Page 66 of Avenged

“I want to say yes,” he continued, as if knowing I’d need to hear more. “I certainly got a second chance. I want to believe Dawson is getting his. But I think some people… Some people don’t have the heart or the spirit or the gumption to use the second chance for good. They haven’t earned it with the necessary work inside themselves to have it. Instead, they just use the second chance to inflict the same kind of misery on a new set of people.”

“Why did you need a second chance?” Because I couldn’t imagine him ever doing anything for which he would have needed forgiveness.

He shifted uncomfortably in the seat, as if he didn’t want to tell me.

“Come on. You’ve heard my doctor talk about my very private organs. You’ve seen me look like a zombie with blood oozing from my orifices. You’ve heard me talk about things I’ve never talked about with anyone. I think you owe me at least one secret.”

“It isn’t really a secret.”

“Okay,” I said, waiting.

“It’s just… After seeing what you do every day… what you do after every shitty thing that’s happened to you…what I did seems even stupider. Ridiculous.”

I thought about what he was saying. How the events of my life had made his feel like less, and it was another thing for me to regret. I didn’t want him to feel like less because of me. “It’s not fair to compare my life with yours. Whatever happened, I’m sure it felt huge and justified at the time.”

He nodded. “When I was at A&M’s Maritime Academy, Ava’s dad flunked me out of a required class. I’d done all the work. Mac, Eli, and I had even recorded me turning things in because we’d known he was looking for a way to punish us.”

“Why?”

“Because we’d let Ava get away.”

I took that in, and it didn’t seem stupid. It seemed just like something the Travis I knew would do, and I told him that.

He shook his head. “That wasn’t the stupid thing. That was absolutely the right thing to do. But after he flunked me, I couldn’t graduate with my friends. I had to retake the class in the fall. I lost my chance at the Navy’s officer program. They didn’t want me. I took all of that, internalized it, and became a royal dickhead for about four years.”

“I can’t imagine you ever being a dickhead.” His lips quirked at my use of his own term.

“Believe me, I was. Ask Eli. Ask Mac. Hell, ask Dawson. I shut them down every time they tried to pull me out of my self-pity. But then I saw Ava again, and I realized, just like you, she’d had to deal with so many worse things than what I’d gone through. I realized I was just being a huge whiny baby.”

His words made me think of Dawson’s attitude, and I suddenly realized how important it was to Travis to help his brother. To help his brother have the second chance Travis had already gotten.

We were almost back at the cottage by the time I asked my next question. “So how do you know the difference?”

He looked at me funny. “The difference?”

“The difference between the people who do and the people who don’t deserve a second chance?”

He rubbed the stubble on his chin, and I wondered how it would feel if he kissed me again. I wondered what the stubble would feel like if he was kissing other parts of my body besides just my lips.

“I’m not sure,” he answered. “I guess it’s just an instinct. A look at their entire life and what they’ve done before the thing that caused them to end up needing the second chance to begin with.”

I looked out the window and thought back on my childhood. “I can remember him coming home with this huge smile lighting up his face, hiding presents behind his back for my mom and me,” I told him. “Mom’s would be flowers or her favorite chocolate crinkles from the bakery downtown. Mine would almost always be something he’d made for me at the shipyard—a sign…a chair for my dolls…a Captain America shield.” My throat clogged on the emotions behind those memories. “There were so many good moments.”

“The good in him,” Travis said.

I nodded. “But after Mom, that light went away.” We pulled into the driveway, and I turned to him. “That’s why I have to go. I have to see if it’s there again.”

I saw a range of emotions fly over his face as he considered what I’d said. He closed his eyes, took a breath, and then asked, “Can I go with you?”

Travis had eased his way into my life. I’d avoided him at first because my body was attracted to his in a way that terrified me. I’d been subconsciously terrified of just this moment. This moment where he continued hammering at the cracks in my shield, causing it to slide away, forcing me to let him in. But now that the moment was actually here, it didn’t terrify me at all. It relieved me. It made me feel like I didn’t have to carry my burdens on my own. That I could share them with someone in a way I couldn’t share them with Violet.

She was my responsibility, not the other way around.

I couldn’t find my voice, but I nodded, and he saw it. I was accepting his help because there was no way I could face this alone. I wasn’t anywhere near strong enough. I wasn’t Glasswing, or Black Widow, or even Jessica Jones.

I was just a regular, mortal human being who required normal mortal things. Like friendship. Like love. Like hope. I wasn’t sure what would happen when it was gone. When he was gone. When he took away what he was offering and moved on to the next chapter in his life, but I had time to figure that out. I had time to rebuild the shield if I needed it. I’d survived worse, and I was sure I’d survive this, too.

Truck

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