Not since that night with Gabriel. Months. It had been months since she'd been loved freely and completely.
And what did you do? You ran scared and this was the result. You should have just stayed with him.
Caught between an icy blue glare and a deep brown accusatory look, it seemed the dumbest thing she'd ever done in her life was hesitate when Gabriel told her he loved her that night and wanted to build a life with her.
You're not strong enough for this... You never were...
But something in her rebelled. Something propped her backbone up when she felt like crumbling. Something made her face him and speak firmly, like the strong woman she'd been pretending to be all this time.
"Since you're so keen on rehashing our history, Gabriel, why don't we start from the beginning? It's only fair, right?"
His face softened then hardened just as quickly. Meredith Rowe, the queen of the emotional quick change, would have been impressed.
"It was you who didn't give me a second thought in the beginning.
You
who might not even have noticed me if you hadn't caught me in a... compromising position.
You
that said you didn't want to ruin anything with a
real
relationship, but you continued to fuck me anyway when you could fit me into your busy schedule."
She was gaining speed now, hurtling away from the guilt. She was reminding herself why she was so hesitant to jump head first into a love she never quite believed she was good enough for.
"It was
you
who let me wait for you while you traveled the world, and did whatever you wanted with whoever you wanted. Called it giving us freedom when the only person who was free was
you
!" she whispered loudly with a jab to his chest. "It wa
s you
who waited until someone else finally stepped up to the plate to give me what you wouldn't, what you refused to give me. You waited forever to tell me you loved me, and you kept secrets from me because that's what was easiest for
you
."
His jaw clenched and she saw him swallow. It gave her courage to continue even though her field of vision was becoming glassy.
"And let's not forget how well you took it the first and only time I let you know just how insecure and hurt I was. You forced me to show you how powerless I was against you, how much I loved you and wanted you in spite of myself that night... And even after all that, you still couldn't promise me you would be there with me till the end," she said, and her voice cracked, recalling how he'd told her he didn't know what he wanted.
He’d said he didn't know if he wanted to commit to “forever” with anyone. He’d said he didn't know if he could, if he was good enough for her. Deep down, all she'd heard was that he didn't love her enough not to hurt her. She wasn't ever going to be enough.
"You weren't even willing to try, Gabriel, not really. Not until it was too late."
The truth hung in the air, thick and unrelenting, and each of them relived that angry night of sex and broken trust in the face of Meredith Rowe's manipulations. Bitter words, accusations and fear had been unleashed as a result, and she'd run from it all as soon as she was physically able.
"Is that right, Gabe? Did I cover everything? Because from the looks of it, what I should really be sorry for is being the dumb bitch who gave you everything you wanted from the jump. I should apologize to you for being spineless, naïve, and full of hope that I was going to be enough for you if I just did things your way."
There was a noticeable shift in his body language, a sigh that could only be categorized as regret. An apology was forming. She knew it the second his eyes lowered from their steady gaze into hers and she felt awful at once. Even after everything she'd said, she still felt like the guilty party. She'd willingly done all of those things for him, had even been willing, misguided as she was, to bend her body to what she thought his needs were, all because she let Meredith convince her she wasn’t enough. She was the fool in all of this, and yet here he was, made to feel like the big bad wolf again.
This wasn't how she wanted this to go, but he was already speaking over the apology formulating in her head.
"You're not dumb, Nicole. Maybe you had too much faith in me. Maybe... maybe I'm guilty of taking advantage of that, when all I ever wanted was to be good enough to deserve what you gave me. But I loved you," he whispered softly. Adamantly. "No one could ever love you as much as I did."
There was a long pause, a moment where she held her breath, waiting. It seemed her life was made up of the moments she was waiting for him, longing for him. He started to open his mouth and say something, brought his eyes up to hers, then looked over her head and turned into the human equivalent of stone. Whatever that moment would have been before he caught sight of Travis behind her faded into ether.
