31. Travis

I was giving her time,wanting her to rest. But she has other plans, she wants to fight with me for paying off her debt, she can fight all she wants, I’m not taking a fucking penny from her.

But I also have nothing in finding my mom, Blake and Logan have been looking non stop, checking bank accounts, well the ones we can get our hands on anyway, and still nothing.

So now I have no choice but to ask her. If she was telling me the truth about my mom, she might know where she is too.

“So, Bianca Brown. Time to talk,” I look over at Blake tapping on his phone, and smile when I see his lips curl. The police are not putting the hotel fire under arson, the fault lies with some faulty wires.

We knew our dads were going to try and claim it, it was a good job. We have money to buy a few police officers to help us, if only I could be there to see their faces when they got the news.

“My name is Bea Foster,” I look over at her as she snaps at me, and I don’t know if I should laugh or not, but my lips curl into a smile still.

“Time to talk.” I’m not in the mood to play around. My head is fucking hurting for lack of sleep, and thinking about fifty different things.

“You dad is a fucking piece of shit. If it wasn’t for my mom, god knows what he would have done to me. I remember one night, I was in the closest with your sister, while he raped my mom, all so he wouldn’t touch me or Tessa.” She breaks eye contact and looks down at her phone. “One too many nights I had to listen to my mom crying, and pleading, and all your dad did was laugh.” She shakes her head, wiping the tears away. “Tessa would tell me, everything would be okay, but it never was. Protecting your sister, my mom was raped and beaten.” She stops talking, and even I can’t look at her, just the thought of what her mom did for Tessa makes me more angry than I can ever say. There will never be enough in this world I can do to repay them.

I shift my weight from foot to foot, my hands digging deeper in my pockets, so I don’t hit anything. Quinn pulls his chair closer to the bed, and takes Bea’s hand, and he looks down at it.

“My mom was in hospital, I tried my best to keep up with the bills, the debt got bigger and bigger, and there was only so much I could do. In the end she was telling me things. But I only had one goal in my head. Take down the Parker family. They made my mom’s life hell, he tried to rape me, I was going to make him pay. You were going to be the way, but then I found out you hate him as much as I do, if not more.” She finally looks at me, eyes full of tears. “Mom told me your mom is alive, and your dad sent her away-”

“Where?” I cut her off, there is so much I can ask, say, shout, but right now all I care about is finding my mom. “Bea, where?” I snap because she’s not answering me.

“My mom was on a lot of meds, I’m not even-”

“Where?” I shout this time which makes her jump.

“She said your dad sent her to a mental home-”

“Go look,” I turn to Blake and Logan, who nod and leave the room, because they will look into every mental hospital in the state.

My mom was not mental, I know that. So the bastard did this, he wanted to get rid of her, but killing her wasn’t the way? Why? Everything he does, he does for a reason, not killing mom has to have a reason behind it.

“Travis-”

“I don’t want to talk anymore,” I cut her off. I’m still not in the mood to talk about anything which she has hidden from me.

“But-”

“You hid the fact my mom is alive Bea, that’s not a small fucking thing-” She goes to say some thing but stops when I don’t give her the chance too. “No, no matter how much I hated you, and I knew you missed your mom, and I knew I would have told you-” I shake my head, and whisper. “I would have told you.” I take a few steps away from the bed, and walk over to the window.

I can try and calm down, because I know she’s not one hundred percent yet, and I’m not going to be the reason she gets worse. I want her out of this place, so I can sleep in my own fucking bed, this place is giving me a headache.

“Bea, leave it.” I hear Quinn behind me, and I walk over to the chair Blake was sitting on, and sit down.

“You’re not allowed to eat until you scan, once the doctor says you can leave you‘re living with me. You don’t leave the house unless one of us three are with you-”

“Hey I can protect her,” Quinn cuts me off, and I look up at him smiling, raising my brow at that comment. “If I’m with one of you.” He adds and I do laugh this time. “How many people have you killed?” His question makes me lean back in my chair, and pull out of my phone, not answering him, I type the guys a message.

Travis - How many are in the state?

Logan - We are looking, just pulled up at home,

And I’ve only checked on my phone.

Blake - Give us an hour we will call you.

Travis - There is nothing coming out of his bank

For any hospital, the money is being paid from

Somewhere, we need to find where.

Logan - There is only one place we can think of.

But getting the accounts isn’t going to be easy.

Blake - There is a reason Jasper was never charged, your

Dad must have made some kind of fucked up deal.

Travis - He got the whole fucking town from them.

Dad owns ninety percent of town. Cain told us that’s what he got.

Why would they help him more?

Blake - Give us an hour, one of us will be looking

into hospitals, and the other into Jasper’s dad more.

