d walked in. “I’ll keep you posted,” he said. “If anything changes.”
“Do that.” I pulled on my jacket and stood. “And Matt.” He looked up. “She’s going to be okay. You know that.”
He held my gaze for a moment, and I could see him deciding whether to believe it or just accept it for now. He nodded once, the way he’d nodded when I’d told him about the trailer—slow and deliberate and meaning more than it looked like.
I left him there and made my way back through the crowd, lifting a hand to Savannah on my way past the bar.
Outside, the cold hit clean and sharp after the warmth of the pub. I stood on the wet sidewalk for a moment, hands in my jacket pockets, the neon sign flickering orange in the puddles at my feet, and let the rain-washed air clear my head. Then I walked to my truck, got in, and sat for a moment with my hands on the wheel before I started the engine.
Riverside Pines. The lot next to hers. A borrowed trailer, no guarantees, and the complete inability to do anything other than what I was already planning to do.
I called my mother and asked to borrow the trailer, holding the phone away from my ear as she excitedly said yes, then started asking questions I didn’t have answers for.
I started the truck and pulled out onto Main.