"Whatever bad blood we had between us, whatever hurts or resentments I wish I could take back, at the end of the day you have to live with the fact that you wouldn't let either one of us make amends, and be happy together. You finally had all the power, the final say, and you made the wrong choice, just like I did so many times before. We both had a shot to make it right. And we blew it."
She didn't need to turn around. Travis' arm was encircling her waist, pulling her into a cold embrace of ownership. Not real love. Not desire. Just a man claiming what little victory he had over the opponent who’d won the race before it even began.
"She's all yours man," Gabriel said finally. "You win."
He lifted himself from the wall and turned his back on her again, his words ringing in her ears like a taunt as he walked onto the dance floor.
She couldn't speak for him unequivocally, but she had a hunch that the last thing Travis felt like was a winner.
Welcome to the club
, she thought.
I don't feel like much of a winner either...
Chapter Eighteen
Nicole sat across from Travis, scooping up a spoonful of Cap'n Crunch and waiting for him to acknowledge the persistent stare aimed at him. For two days she'd been little more than a piece of furniture propped up in the various rooms of their home. He hadn't even grunted at her except for the night of the reception...
They came home in silence. She reached out and touched his shoulder as he took off his suit jacket. It was a silent apology for the night of awkwardness that couldn't have been avoided by him if he'd wanted to. There was no right answer for Travis, not when Gabriel was the best man of the groom, and Nicole was the sister and sister-in-law of the newlyweds. There was no escape from worry and the unrelenting reminders of what Gabriel meant to her, the toll it had taken on their relationship. Either he stayed at home and waited to see if she ran back into his arms, or he went and suffered through a mixture of icy stares and longing glances. Either way, he was the outsider in this equation. She felt that as surely as she felt his shoulder under her shaking fingertips.
She expected him to brush her off, to ignore her. She expected uncertainty and anger. She didn't expect him to reach up and touch her fingertips gently with his, his head drooping with a fatigue that echoed her own. She dared to move closer, to show him he wasn't alone, even if he'd spent the last couple of months feeling that way. He responded in kind by turning into her hand and kissing her palm softly, almost reverently. She'd never deserve the way he felt about her, the worship that resided in his touch even now.
A striking thought hit her, and Gabriel's words echoed in her head. He'd never felt like he deserved her love and admiration, not to the extent she was willing to give it. He hadn't meant to take advantage of that anymore than she'd meant to take advantage of Travis. But faith and love had conspired against them, and here she stood once again echoing Gabriel's journey in her own life.
She wanted this to end differently. She wanted to take away Travis' pain and stop being the cause of it in the first place. She used the same hand he still held against his lips to turn his face to hers. The kiss she placed on his lips was soft, gentle.
The kiss he returned only started out that way.
Then it became something more. Something harder. He turned his body all the way into hers, pulling her into an almost painful embrace, but she didn't recoil. She gave into what he wanted, because it had been so long since he'd wanted her in a way that didn't make them both feel numb. This was passion and anger and longing. This was the kiss of a man who had been submerged and was now coming up for air.
It all happened so fast. His fingers were on her zipper, roughly pulling it down with one hand, while the other stripped off the strap dangling loosely on her shoulder. She gasped for breath in between kisses, and before she knew it she was backed up with no place left to go, then bouncing on the bed, wearing only heels, underwear and shock.
The snap and clink of his belt unbuckling, the way he peeled his shirt off his lean torso, even the way he stared down at her heaving chest and half-naked body, made her slick and tingly.
But even with all that, something was off. He stared at her body as he slid her panties off. Not her eyes. And the hunger to be touched, the impending release, was a pale shadow in comparison to the heat Gabriel inspired. With just a few choice words and a look — however cruel those words were meant to be — he'd set her on fire.
There shouldn't have been any time to think about that altercation, or about Gabriel period. There shouldn't have been a thought for the man who had tried to humiliate her with remembrances of the mistakes she'd made. Still, when Travis tugged her hips down to the edge of the bed, shoved his pants down and off, and lined himself up with her quivering body, she found herself flashing back to similar moments with Gabe.
