Page 74 of Keeping Secrets

Then she shook off his hand.

“I’ll see you around, Travis.” Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion. Exhausted.

“When? Where?”

“I don’t know,” she said with a shrug. “It’s a small town.”

“Keely, don’t do this.”

She looked up at him with so much sorrow in her eyes that he took a step back. What was he doing? If she wanted to go, he should let her. He should set her free.

He should never have gotten involved with her in the first place. He had known better, but he had let his own desires override doing what was right.

Keely deserved better.

“Goodbye, Travis.”

She walked out the office door, shutting it behind her. Every cell in his body screamed at him to run after her, to catch her, to explain. Instead, he sank into Scot’s office chair and put his head in his hands.

How had he made such a mess of things?

CHAPTER 23

Before Travis, Keely had never understood how heartache could manifest as physical pain. She wanted nothing to do with a man who couldn’t be honest with her… and yet the thought of not seeing him again made her feel physically ill. Her bones ached.

It felt uncomfortably similar to going through withdrawals. Short of the acute misery of that, nothing had ever affected her quite this strongly.

She hardly slept at all that night. She tossed and turned, occasionally checking her phone to see if Travis had texted her with some explanation. But he didn’t send her a single message. He didn’t call.

Good, she told herself. Good riddance.

But it didn’t feel good. It felt like torture.

After a night of tossing and turning and futilely trying to sleep, she finally crawled out of bed at dawn. She walked into the kitchen, sandy-eyed and irritable, and started a pot of coffee.

Though she had no appetite at all, she forced herself to eat one of the strawberry-lemon muffins she had made a couple of days before. Today was market day, the start of her trial week with Frances, and she needed to be able to function. Skipping breakfast on top of a sleepless night wasn’t going to do her brain or her body any favors.

More than once, as she had tossed and turned throughout the night fighting off thoughts of Travis and futilely trying to sleep, she had considered calling in sick and asking Frances if they could postpone their trip to the market. But she couldn’t stomach the possibility of losing this job on top of everything else.

This was her chance, an amazing job right here in town that would give her the resources she needed to pursue this nebulous dream she had of making a living by making food.

She felt jittery just sitting in the house and waiting for her appointment with Frances, so she bundled up and went out to walk the sea cliffs. It was a bright and blustery day. The blue water was checked with whitecaps and shone yellow-white where the sun glinted off the waves.

Thinking back to her day on the beach with Travis was downright painful. She tried not to think of him, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. Each time she cleared her mind or managed to get it going down another track, some new memory would emerge.

Twelve-year-old Travis laughing at her parents’ kitchen table.

His arm against hers as they sat in the cove eating macarons.

The warmth of his smile.

The picture of him and Rachel. The lies and obfuscations. The way he had dodged her and ignored her texts for weeks before finally taking her out to dinner.

Had he ever even been interested in her? She didn’t understand it. After all of the mixed signals that the man had sent her over the past few months, she should want nothing to do with him.

And yet there was nothing that she wanted more than for things to be right between them.

All she truly wanted was for him to track her down and explain everything, lay it out so clear and simple that all of her worries disappeared. She wanted him to tell her that he was madly in love with her, that she was the only one for him.

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