I don’t reply back to them, I have to give them time to find something. They only left five minutes ago. I know if I start looking I’m not going to be able to stop, and it will only cause more questions. I have to trust my brothers to find out what is happening.

“Are you going to give me the silent treatment?” I hear Bea, but I don’t look up at her, nor do I answer her. It’s not the silent treatment, it’s the fucking if I say anything, it won’t be nice treatment.

It’s not just best for her, but for me to keep quiet at the moment. Give myself time to calm down, before I say something I will regret.

“Travis-”

“Bea stop,” I snap, still not looking up from my phone.

“But-”

“You hid my mom from me!” I slam my hand on the end of the bed, snapping my head to look at her. “It’s going to take more than fucking five minutes to get over it, if you told me from the fucking start, or when you found out I hated my dad, or if you even cared about-”

“I do-”

“Then you would have told me sooner, and I could have got my mom out. But you didn’t, so it’s going to take time to get over the fact that the woman I love hid this massive thing from me.” I don’t care, I”ve told her I love her in anger. They say you say things in anger which you’ve been holding back. Again it’s the main reason I don’t want to talk yet, I need time to just calm down.

“Tra-”

“Bea, please fucking stop.” This time I full on shout at her. I need her to understand that I don’t want to talk anymore. Shaking my head, I get back to my phone, and hear Quinn telling her to stop, and give me time. It’s all I’m fucking asking.

I rub my forehead, as my head starts to hurt. I blame this place, the hospital is the worst place to be day in day out. You do nothing but sit in a white fucked up room. Tapping my thumb on my phone and shaking my head.

“Fuck!” I snap looking up at Bea. “Does my dad know you know about my mom?” I ask.

“What?”

“Does my dad know you know about my mom being alive? There is a reason he wanted to get rid of you, is this the reason?” I ask again, opening my phone up, and getting ready to hit Logan’s name to call.

“Yes-” I don’t let her say anything as I put my phone on speaker waiting for Logan to answer.

“You’re on speaker,” we both say at the same time.

“He knows we know. Bea told him she knows about mom. He knows we fucking know. I kept telling you I was seeing her around, the bastards playing mind games-”

“Travis, deep breath man.” I hear Blake shout, and I take a moment to breathe, I can feel my heart beating at a crazy pace now. “Logan and I were both thinking the same thing.”

“He knows we’re looking for her, what if he has her…what if I’m so close, and he-”

“Travis, if he wanted to kill her he would have done it ages ago.” Logan shouts down the phone, they both know I’m over thinking all this, but am I wrong? “You want me to come back you seem to be losing it-”

“No, I want you looking under every fucking rock. I’m hoping Bea will be home tonight-”

“Trust us,” Blake says.

They end the call, and I look out the window. My mom is close, she’s always been close, and now the fear of losing her all over again is hitting me hard.

I sit out in the corridor waiting for Blake and Logan to get here. Bea went for her scan an hour ago, now waiting for the doctor to give her the all clear.

Bea tried to talk to me again, and she wasn’t listening to me when I told her to stop. I came out here knowing she wouldn’t follow or Quinn wouldn’t let her. Fucked up, but I still don’t know what to say to her.

I understand, but I don’t. Did she even care about me? I fell for her, and I fell fucking hard. Fell in love with her, and I was nothing to her. Nothing to the point she hid my mom from me, how could she.

I hear the door open, but I don’t open my eyes. “Is she sleeping?” I ask Quinn.

“Yeah, cried herself to sleep. Travis, I know you hate her-”

“I don’t hate her. I’m angry. The woman I’m so angry with I can’t even sit in the same room as, is the woman I love, yet I mean fucking nothing to her.” I finally open my eyes and lean forward my elbows on my legs, and I rub my eyes with my palm.

“Nothing? Are you joking? If you knew Bea before she met you, you”d be laughing at yourself. After the first night she told me she was fucked. She fell for you, and had to fight with herself every day about what to do. Tell you, walk away, kill your dad-” he stops when I look at him, and he shakes his head slightly at me. “She loves you, she was ready to tell you everything. She knew there was a chance you’d hate her, but that woman in there never wanted to be with anyone after her dad left, and what your dad did to her mom, but you Travis, she was ready to lose the first man she ever loved, to give you something.” We both look to the right when we hear Blake and Logan walking over to us. “I don’t blame you for hating her, and I’ve told her to give you time,” Quinn stops talking when the guys sit down with us.

“Dinner,” Blake hands us containers. “August said we’ve been eating too much take out.” He starts laughing as he hands me a fork, and I look in the container, pasta.

“The doctor say anything?” Logan asks.

“Not yet.” I take a mouthful of pasta, and see Quinn watching the three of us. “What?” I ask him.

“How much of the rumors are true?” Now that does get the three of us laughing. I like Quinn, he doesn’t care what questions he asks us.

