Page 72 of Obsessed with my Temptation

I left after them. I couldn’t stay here with my parents, there was no way I could sleep feeling like this. A knife was digging into my insides. I was tired of being like this, of just sticking to my ‘perfect guy’ routine and not trying to step out of this confining box I found myself in.

And yet I couldn’t help but be scared. The thought of disappointing people filled me with apprehension, but nothing like the dread I felt at the thought of losing Travis.

And yet it felt inevitable. He would move on eventually, he’d never wanted a relationship with me. He’d told me in the beginning and he’d told me that day in the drive-in movie.Our date. We’d been having fun, but what could I offer him in the long run? I wasn’t shameless or confident like him. I wasn’t out and proud. I was nothing like what I thought he would like.

I wandered around town, letting the cool night air sting my face and clear my mind but it didn’t work.

When I finally stopped and looked up, I was right at the entrance of Travis’s apartment. I needed to see him. I needed to tell him what I felt, because if nothing else, that was what we’d talked about, what I promised.

If it stopped working for any of us, we had to tell the other.

And if Travis never wanted to be with me, never wantedmore…I couldn’t keep doing this. It would break me.

The doorbell rang, but no one responded. Looking up at his floor, I saw the lights weren’t on. No one was in.

I didn’t know when he would come back and I didn’t feel like sending him a message. I felt like I didn’t deserve to have him come and leave whatever he was doing for me after the evening I’d just had. So I sat there and waited for him to come, hoping that by the time he did, something would have made this turmoil stop.

Chapter 22

Travis

Aweek without Scott was a lot harder than I would have liked it to be. The competition would be here in no time, but I could barely concentrate. My repressed feelings for Scott hung around me like a dark cloud, and it made for a hell of a fun time trying to study for exams. Coach wasn’t happy either. He tried to pump me up, then tried to chastise me when it didn’t work. He shook his head and let me be when that didn’t either.

I was a mess. I wasin lovewith Scott, and I was fucking terrified. I’d broken all the promises I’d made to myself, and it had given me some of the best weeks of my life. But where would it lead? This was never part of the plan. And even if I’d been happy—I knew that what Henry had told me was true. I knew how ‘flings’ with good boys ended.

I thought seeing Scott less might help, at least while I was trying to sort myself out, but it was almost worse. The stolen moments we had only left me feeling like I was trying to hold on to smoke. Like it would leave my fingers before I knew it.

On Friday I went to have dinner with my mother and sister at the latter’s request. Or orders, more like. Layla had been hounding me for weeks to go with her more often to see our mother. This week already felt eternal and I couldn’t deal with her disapproving tones anymore, so I gave up and went.

It was almost as tense as usual, only I must have spoken three sentences during the whole dinner. Being in my childhood home only reminded me of my asshole father, which was the cherry on top of everything else.

Helping to wash and put away the dishes as usual, I hoped that this whole week, thismonthcould be over already. I wanted to see Scott and just be with him, forget for a bit about the fear coiling in my gut.

“Travis, listen…” my mother started. I hadn’t noticed my sister had left, so now it was only my mother and me.

Sneaky Layla.

“I wanted to wish you good luck on your competition,” my mother said with a small tight smile.

Her gray eyes were just like mine. Something I was glad about. Only my hair reminded me of my father, and so had my nose, but now after being broken it looked less perfect and it was no longer his—it was mine.

“Thanks,” I said, drying my hands and getting ready to leave.

“I know I haven’t been very good to you, Travis, but I want you to know that I will always support you. No matter what you do.”

That made me tense. “What is this about?”

My mother sighed. “The fact that you have to ask tells me just how bad I’ve been doing.” She leaned on the kitchen table, hands on her lap, expression sad. “I wasn’t a very good mother to you Travis, and for that I’m sorry. I was worried about you and I didn’t know how to make you listen, not realizing it wasmewho wasn’t listening.”

I gulped, throat tight. I didn’t want to hear what she had to say, but I did.

I’d been very angry in high school. My parents’ decaying relationship, their fights, and my father’s passive aggressiveness had gotten on my nerves. I was as angry as my father was, only I took it out by fighting. By splitting my knuckles, by feeling the thud of bone against bone, the metallic scent of blood filling the air. I’d told my mother countless times to leave my father, but she hadn’t listened—even if he eventually left.

And she hadn’t listened when I told her that it hadn’t been me who had hurt Mark. Only because my sister and her boyfriend at the time had been there to prove my innocence had she believed me. My mother started discounting my opinions once I started with the fights, and I never regained that trust back.

Neither had she regained mine.

But now, when I already felt down and near my breaking point, she had to bring this up?

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