MINE!

I'll Sort It

When Travis had asked where the last date I went on was and I told him a fancy restaurant in a fancy part of town where we ate steak and drank champagne I wasn't sure how he would react.

Would he go all out for our second first date?

Spend money he didn't have?

Get himself in trouble again, just to prove to someone else he was enough for me the way he had tried to prove it to my dad?

Turns out nowadays the only person Travis is interested in proving himself to is me, that's why for our first official date this time around we are siting on a blue and whit plaid picnic matt in the park just down the road from my apartment, the one we came to when we were kids and I was trying to pretend I was nothing more than his tutor, that those honey coloured eyes didn't make my pulse speed up, that his unedited thoughts about my clothes and my body didn't cause my body to heat up and that I didn't want to kiss his mouth more that I wanted to use my own to breathe

"Drink?" He asks whilst pouring white wine into clear plastic cups and I nod and smile, happy at how relaxed he looks in his white tank top and light blue coloured jeans with his array of tattoos on show "So how was your day?" He hands me the cups and sits with his back against a tree and sips his drink

"Busy"

"Work stuff?"

I nod "Always work stuff"

"Cez told me you moved offices last year because of some guy, what happened?"

His eyes narrow and his jaw tenses.

Joe Alwyn is not how I wanted this date to start. He is possibly the only thing Travis could have asked about that's likely to end up with him back in jail

"I don't want to talk about Joe, I want to talk about you and us and nice stuff"

"And I want to know what he did and how badly I have to hurt him" he places his drink down and looks at me with that face that tells me I'm not getting out of this, we aren't moving on until he knows everything and has acted as both judge and jury

"He just... he made a fool of me, embarrassed me, it's not worth talking about" but he's sits up straight as a rake, his face darkening as he cracks his knuckles and then stares directly at me

"Tell me everything. Now."

"Travis! You're spoiling this" I rub a hand across my forehead really not wanting to talk about any of this but he takes my cup from my hand and places it next to his as he heaves me forward so I'm straddling his lap and he has my face in his hands

"Taylor, I love you. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for you"

"Yeah I know that"

"Then you know that I'm not letting this lie, you tell me what he did and I decide how I react" he stroke his thumbs over my cheeks and then presses his lips to mine and causes my chest and groin to burn only the way his kisses can

"I'll tell you about Joe on one condition"

"And what is that?"

"You tell me what happened the night Hector Hernandez died" He leans his head back against the tree and the lets out a puff of breath before opening his eyes and looking directly into mine

"Fine"

That one word causes my heart to pound loudly in my ears.

The event that came between us, the day that changed everything, I'm finally going to know the truth but not before he hears about my humiliation at the hands of Joe Alwyn

"Promise you wont do anything"

"No"

"Travis!!!.."

"If he hurt you in any way then he has to pay"

"Travis!!!" I rest my head on his shoulder as his hand moves under the back of my t-shirt and he gently strokes my skin causing my body to heat up as goosebumps cover every part of me

"Talk, let me worry about the rest of it"

And there he is, my strong man, my protector. Part of me wished he'd been around when everything had happened with Joe but the other part of me knew if he had been around I would never have given Joe even a second glance

"After you went to jail, I was so lonely, so lost, so confused without you. I doubted everything about us, about myself. I was doing everything I could to just forget you, to avoid thinking about that day or any day that came after it"

Travis's hands move from my face to my hair, smoothing over it in a gesture of comfort and soothing me like no one else ever has or ever will "Baby i'm so sorry"

"Joe started paying me attention at work, a lot of attention, like way too much, to be honest I should have realised something was wrong but I was too caught up in my grief at losing you. He kept asking me out and I kept saying no. He would tag me in all his Instagram posts of all this fancy stuff he was doing and then one day I... I saw a picture of you on Instagram and I just spiralled, I told him yes"

Shame forces tears down my cheeks, tears Travis immediately wipes away

"He picked me up, took me out to a posh restaurant, ate the most obscene costing food and drank champagne costing hundreds of dollars a bottle the bill was insane but after we asked for the cheque he went to use the bathroom and then he disappeared and didn't come back. In fact he hid and took photos of me as I was asked to pay but I didn't have that kind of money so the police were called, I explained the situation but nothing made any difference until Eva stepped in"

"Cez's girl?"

I nod "She had just qualified as an attorney and she was able to pull some strings and get me out of trouble, I owe her a lot, with a criminal record I could have lost my job"

"Taylor, why are you acting like this is your fault? Lift your head up, you did nothing wrong"

"I should have know better" I hiccup a sob and his arms pull me to him safe and secure "He put the pictures and his version of the events all over social media, I was a laughing stock at work, everyone was talking and whispering so I had to move offices. I felt like such an idiot Trav" I press my face to his chest as he makes soothing noises in my ear

"I'll sort it" he whispers into my hair

"No forget it, it doesn't matter"

"It does matter"

"I don't want you in anymore trouble, I just got you back" I wrap my arms around his neck and hold him tight "I can't lose you again"

He doesn't say anything and I know him well enough to know that isn't a good sign, his silence means he refuses to agree to what i'm asking him and it's just one more sign that he hasn't changed as much as I hoped he had and that combined with what i'm about to hear about the night Hector Hernandez died means Travis and I may once again be on borrowed time