Page 73 of Avenged

I looked up at him in surprise. I had lost a few pounds since I met him, mostly because Leena and Mandy weren’t around to push chocolate cake and snickerdoodles at me. But it had also been because of the pain I’d had before the treatments had started to kick in.

“I’m hardly wasting away,” I said with an eye roll.

He smiled. “Just come home first, and then, if you still want to go to work, I won’t say another word.”

He took my silence as acquiescence, which I guess it was.

Travis parked outside Nate’s, and I stayed in the truck, rolling down the window, and letting the smell and sounds of the ocean soothe me, to ground me to where I was now instead of the jail we’d spent our morning in. The smells of garlic from the restaurant twined with the salt air. The sounds of the tourists navigating the streets littered with booths for Sailfest rang gently through my ears. They blended with the excitement of the seagulls searching for food amongst the crowds. I closed my eyes and just let all of it settle into my bones.

A hand on my cheek jerked me out of my almost sleep. Travis was smiling in the window at me. He looked like life: the soft curve of his lips, his amber eyes twinkling, his gray T-shirt with the Coast Guard emblem stretched across his chest in just the right way. My husband.

The knowledge of that hit me all the way down to my core. Down to the little hidden spots inside me I didn’t let anyone see. The spots that needed to be loved. That needed to be accepted. That needed to be wanted. I ached so badly for that word “husband” to have all of the real meanings behind it. I wanted more. I wanted him.

That made me jolt up from my half-asleep position.

I took the food from him through the window. It was enough to feed a small army, but I’d slowly gotten used to the fact that Travis and Dawson ate like that. Like a small army.

As Travis jogged around to the other side of the truck, my eyes followed him, and my body ached. I really did want him. My body had wanted him for a long time, but all of me wanted him now. Wanted to call him mine in a way I couldn’t. That we’d agreed not to.

But he’d broken our agreement once with a kiss.

Wasn’t I allowed one slip too?

One chance to feel his skin against mine?

Just once.

Just once and then it would be okay to let him go again.

Like I’d have to.

So many people did that—had sex and then moved on. Couldn’t I do it, too? Couldn’t I let myself have the moment before it was gone? It wasn’t anyway near my norm, but maybe it was exactly what I needed. Something outside the boundaries I kept myself within.

I shook myself out of my thoughts as we pulled into the cottage driveway behind Jada’s sports car. I hadn’t known she and Vi would be there. I thought they’d already be ambling through the booths and rides at the festival.

“Stay there, I’ll get the door,” Travis said, and he was at the pickup’s door before I could object. He took the pizza boxes and food bags away from me.

He led the way to the house and opened the door before I could get it for him. I stepped inside, and three voices rang out, “Surprise!”

Violet, Jada, and Dawson were standing with streamers and balloons filling the tiny living space behind them. They had little party hats on their heads that looked like they were made for two-year-olds, and they held party horns they proceeded to blow with a harsh nasally sound.

Travis turned and looked down at me, the twinkle in his eye shining brighter. “Happy Birthday, Jersey.”

My heart flew out of my chest. The four people in the house had thrown me a birthday party. I hadn’t had a birthday party since before Mom died. Since I was thirteen… in eleven years. Mandy and Leena had bought me a cake and given me presents on the two birthdays we’d lived with them, but I hadn’t let them make a bigger deal out of it. I hadn’t had party decorations, and stupid balloons, and people yelling surprise.

Violet jumped over to me, her vibrancy filling the room like it always did. She hugged me tight. “I love you, Jersey. Happy Birthday.”

I hugged her tightly back. “I love you, too, but you’re in a boatload of trouble.” But it was said with a smile in my voice. “It isn’t my birthday.”

“Tomorrow is,” Travis said with a smile that matched Violet’s. True happiness. True happiness that they were doing this for me. Tears that I hadn’t shed today threatened to overflow once more just as they’d tried to come at Travis’s kind words earlier.

“Violet knows I don’t like to make a big deal out of it,” I said, barely holding back the emotions trying to burst from inside me.

“It is a big deal. Twenty-four. You’re almost a quarter of a century,” Dawson said. “Old.”

I couldn’t help a smile and a laugh, letting go of my darker thoughts. I may have been closer to Dawson’s age than Travis’s, but I felt way older, like I was turning forty-four instead of twenty-four. Like I truly was Violet’s mom and not her older sister.

“Come get your presents,” Violet said, pulling me into the kitchen where there was a five-layer chocolate cake, more balloons, sparkling confetti, and a small pile of presents.

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