Even during the roughest, dirtiest moments, he'd still been connected to her. His eyes would lock on hers, his fingers coursing over every inch of bare skin. Every fiber of his being used to scream he wanted her as much as he wanted to be inside of her. With Travis, this moment was rendered cold, almost perfunctory if it hadn't been for the long stretch of deprivation that fed her hunger to be filled.
She wanted to grab hold of Travis' face, pull it down to hers and kiss him like she always did. She wanted his tenderness, but he didn't have any tenderness to give her. Just lust. Just release.
When it was all over, he barely looked at her. He simply pulled out, pulled away, and turned towards the bathroom on shaky legs to wash off the remnants of their coupling. He took all of his warmth with him, leaving her cold and alone for the rest of the night.
More punishment. More penance.
Travis got up and she wiped her mind clean of that painful night when she slept in a ball on his side of the bed and tried desperately to cry in silence. He'd slept in the living room, unable to hear her and unable to care if she was in pain.
This time, however, she didn't want to be silent. This time she would make him care. She'd been silent for months, and something in her had broken at the reception. Something in her when she talked to Gabriel had ignited a need to speak plain and true, the way she used to before fear had choked her resolve.
So, she stood and walked around the table, placing herself in front of him. He had the presence of mind to be shocked. His blue eyes widened and his pink lips parted as he stared down at her.
"Where are you going?" she asked him.
Immediately he closed up on her, refusing to show any sort of remorse as he sidestepped her. She wasn't letting up, though. She slid in front of him and blocked his path again.
"Nicole, can you move, please?"
"Why? This seems to be the only way you'll even look at me. So, why should I move?"
"Because I have somewhere I need to be," he said.
"And where is that?"
He clenched his jaw and shifted his weight. She was almost scared of the latent disgust in his gaze.
How dare you judge me
, his eyes seemed to say. What right did she have to ask for anything other than what he was willing to give?
"You’re seriously going to ask me where I'm going?" he chastised. His disbelieving smirk filled her with doubt. "What? You afraid you can't trust me now?"
He sidestepped her and headed towards the bedroom to change, forcing her to follow and speak to his back.
"I never said that. As a matter of fact, the last couple of months I haven't said anything because I've been trying to give you space." She watched him swap out his t-shirt for a black button-down that made his eyes blaze a brighter blue by contrast.
His sigh was heavy, and the sound of the dark jeans he'd chosen to wear was heavier as he slapped them down on the bed. "Do you want a medal or something? You haven't cheated in months. But why would you?"
"What is that suppo—," she started to yell, then realized that Preston was in the other room sleeping, a temporary houseguest since Jackie and Ian took off for their honeymoon the day before. She lowered her voice and asked, "What is that supposed to mean?"
"It means you've been too busy following me around like a puppy dog to cheat on me again. Every look, every smile, every time you touch me, it's like you're saying 'I'm sorry, Travis. I'm sorry that I lied to you, that I didn't really love you after all.' And then you wonder why I need my space?”
Nicole swallowed and blinked back the tears that were always ready to come up to the surface.
"Some things you can't fix as quickly as you like, Nicole, no matter how much you try to smile it away. Trusting you again is going to take a lot more time than this."
She wrapped an arm around her waist, so she could brace her other arm while she attacked her thumbnail. Anything would do to keep her emotions at bay, even a horrible habit like biting her nails. "So, I'm just supposed to sit patiently in my corner, and wait for the day you decide I'm worthy enough to exist in our home again? Or, will you just find a way to resent me for that too. 'Nicole's being too meek and silent because she wants sympathy’."
His lips curved into a smile that mocked any actual amusement. "I love this. You screw things up for us and yet somehow manage to play the poor, oppressed—"
"I'm not playing at anything. It's been over four months, Travis! Four months! A weaker person, a person who didn't love you, would have given up by now. There hasn't been anything 'quick' about this time for me. There haven't been a lot of smiles. There's just been a lot of sadness I've kept to myself, because I didn't think I deserved to be upset."
