The Bet (The Bet #1)(57)

“Let it out, baby girl.”

“I’m not your baby.” She’d sobbed into his chest.

“Don’t I know it,” he had said sadly as he wiped large alligator tears from her puffy cheeks.

“Everything okay back here?” Grandma Nadine had called, right before she’d walked around the corner.

“Fine, it’s fine.” Kacey had frantically wiped her cheeks and had pasted a smile on her face. “No biggie. You know how Travis and I can get.” She’d lamely punched him in the shoulder and walked off. But she hadn’t remembered until now what Grandma Nadine had said to Travis when she’d thought Kacey was out of earshot.

“She’ll come around one day, Travis. Don’t give up.”

“Damn, Grandma,” Travis had mumbled. “That girl wasn’t ever mine to give up in the first place.”





Chapter Twenty-eight




Travis watched the display of emotions wash over Kacey’s face. Hell, as long as he lived, he would never get tired of watching those eyes squint when she was thinking, or the way she held her lip captive between her front teeth when she was trying to keep herself from saying something she’d regret.

And finally, the worst of all, her tells. The way she clenched her hands in her lap as if that simple gesture would hold all the walls firmly in place.

“Kace, say something.” He reached for her shoulder and gently placed his hand across it.

“The last time I was here was with you.”

“Yup.” Figures she’d remember that first.

“You were so angry at me.”

“Kace,” Travis said, turning off the truck. “You were angry at yourself. I was angry at you for giving up — or at least in my mind, giving up something that I thought you wanted. But mainly, Kace, I was angry that when things got rough, you ran.”

“What did you expect me to do?” Kacey screamed, causing Travis to jump.

“Fight. I expected you to fight.”

“Against what, Travis? Myself? There was nothing left to fight for! I lost my parents, I lost my best friend. I lost everything!”

Travis scowled and pulled back his hand. He couldn’t touch her, not with what he had to say. “You didn’t lose everything. You still had my family, and you still had Grandma. Geez Kacey, you had me. You lived! But that was the day I watched part of you give up, and you let a part of yourself die. Maybe that’s why Grandma wanted you here in the first place. You really do need to find yourself, Kace. And if that means I lose you… again, in order for it to happen, so be it.”

“What?” Her head whipped around to face him. “What do you mean lose me again?”

Shit. “That day, the day you walked away from me, from us, from everything. I uh… I followed you.”

“To?”

Travis gulped. “Seattle.”

“Why?”

Travis closed his eyes and leaned his head against the back of the seat. “To bring you home, Kace. To bring you home.”

“I don’t understand.”

Of course she wouldn’t. Travis groaned aloud and fought the urge to hit the steering wheel or at least strangle something. “You never belonged apart from us…” He gulped. “Apart from me. You never belonged apart from me.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying…” Could he do it? Could he say he loved her? Travis looked at her moonlit face and chickened out. “All I’m saying is, I was an idiot and chased after you to bring you back home. It was stupid that you would run to another city after your parents died. I know you needed a fresh start, but why couldn’t you lean on us? Why couldn’t you allow us to support you?”

“I can’t talk about that.” Kacey looked away again.

Damn his idiot brother. He’d do anything to know what else happened that night besides sex. No way did sex ruin people the way it ruined Jake and Kacey. Was she really telling him everything? Part of his heart clenched at the thought.

“I bought it,” he blurted, much like an eighth grader with no skills with the female sex, or communication for that matter.

“Pardon?”

“The restaurant. I bought it.”

“Today?” Kacey gave him a horrified look.

“No.” He felt suddenly embarrassed. “The day you signed the papers, you signed them over to my business partner. Three years ago I bought him out. It’s all mine.”

“Why?” Kacey’s lip trembled.

“Because I’m a good businessman?” And he got an enormous trust fund when he was eighteen.

Kacey rolled her eyes.

The inside of the truck fell silent except for Travis’s heavy breathing. The windows would be steamed any minute. He wondered if she could hear his heart hammering in his chest. “Because of you, Kace. Everything I do, everything I’ve done in my life, it’s all because of you.”

There, he said it. Now she could rip out his heart and stomp on it.

With a sob, she lunged across the console and into his lap, grabbing his lips between hers in such a forceful kiss he was breathless.

“You knew,” she said while kissing his jaw. “You knew how much this place meant to me, Travis.”