“Nice seeing you as ever, Meredith,” I call out, striding back to my truck.
I slide in behind the wheel and glance up, watching as she stands there with her arms folded across her chest. All I know is the sooner I’m out ofSilverpine, the better, because every time I see her face, it reminds me of how much her family has tried to hurt me through my own flesh and blood.
What’s coming isn’t all that different from the memory that just blindsided me.
I’ve spent every spare moment with Piper these last few days. Telling her I love her felt like breaking down the final wall inside me, allowing her and all my feelings to come flooding in.
Now that she’s gone back to her sister’s for the night, I’ve asked Travis to come over. My stomach’s in knots, and every part of me wants to run the other way, but we need to talk. The first issue is what he did to Piper. The second—and this one makes my chest tight just thinking about it—is what I’ve done to him.
Loud knocking cuts through the silence of the house, dragging me out of the dark spiral of my thoughts. I step back from the kitchen window, set down my whiskey, and head toward the front door. When I pull it open, my son just stands on the porch with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets like we don’t have a thousand unresolved things between us.
“Since when do you lock your door?”
“Since I wasn’t okay with you just coming and going whenever you feel like it.” The truth stings coming out, but I force it anyway.
For a few long seconds, he just stands there studying me, like he’s trying to figure out what version of me he’s walking into—the disappointed father, the exhausted farmer, or the man who’s barely holding onto his temper.
When he finally steps inside, his eyes sweep the living room before he drops onto the couch with a lazy kind of casualness that makes my jaw tick. I don’t sit beside him. I can’t. There’s still a part of me that wants to beat him bloody for what he did to Piper, so I take the opposite chair and lean forward, with my elbows braced on my knees, trying to cage the fury clawing its way up my spine.
“Where is she?”
“Home.”
“With her sister?”
I nod once, and we’re locked in a staredown that crackles with twenty-three years of resentment and unspoken shit we’ve both buried too deep. Now that he’s here, sitting on my couch, I’m at a loss, because how the hell do you start unpacking two decades of emotional baggage?
“The first thing we’re gonna discuss is Piper. We’re going to talk about what you did to her and why the hell you think you had any right to put your hands on a woman. Because I know damn well I never taught you that.” I lean forward, darkness edging into my tone as the image of that bruise on her perfect skin flashes behind my eyes. “And as much as your mom failed to teach you basic human respect, don’t you dare sit there and tell me she’d be proud of the man you were in that moment.”
“Did you see my face?” Travis spits back. “Mom was ready to call the fucking police.”
“But you couldn’t let her, could you? Because then you’d have to explain why a woman half your size felt the need to defend herself against your hands.”
He shifts forward, suddenly finding the floor real interesting, while the silence stretches like a rubber band pulled too tight.
“I was angry. That’s all it was.”
“That’s not a fucking excuse.” My grip tightens on the armrest until it creaks beneath my fingers. “There’s never an excuse for what you did. Not anger, not hurt feelings or jealousy, not anything.”
“Does that work both ways?” he asks, and there’s a challenge in his eyes when they meet mine. “Because Piper’s fist sure as hell flew.”
“Do I condone it? No.” The truth grinds out between my teeth. “But you deserved worse than what you got, and you’re lucky I wasn’t there to see it happen.”
“Why? Because you would’ve played the hero? Give me a fucking break.”
This arrogant bastard wearing my son’s face has the audacity to laugh like this is all some big joke. My fingers curl into fists against mythighs, itching to remind him exactly whose house he’s in and whose blood runs in his veins.
“I got mad because she was laying into Mom. I slapped her around and got my ass handed to me. My mistake. It won’t happen again.”
He doesn’t care one goddamn bit.
It’s the most hollow, pathetic excuse I’ve ever heard, and it confirms what I already feared, that he’d do it again. If he thought he could get away with it, if there weren’t bruises to wear as proof, he’d absolutely do it again.
“You know what, Travis? I tried to raise you right in the small window I actually had. I tried to teach you manners, respect, and what it means to be a man.” I rake a hand through my hair as frustration burns in my chest. “But you don’t give a single fuck about any of it. Your mom never showed you discipline, never gave you boundaries, and now look at what you’ve become.”
“Don’t you dare talk about her. You knew her for five minutes while you were making me, then left her like she was nothing but a cheap whore.”
“What did you expect me to do? Marry a woman I barely knew just to make your grandparents happy?”
