We lay like that while the river sang outside and Aggie’s lights blinked through the window in soft, cheerful pulses. His heartbeat thudded steadily against my spine. His thumb moved in slow circles over my knuckles.
I fell asleep wrapped in him, safe and wanted and finally, completely at home. The trailer was quiet except for our breathing. And for the first time in years, the dark didn’t feel empty. It felt shared.
Hours later, I woke to the sound of gravel crunching under tires. Then footsteps, the sound of someone who knew exactly where they were going. Gray morning light seeped through the curtains. The river murmured softly. The campground held its breath.
Then the knock. Sharp. Staccato. Expectant.
“Becca.”
Travis.
The sound of his voice did what it always did before my brain could stop it — shot straight down my spine and lit every nerve ending at once. Not fear exactly. Not anymore. Something hotter than that, and uglier. My jaw clamped shut so hard I felt it in my back teeth.
Levi stirred beneath me, immediately alert. His arm tightened around my waist for one protective second before he eased me off his chest and sat up. His hair was sleep-mussed, eyes already sharp. He didn’t speak. Just looked at me, reading everything in my face, then nodded once.
I was already out of the blanket before I’d decided to move. Muscle memory, maybe. Or rage. I grabbed my sweatshirt and dragged it over my head, shoved my legs into my pants, and crossed the narrow trailer with my pulse loud in my ears and my hands. My hands started to shake, and I wasn’t going to let them. I pressed my thumbnail into my palm hard enough to sting and kept walking.
He showed up here. He actually showed up here.
By the time I reached the door, my teeth were still clenched. My eyes were burning with it. The calm I put on wasn’t peaceful; it was a lid pressed down over something that wanted very badly to boil over. I was done being afraid of this man. Done. But what was underneath the fear, now that I was finally looking at it, didn’t feel like freedom yet.
It felt like fury.
I opened the door.
Travis stood on the step in his navy blue jacket and expensive boots, hair neat, expression arranged into earnest concern. But it was a mask. He didn’t care about me, not really. He opened his mouth.
I looked at him and felt my eyes narrow, slow and deliberate, and said nothing. “It’s early.” The words came out flat and bitten off, harder than I intended, or maybe exactly as hard as I intended. My jaw was still tight. I could feel it in my temples.
“I know.” He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. It never had, and I’d spent years telling myself I was imagining that. “I’ve been thinking about you.”
“Travis—”
His name in my mouth enraged me. I heard the way I said it—clipped, almost a warning, the kind of tone I’d heard and swallowed down for years because I’d been so careful, always so careful, not to give him anything to work with. Not anger, not tears, not the satisfaction of knowing he still got under my skin. But he was under my skin right now. I could feel it like a splinter, hot and buried deep.
“I heard your podcast last night.” His voice was warm, reasonable, and certain he had the upper hand. “Someone sent me the link and told me it was you. You were talking about someone who keeps showing up. Someone you’ve been circling for years.” He paused, bait dangling. “I know that was about me.”
The audacity hit like a slap.
He took my silence as permission to keep going.
“I know things got bad,” he said, dropping into that soft, confessional tone he’d always used when he wanted to rewrite reality and make me fall back into line. “I made mistakes. But what you said last night—that’s us. That’s always been us, Becca. You know it.”
“No,” I said. Calm. Clear. Final.
He blinked.
“It wasn’t about you,” I said. “It was never about you.”
Something flickered. He was surprised, then his expression hardened. “You’re still angry.”
“Yeah, I’m angry,” I said. “I want you to know that. I am so angry at you, I can barely look at you right now.”
His expression shifted, something flickering behind the concern—surprise, maybe, that I wasn’t doing what I always did. Smoothing it over. Making it easier for him.
“Becca—”
“No.” The word came out harsh. “You don’t get to say my name like that anymore. Like you’re worried about me. Like you showed up here because you care.” I felt my voice trying to climb and dragged it back down, not to softness but to something colder, more deliberate. “I’m angry. I’m furious. And I am also done. All of those things are true at the same time, and I need you to hear me. I am done with you. Not taking space, not needing time, not something you can wait out.” My hands weren’t shaking anymore. “This isn’t a door,” I added. “It’s a wall. And I built it, and it’s mine, and you don’t get to knock on it and smile at me like that and think anything is going to open.”
