Sativa.

7. And Burn

Two years in the mental hospital helped Tina battle severe depression. Upon her release, she started dating a to-do archeologist. Shortly before Blaine's eighteenth birthday she abandoned her family to move to Hawaii. Blaine hasn't spoken to her sister for six years. Until now, a week after Mother's death.

"I really can't believe her." Blaine glares out the window, her arms crossed, while the car eases down a McDonald's drive-thru lane.

Everything about meeting Tina feels wrong. Why does she have to jump because, out of the blue, her sister decides she needs her family again? It's too late for that.

She hasn't told Travis about this morning's groundbreaking phone call and he tilts his head, confused. "Can't believe who?"

Blaine disregards him in a tirade. "And she wants to meet at the café over 'coffee.'" She air quotes with her fingers. "Tina hates coffee!"

"As in sister Tina?"

He averts his attention to pass money to the first window. The car inches forward little by little. Blaine, agitated, bites the inside of her cheek and twirls a strand of hair round her pointer finger.

"We were inseparable growing up. Then poof! Gone!" She lights a cigarette, takes a long drag, then mutters, "bitch," under her breath. Smoke puffs from between her lips like she's actually evolving into a mini fire breathing dragon.

Travis arches his brows, at a loss. "Are you even willing to give her a chance? Maybe she'll explain?"

When she glances at him her gaze is heated enough to wither water. "You don't know what she put me through."

For months Tina self-harmed and Blaine always hid bloody razors under her own mattress so the parents wouldn't find them. Then her sister cut her from her life as effectively as she had slit her wrists.

"It's bullshit." Blaine grumbles under her breath as an afterthought.

"I know you, babe." He speaks calmly despite the intensity of her mood. "You're tough as nails but you also care like no one else can. I know you're curious."

"Well." She takes a long pull from the smoke before snuffing it out. "Curiosity killed the damned cat."

Travis drives with one hand, using his other hand to comb his fingers through her hair. At first she endured this frequent gesture with a clenched jaw because she never lets anyone near her hair. Now she appreciates the tenderness of his touch acknowledging it's his way of comforting her.

Solace ebbs back into a simmering fury when he turns an opposite way than she expected. "Why are we going this way?"

"Just a pit-stop," he assures. "To show you some of the jobs I worked around here."

Travis is a brilliant storyteller, speaking vibrantly until she's practically transported into his memories. He has enough ambition to take him to the moon and her eyes sparkle at his passion. Either he's talking all the time or not at all, never in between, but this particular silence between them is unusually tense. Blaine can't ignore the pit widening in her stomach.

"Where are we going?"

"Why?"

She grits her teeth. "Because I asked."

"Why?"

Typical. Repeating the same question is always his defense for avoiding a straight answer.

"You're an ass." She jabs her finger at him as effective as a mute button. "And don't ask why. You know why."

Light-hearted, he merely smiles and nods. Perhaps that's why she's so drawn to him. She's made a habit of acting hostile to keep from getting attached. Travis is different in the way he can disarm her with an easy smile. Even when she's snarky.