"You don't," he said with a shrug that cut through her like a knife. "You don't have the right to be upset about anything I do, or say. So, you might want to save yourself some time and energy trying to convince me otherwise, and just get used to it. You're on my time schedule now."
Nicole felt the bile rise in her throat and the blood boil under her skin. She was never a great fan of confrontation. But even she had a limit. "Who do you think you are?"
This one statement halted Travis' movement. He was in the middle of zipping up his fly, when he stopped and let his bottom teeth scrape against his upper lip. The words were going to be vicious and cruel, and they were just waiting to escape his lips. She spoke before they could break into the frigid air between them.
"No, let me rephrase that. Who the
fuck
do you think you are? And where was your self-righteousness two nights ago when you were fucking me, and then running to the bathroom to rinse me off before you slept on the couch? Huh?!"
He had the decency to look ashamed and to jump a bit at her shrill exclamation.
"Why are you even with me?" she blurted, wishing she could stop her voice from shaking with her impending sobs. "Why are you with me if I'm so disgusting to be around that you can't even look at me, not without having to run off to some bar so you can flirt and forget I even exist?"
"What are you talking about?" he said. But his eyes said that he knew.
"I'm talking about the cute bartender who’s always so nice to you. Makes me wonder if some of your late night project
issues
for work didn't involve her. Or, is that what you wanted me to think? I mean, it's only what I deserve right?"
"Okay, that's enough! You don't get to play the victim when you're the one that cheated on me with a man you're still in love with!"
Nicole swallowed and lowered her head.
"You think I didn't see the way you looked at him the other night? You think I didn't know all along that you still had feelings for him?" he asked with a tilt of his head. "Why else do you think I wanted you to stay as far away from him as possible?"
"I never meant to hurt you, Travis," she said softly. "You have to believe that."
He shook his head and sat down on the edge of the bed, facing the wall. She stared at his profile for a long time in silence, trying not to cry.
How had something so sweet and safe become this? Was she cursed? Was this what happened when she loved someone? It almost made her mourn the days when men ran through her heart like a freight train bound for a better destination. It made her miss the days when she didn't know what it really meant to hurt and be hurt, to love and be loved. To lose and feel so lost. If this was evolution and growth, she wanted to be stunted. She wanted blindness and ignorance.
"Say something. Please,” she begged. “Just talk to me."
Travis licked his lips. She saw his hands clench.
"Tell me the truth. Tell me you're unhappy. Tell me you can't look at me without seeing what I did," she said with tears in her eyes. "Tell me you don't love me anymore. Say what your eyes tell me every time you look at me."
He smirked. The spell was broken.
"You'd love that, wouldn't you," he muttered, tugging on socks from the drawer on his side of the bed, then his shoes. "You get to be the victim, the one that tried so hard, and I get to be the asshole that drove you to your ex."
"This isn't a game to me and I'm not keeping score or playing a part!" she screamed. She felt unhinged, unheard. "Why can't you understand that? Why can't you see I'm trying and I just can't live like this anymore?!"
"Then don't!"
She shook her head.
"Go ahead and leave. No one here is going to stop you."
He might as well have said he would be better off if she went.
"That would make this all so easy for you, wouldn't it?" she bit out through clenched teeth. "Me giving up so this can be all my fault, right down to how it ended."
He stood with what had become his signature smirk and walked past her.
"Where are you going?!"
"Away from here. Be here when I get back. Or don't be. It's your choice, Nicole. It always was."
He left the room without turning around. Moments later the front door slammed, causing her nephew to cry from his room. She walked quickly to the second bedroom and opened the door. Preston was sitting up in his crib, wiping at his eyes and sobbing.
"S-shh. I-it's okay, sweetie," Nicole whispered in between her own sobs. "It's okay. A-auntie Nikki's h-here... Shh..."