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Travis glanced down at his hands. Both of them were fisted. He stared at them so long, his vision blurred, and then, with a curse, he unclenched them.
“You want to talk about it?” Hudson asked.
“You guys aren’t going to hold hands and sing Kumbaya are you?” Nash popped open another can and slid farther back in his chair. Both Blackwells ignored him.
“How’d you and Rebecca get back together?” Travis asked, watching his brother closely.
Hudson was silent for a few moments as if contemplating his words. “It took a lot. You were too young to remember or know anything, but I ended things badly, and she pretty much hated me when I left town.”
“Something we have in common,” Travis mumbled. He wasn’t sure his brother heard him.
“I came back because Dad was sick.” He shook his head. “No, I came back because he was dying. I had no desire to stay here. I had a job and a life that was good. But then I saw her, and things changed.”
“She still hated you.”
“Damn right she did.” Hudson was quiet for a few moments. “It’s true what they say about love and hate. They’re two sides of the same coin. You can toss that sucker in the air and pray it lands the way you want it to. But it’s still a fifty-fifty shot.”
He stirred the fire with a long stick. “I convinced myself that she and I were never going to be together again. For a lot of reasons. The main one being I didn’t think I deserved her. She’d been through a lot. Shitty marriage. Moving back here. She was raising a young son on her own, and I was a complication she didn’t need. In my mind, she should have been with someone who existed on a level I couldn’t even aspire to. But then I realized something. None of us are saints. We’re all human, and we all make mistakes. But more importantly, we all deserve to be happy.”
“It doesn’t always happen,” Travis muttered.
“No.” Hudson agreed. “It doesn’t. But you’ve got to at least try.”
“Hudsy,” Nash groaned, straightening up in his chair. “Should I just call you Doctor Phil?”
Hudson tossed his empty can at his friend with a chuckle. “Do that and I’m going to start charging for all these words of wisdom.”
Nash looked at Travis. “Why don’t you just come out and tell us what the hell it is that’s bugging you?” He leaned forward. “Nope. Wait.” He shot a look toward Hudson. “You’re not the only Doctor Phil in the house.” He focused on Travis again. “I bet she’s about five foot six with blonde hair that almost touches her ass, a temper like no other woman in town, and the kind of eyes that can see right through a man.”
Busted.
Travis sighed. “She won’t take my calls or answer my text messages, even though I can see she’s read them. I’ve driven to the spa and she’s never there, which is bull. Her car is in the parking lot. Hell, I even dropped in to see Ryder.”
“What’d he say?” Hudson asked.
“He told me to go fuck myself.”
“What did you expect? He has his problems, but him and Ruby are family. They’ve always been tight. And he’s going to have her back even if she doesn’t want him to. If Ryder thinks you’re going to screw his sister over again, he’ll do whatever it takes to keep you away from her.”
Travis had nothing to say. He got it. He’d do the same if it were his sister. And that fact was a sobering thought.
“What is it exactly you expected to happen? Do you want to apologize to her? Is that what this is about?”
“Already done that.”
“So it’s something more.” Hudson’s eyebrow shot up. “She’s seeing the golf pro. You know that, right?”
“Not anymore.”
Hudson exchanged a look with Nash, who was now grinning.
Silence fell between the men. It stretched long and thin and became a kind of roaring in Travis’s ears. His chest was tight and his hands fisted once more. The emotion in him was like a big balloon that had filled and was about to burst.
“I don’t know what I want. Not exactly. But there’s still something between us. I know it. She knows it.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I want to spend time with her. I’m saying I miss her. I’m saying maybe I should never have let her go.”
