“‘Course I know you haven’t had it easy,” Travis snapped back, now insulted by the idea that he didn’t know her like that. Had she forgotten what their whole friendship was built on? The two of them had found each other in the mess of the town’s feelings towards them. The slut and the arsonist. Something that a teenager could fashion into a funny band name if they didn’t stop for too long to think about how a label like that could turn the world of the town’s two pariahs upside down. Everyone had turned their back on them. Travis had always thought he could stomach that, so long as they didn’t turn their back on each other.
It was why her next question hurt so fucking bad.
“You’re really asking me that?” he asked, letting out a huff of disbelief. It sounded cold. Good, let it.
Dolly was about the only person out there who knew how scared Travis could be. Put him on the back of an animal like a bull, kicking and rearing and doing what it could to throw him off, and he’d face that without fear. But leave him alone in the same house as his father? Another Travis showed face, a Travis who trembled at the sound of a raised voice or the slamming of a door. He’d gotten so many bruises from his old man, he’d thought that the fear would have surely been knocked out of him by now, but every time he thought about that tiny ramshackle little farmhouse he’d grown up in, beer bottles littering the counters and cigarette ash clinging to the carpet and sticking to the soles of his bare feet, he knew he’d always be running from that memory.
Could he really be mad at Dolly for doing the same? Running?
Yeah, he told himself petulantly. Because when Travis had had all his grand plans to run away and get out of there, he’d always intended on having Dolly in tow.
That was the bottom line, wasn’t it? He wasn’t mad at Dolly for leaving. He knew she had to get out. He was mad that she’d left without him.
“You didn’t even think to ask me to come,” he said, flatly.
He stood there on the sidewalk as Dolly apologised again, but he wasn’t sure that it made a damn bit of difference how many times she said her sorries. He wasn’t in the mood to hear them.
Something niggled in his chest when she insisted that she’d never stop being sorry, even if she never saw him again. She seemed certain about that fact, and somehow even more certain that she would walk away right now and leave him be. He stared down at his boots, scuffed and worn, and sensed her turn to walk by him, out of his sight until he would have to be the one to seek her out again if they did ever want to talk.
His body moved first, head and heart struggling to catch up. A hand reached out, pressing against the waistband of Dolly’s jeans, and halting her in her path. He could almost sense her confusion as he kept his head bowed, not too sure what he even planned to do.
Before he could stop himself, he used the grip he had on her to hook his fingers into her belt loops and pull her in. His arms went around her of their own accord, and suddenly he was hugging her, nose pushed into unfamiliar brown hair.
Travis held Dolly tightly, knowing she’d be able to feel just how hard his heart was hammering through the flannel of his shirt. His pride hated him for the moment of weakness, but maybe this would be the last time he held Dolly like this if his stubbornness decided that was to be so. He inhaled deeply, eyes scrunched shut.
“I’m so fuckin’ mad at you, you have no idea,” he told her sternly, tightening his hold on her.
The problem with running for your life was that you didn’t have time to look back. Looking back meant slowing down, faltering, and coming to an outright halt. Dolly had been trembling down to her toes, with scrapes and bruises littering her body, a result of both fallen debris and stumbling over her own two feet in the desperate panic to get out. By the time Hunter had found her and pulled her free, Dolly didn’t have time to think, she didn’t have time to stop and pack her bags as the storm ripped through her home. If she’d stopped even for a second, she’d have either died in that house alongside her father, or she’d have been trapped there again, for the rest of her life.
She knew it wasn’t fair, that instagram comments weren’t a substitute for care. Dolly was well aware she’d left behind a huge chunk of her heart and had been lost in the darkest depths of her own mind for months without him. She had no excuse, no apology worthy of the hurt she caused. But she loved Travis so completely that she wasn’t sure what she’d do now if she lost him for a second, more permanent time.
“I know, Trav. I’m really...” she trailed off, her sorries rendered useless. She wouldn’t keep wasting his time with them.
A gasp tore from Dolly’s throat as she felt Travis slide his hand against her waist. She blinked up at him in surprise, a jolt of something unfurling in her stomach as he hooked his fingers around the loops of her jeans. Was she crazy, or was there something impossibly sexy about that move? Her heart pounded in her chest and for one foolish, fleeting second her mind was screaming kiss me, kiss me!
Instead, Travis did one better than that, somehow. His arms wrapped her up in a crushing embrace, tugging her into his chest as he held her the way he’d done so many times in the past. The same way he’d pulled her in for warmth, on those nights they’d fallen asleep in the barn, surrounded by hay and the only thing to guide them to sleep the sound of each other’s fading laughter. When her father had tried to beat her six ways from Sunday in a drunken haze, Travis had held her like this, his lips finding her temple as he’d reassured her she was safe with him, she’d always be safe with him. Dolly had believed him then, and she believed it now, even with the words unspoken. Even when she’d done such a sorry job of holding up her end of the bargain.
“I know, baby,” Dolly soothed, voice soft as she looped an arm around his shoulders, returning the hug. Relief settled in her chest, traitorously so, as she sighed into his neck. Her lips brushed his skin and she nuzzled closer, enjoying the feel of his arms around her. It wasn’t complete forgiveness, and she had a lot of work to do, but it was a start. “I’m mad at me too.”
A lazy hand slipped into his hair, stroking over his wavy blond locks as she carefully maneuvered herself in his arms to press a kiss to her best friend's temple.
“I’m not lettin’ go this time, baby. I promise.”
