Afraid to Fly (Anchor Point #2)(49)

Travis stiffened abruptly, almost like I'd smacked him. Eyes locked on me, he swallowed again. "She . . . really?"

I nodded.

"Oh." He shifted, and he was tense now. Really tense. "So your kids . . . When, uh . . . when do you think that'll be? That you'll tell them?"

"Don't know. She's going to talk to her brother and get his opinion." I smiled. "She said she hopes it works out with us, though."

He smiled too, but he seemed guarded. Not distant, necessarily, but something was off.

I pushed myself off the counter and crossed the kitchen. "Hey. You okay?"

"Yeah. Yeah. I . . ." He shook his head. "Just tired from last night."

"Oh." I touched his face. "You seem kind of . . ." Distracted? A million miles away?

"I'm good." His smile warmed up a bit, and he kissed me lightly. "And I spent most of the day thinking. About, um, us."

My heart fluttered. "Yeah?"

He nodded. "Yeah, I . . ."

Our eyes locked.

He held my gaze for a long moment.

And then his whole body tensed. Little by little, his expression changed. I couldn't put my finger on exactly how, but his warm, nervous smile was gone, and in its place . . .




       
         
       
        
I could've been imagining it, but I thought some color slipped out of his face. He was still looking right at me, and yet he had a thousand-yard stare too. Like he was looking at me and through me and somewhere else entirely, all at the same time.

"Travis." I squeezed his shoulder. "You okay?"

Abruptly, something shifted in him. He released a breath as he broke eye contact, and his shoulders sagged. Then he turned away and, hand trembling violently, ran his fingers through his hair. "Fuck."

"What's wrong?" My heart was in my throat. What the hell?

His back was to me. For what seemed like years, he didn't make a sound.

Cautiously, I took a step closer. "Travis?"

"I'm sorry." He turned back around, and when our eyes met, he whispered the four words I was dreading the most: "I can't do this."

Panic surged through me. "What? Why not? What's . . ." I blinked a few times. "What's going on?"

He wiped a hand over his face. "I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you said that. But what-"

"This has nothing to do with you. I promise." He swallowed hard, almost like he was trying to keep from getting sick. "But I . . . Look at me, Clint. I'm barely keeping myself together. I . . . I don't have it in me to be in a relationship. Not now."

"But, all along, we've been-"

"I know. But I-"

"You're dumping me out of the blue? For nothing?"

"Not for nothing," he snapped. "You didn't do anything wrong. You're . . ." He tightened his jaw, and his voice wavered. "You've been great. You're . . . God, you're perfect."

Oh, not even close. "Then what the hell-"

"I just can't." He put up a hand and shook his head. "This is too much, too fast, and I-"

"Then we can slow down. Just tell me what to do."

"No. There's no slowing it down. We're already too-" He snapped his teeth together, and his eyes widened like he'd almost said more than he should've. Breaking eye contact, he said, "I need to go."

"But-"

"Please." He met my eyes again, and he suddenly looked exhausted. As if we'd been standing here pounding our heads on this subject for hours and hours instead of barely a minute. "I need to go."

Before I could respond, he turned and headed for the door, walking fast enough to almost hide his limp as he left me staring slack-jawed at his back and wondering what the hell was going on. What did I do? What did- 

The other night's conversation flashed through my mind.

He knew what had ended my career as an RAP. He knew what I had done to all those people.

Was that why he couldn't look at me?

And . . .

Oh shit. He knows!

I hurried after him. "Travis, wait."

Hand on the front door, he turned around.

I tried and failed to ignore the queasiness in my gut. "What I told you . . . about what happened to-what I did."

His eyebrows rose, an unspoken Yeah?

"That stays between us, right?"

Travis's lips parted. He stared at me like I'd just insulted his mother. "Of course it does. Why wouldn't it?"

"I . . ." My shoulders fell. "I don't know. I . . ." Trusted you differently that night than I do now. "I don't know."

He watched me for a moment. Then, without another word, he left.

