loml

six

"T?" I heard my name a few minutes later and looked over to see Travis standing in the open doorway to Poppy's playroom, looking out at me. "What are you doing?" He called out.

"What does it look like?" I called back. Travis glanced back, grabbing something and moving outside. He opened up an umbrella as he walked out to where I stood, holding it over me when he drew closer. "Where's Liv?" I asked.

"She went home; she's got work this evening." Travis explained, and I nodded. "T, I know you're all about the rain and everything, but you'll get sick standing out here like this. What's going on?"

"What makes you think there's something going on?"

"You only stand in the rain when you're upset about something and need to think." Travis pointed out. "So come on, talk to me."

"I'm good." I lied. "I'm just thinking about what to do about our living situation." Travis raised his eyebrows at me, calling bullshit. "Or maybe I just don't want to tell you." I whispered, deciding against lying, since I knew I could never get away with it with him. 

"Why?"

"Because I just don't."

"T, there's nothing we haven't told each other." Travis reached out and rested a hand on my arm, rubbing gently. "Talk to me, you know I'll listen to anything."

"Fine." I smiled. "Put the umbrella down then."

Travis chuckled but closed the umbrella, dropping it onto the grass by our feet and letting the rain come down on the both of us. I blinked droplets from my eyelashes as the sky opened up, beating down in thick curtains. Travis looked up and then looked at me, holding his arms out as if to say 'your move'. I sucked in a breath.

"I know there's things you haven't told me." I said. "About what you did. I know there's more, and you have to tell me Travis. I can't live like this anymore. I hate you so much for what you did, but god I just want to move on from it so we can work together." I shook my head, fighting tears. "It's too hard Travis, please, just tell me what you've been lying about all this time."

Travis just stared at me, still and silent and getting soaked from the weather. My hair was plastered to my face, my body shivering, but I felt so rooted to the spot I couldn't have turned away if there was a gun to my head. This was how we'd always been, Travis and me. We had the type of love you only read about in books and saw in movies. Everything was like that; like our first kiss by the wishing well, like the way the sun had come out behind a cloud just as we'd been declared husband and wife, and just like the way we stood now, in middle of a storm. 

"T." He whispered.

"Please tell me." I begged. "I know there's things I don't know because you never wanted to tell me." Travis sighed, accepting my claim with a small nod, and my heart sped up in response. 

"Alright." He sighed. "That woman I was with, I wasn't cheating on you by choice." He told me, and I went completely still as I listened. "Her company rivalled my dad's, and she'd found something that could have torn the whole business down, something my dad was doing that wasn't quite legal. I went to her, to beg her not to turn him in, and she told me that she'd destroy the evidence if I slept with her." Travis shook his head, tears filling his eyes as he looked down. "I said no, but my dad he...he talked me into it. Told me you never had to know, and so to save him, I slept with her. But she took it further, saying she wanted me one more time, wanted me to do one more for her before she held up her end of the deal. The night you found out...she'd finally destroyed the evidence. I was coming home to tell you everything, to beg you to understand, to tell you I understood if you wanted to leave me." Sucking in a breath, Travis looked at me. I couldn't tell if he was crying; the rain was too thick. "But I never got the chance, and I decided it would be easier for you to think I had chosen to cheat on you instead of being blackmailed into it. I don't know why."