Page 120 of The Lair

I’m about to tell him that I know who he is, but I stop myself because he’s right. We haven’t been fully honest with each other for different reasons—me because I was scared, and him because that’s simply how he is.

My voice quivers. “Why are you really here?”

He takes a step in my direction, then another. And when his hand lands on my elbow, cradling it with his gentle warmth, I don’t move. Because I may not deserve him, but I want to be selfish right now and take what isn’t mine.

“I’m not good with words or feelings,” he says in a low voice. Quietly, just for the two of us. “You… you’ve made me feel things I’d never felt before. It was uncomfortable at first. Until I learned to put a name on it.”

I close my eyes, my pulse beating in my throat. “Travis…”

“You don’t have to say anything.” His voice sounds gravelly. “You may not feel the same, and I’d understand. But I couldn’t?—”

“I feel the same,” I breathe out. “I feel everything. Every single thing, Travis. I have for months.”

He lets out an uneven breath. “You mean that?”

I nod. Then I feel rather than see his hand pulling me closer until my body is fully against his. Until both of his arms are around me, and I fall apart.

“I’ve missed you so much,” I croak out.

One of his hands moves to rest at the nape of my neck. “I’ve missed you more. Trust me on that.”

We stay silent for what feels like hours but is probably only a couple of minutes. I allow myself the last moments of selfishness in Travis’s arms before I force myself to be honest and do what’s right. No matter how badly my heart wants something different… my soul calls for this.

“I’m not ready,” I admit quietly against his chest. “I don’t want to stop talking to you, and I don’t want us to become strangers. I want you to get to know me, toreallyknow me, and I want to know you better too. I care about you more than I’ve ever cared about anyone, but I’m not ready for… for more. Not yet, even though I want to. I need to find myself first because you deserve the best version of me, and she doesn’t exist yet. I-I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize for asking for what you need.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear so lovingly, it takes everything in me not to bawl my eyes out.I love him. I love him so much.“However long it takes you, Allie, I’ll be here. You’ve got me, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”

Chapter Thirty-Nine

“Allie, honey?”Jada calls out the following afternoon. “It’s for you.”

Confused but not anxious—which is a first—I set my pen and journal down onto the mattress and stretch my arms above my head.

The past twenty-four hours have been quite… something.

When Jada and Paul came home and I told them about Travis’s visit, Jada admitted that Travis called her after the interview aired, asking if she thought it would be a good idea to come here.

“I hesitated,” she confessed last night. “I didn’t know if you were ready to see him.”

“You did the right thing,” I said, not wanting her to feel bad about something I wasn’t angry about in the first place. “I needed to see him. I needed the wake-up call.”

This morning, during my video call with Dr. Rowland, I told her about what it meant to me that he’d come to California. For me.

“I don’t want to run away anymore. Not from myself or my feelings, and not from him,” I told my therapist. “But I’m scared of what comes next.”

“In what way?” she asked, tilting her blonde head to the side and pushing her glasses up her nose.

“What if I ruin it? I’ve been lying for so long, I’m scared it’s now part of me, and I can’t even see it. What if I find myself lying about small things because that’s what my brain thinks will keep me safe?”

During our first video session, she told me I was very self-aware, which would help in my healing process. I’d never been called self-aware before.

“That’s a very valid worry to have,” she said, her voice always encouraging. “But you aren’t lying to me in our sessions. And when you talk to Jada and Paul, you aren’t lying about your feelings either. Nor did you lie in the interview.

“Therapy is a long journey. After what you’ve been through, it’s going to take a great deal of effort and patience to overcome these obstacles your family has been throwing in your direction for more than a decade. But youcando it. What you need right now is to listen to yourself and respect your wishes. If you want to go out and make friends, do it. If you want to get into a relationship, do it. You’re healthy in far more ways than you realize. Yes, you used to lie, but it never came from a bad place. It came from survival. Now that you don’t have to just survive anymore, you need to relearn how to trust yourself and take risks. We all have trauma that could ruin our relationships—what counts is that we work on ourselves to prevent that from happening, and you’re doing it.”

When we hung up, I plugged in my phone, waited until it was charged, and finally faced what I should’ve never been scared of in the first place.

Charlie

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