I leaned against the wall, heart thumping and head spinning. All the air in my lungs was gone. Hell, all the air in the room seemed to be gone. Fuck-another minute in here and I was going to suffocate.

On shaking knees, I stepped outside into my tiny backyard. There, I dropped onto the concrete step and stared out at the postage stamp of lawn.

So that was it. Zero to sixty in under three months, and bam! Brick wall. I'd fallen hard for someone. Finally had some hope that I really was worthy of being loved, that I was no longer the asshole who'd nuked my marriage, and . . . this.

I wasn't even angry. I was probably hurt, but I didn't feel it yet. I was just in shock. After the way things had been going, this was the last thing I'd anticipated, and I didn't know how to process it yet, never mind how to feel about it. All I could do was sit here and stare blankly into space and wonder why Travis wasn't here anymore.

I needed to get out of here and go think about something else. Maybe I needed to find someone else to get my mind off Travis. I could always go down to that other town. What was the name? Flatstick? Whatever it was called, there were apparently a lot of gay bars. Or I could reactivate my accounts on the latest find-me-some-dick app.

But even thinking about all that exhausted me. It didn't matter that usually the first thing I wanted after a breakup was to get between the sheets with someone else. Hell, less than twelve hours had elapsed between my ex-wife kicking me out for good and a Vegas streetwalker getting into my car. It wasn't my proudest moment, but it had happened.

Today, I didn't want to go anywhere with anyone. I didn't even think I had the energy to pursue-let alone engage in-sex.

The difference was obvious. When my ex-wife had dropped the divorce hammer, it was like yelling that we'd hit an iceberg after the ship was already ass-up and going down.

This breakup, though, had come out of nowhere. One minute, smooth sailing. The next . . .

The next . . .

This was the next minute.

And I still had no idea what had happened or where to go from here.





Did I do the right thing?

Of course I did.

What else could I do?

On the way home from Clint's, I wondered more than once if I should pull over and get my shit together. I couldn't concentrate. Not while I was still reeling from how things had gone. One moment, I'd been standing there ready to pour my heart out and tell him I loved him, and the next, he'd mentioned coming out to his kids, and suddenly my head had been full of Dion's long silent voice.

"If I could, I would. God, I would. But I can't lose my kids over this. They've-"

"I know." I could still feel myself choking back tears as I'd spoken. "We can't. I know. I wish we could, but we can't."



       
         
       
        

Then he'd kissed me. Then he'd left. Then he'd been gone for good, lowered in a box into a six-foot pit while the kids he'd sworn not to lose had bawled their eyes out-

And face-to-face with Clint, after psyching myself up to tell him that yes, we could . . . I couldn't. It had suddenly come down to either diving headlong into something that would end in painful disaster, or walking out and wondering if I'd fucked up.

So did I fuck up?

A truck roared past me, startling me, and I realized I'd dropped below forty in a fifty-five-mile-an-hour zone. Yeah. Time to pull over.

I slowed down a bit more, nosed off the highway, and came to a stop. With my hazards on and my engine idling, I scrubbed a hand over my face. I'd saved myself from going through the kind of heartbreak I'd had in the past. I had to do this if I didn't want to hurt like that again.

So why did it hurt so bad? Why was I shaking? Shit, did I make a mistake?

Fuck. Apparently I was too screwed up in the head to figure this out on my own.

Hands unsteady, I texted Paul. You busy? Really need to talk again.



Paul met me at my place half an hour later.

"Hey," he said as he came inside. "What's up?"

"Thanks for coming over. You don't mind me picking your brain twice?"

He shrugged off his jacket. "Sean and his mother are still arguing about wedding shit, so I'm happy to vacate for a while. So what's going on?"

"Let's go sit. You want any coffee or anything?" I didn't know why I bothered stalling. He was here now, and he was going to drag the truth out of me whether I liked it or not.

"No, I'm fine."

We walked into the living room.

"You're really wound up," Paul said. "Talk to me, Travis."

That was what I'd brought him here for, wasn't it? "I . . ." I rubbed both hands over my face, then turned and faced him. "I called things off with Clint."