“Depends on the rumor,” Logan is the one to reply, as I continue to eat my dinner. Quinn has been asking me questions all day, but I’ve not answered one of them, and if he thinks these two will, he”s dreaming. Maybe the ones about our sex life, we might answer but nothing else.

“Did you sleep with your high school teacher?” He points to Blake.

“I did, it wasn”t the worst sex I’ve had.” Blake jokes, and I chuckle to myself.

“And you had a threesome with college girls,” he looks at me.

“Not just once.” The corner of my lips curls, the simple days, when we fucked and played hockey. Now I fuck one woman, and don’t play hockey. What has my life become?

“Is it true, you kill people?” Again wi that question.

“You’ve asked that question a few times now, you want someone dead. I mean we know people,” I’m the one to speak because I know Blake and Logan won’t say a thing about it, but he”s asked about it about ten times today. “I’m sure they will do us a favor.”

Quinn looks between the three of us, but says nothing. He walks into Bea’s room, and Blake hands me a piece of paper.

“That’s every mental hospital in the state, the ones highlighted are the closest ones. They won’t say shit over the phone so we will have to go there so see if Aunt Cara has been there.” I take the paper from Logan, that’s a lot of places to go to.

“Mom used to laugh, I heard her laughing. He stopped her,” Tess tells me, and I smile looking at the picture. “She always said she wanted us to smile.”

I only ever hear stories from Tess about mom, but she always tells me the good things, never the bad stuff. I don’t know why. I know everything dad did to her, he beats me up telling me every detail.

“Remember her smiling, Travis.”

“Travis?”

“Yeah,” I’m pulled out from the past quickly. Not looking up at them, I look at the list. She’s been in one of these places for years, what has it done to her?

“We’ll start-”

“No. Is one of you okay to stay here until the doctor comes back?” I ask.

I need some time out of this place, even a few hours. I don’t want to talk to Bea yet, because I don’t know what to say to her.

“I’ll call August, let her know I’m here. Logan will go with you.” Blake starts tapping on his phone, and I finally hand the paper back to Logan. “Are you telling her you’re leaving?” Blake asks.

“No.” I finish my pasta, and throw the empty box in the bin, then leave the corridor, hearing Blake say something to Logan, but can’t make out what.

I wait for Logan to unlock the car, and get in. Slamming the door shut, and my phone vibrates in my pocket, and see a message from Bea.

Bea - I’m sorry.

Not replying to her I turn to Logan who’s watching me. “What?”

“You’re shutting us out too. Bea, we understand, but us?” Logan drives out of the car park. “We understand you’re pissed off, we’ve both been there, but we didn’t shut you out.”

“How can I shut you out? I’ve told you everything, I’ve not been home to talk without Quinn and Bea around,” I snap back. Maybe I haven’t talked about what’s going on in my head with them, but I’ve been at the hospital every second of the day, so when am I supposed to talk to them?

“We’re alone now, talk to me.” Logan asks, and I take a deep breath because I don’t know what to say to him. “Do you love her?”

“If I didn’t you think I’d be here every fucking second of the day?” I ask, this is the last place I want to be spending my fucking time, when I could be out looking for my mom. “Just need some time to forgive her for hiding my mom from me. I’m scared-” I stop talking, because I can feel my heart beginning to panic.

“Scared about? We can’t help you, if we don’t know what’s going on.” Logan looks at his phone for directions to the first place.

“I’m angry she hid this from me, I hate her for it, but I’m scared she’s told me too late, and I’m about to lose her all over again. I feel like I”ve lost Tess again, can’t lose my mom again. And if I have, what does it mean for me and Bea, because I don’t know if I will be able to forgive her?” There is nothing else to say, that is all I’m thinking about, every second it’s all I’m thinking about.

“You’re not losing your mom, we will find her. And as far as Bea goes, you need time, I get it. I needed it with Meadow, but remember we’re here. Talk to us.” Logan stops at the light, and I look out the window. “You know what I think?”

“What?” I ask.

“You’re pissed off with Bea for not telling you, but also pissed off with yourself for not knowing about your mom. I would be, I’d be killing myself at the thought of it. Finding out my mom has been alive all this time, and not once-”

“Yeah, I am pissed off I didn’t ask more questions about her death, I’m pissed that when Aunt Lizzie said it was a closed casket, I didn’t think to ask why, I’m pissed that I could have saved her sooner. I’m pissed off that the woman I love knew she was alive, and didn’t fucking tell me.” I punch the dashboard a few times. “I’m fucking pissed off.” The words escape as rage takes over, but not at him, or even Bea. But rage towards myself.

I should have asked more questions, and I didn’t.

“We will find her.” Logan tells me, as we pull up at the first place on the list, a list which is too long to go through today. All I have to hope for is that, my dad hasn’t taken her out.

If he has her, I don”t know what will happen to her.