Travis wasn’t cruel and he never had been. Despite what their townsfolk had always tried to say, despite the warnings she’d never bothered to heed, he’d always been one of the good ones. He still was, Dolly knew that, but right now his face was twisted into pure disgust, words riddled with venom. He was looking at her with just about the same amount of revulsion that her Daddy had once worn, that the women around town had reserved for her any time she entered their local diner or showed up for a beer or two at Austin’s tavern.
“I wasn’t tryin’ to hurt you, Trav. None of this was about you,” she pleaded with him to understand, her throat aching from the wave of sobs that continued to stick. It wasn’t what he wanted to hear, she knew that. Hell, he didn’t want to hear from her point blank. But right now, it was all she had.
“I was scared outta my wits too. D’you really think I’ve just had it easy? D’you even know me at all, baby?” Dolly sighed, all the fight seeping from her as she searched his face for any hint of understanding. She hoped she might see a glimmer of empathy behind his gaze, not that she even deserved it. Her actions had been tactless and selfish and she’d destroyed every good thing they’d built together, but she’d never done it with the intention of hurting him. The only thing that had driven her had been fear, and if anybody could understand what she’d been running from, she would have hoped it was Travis.
Dolly waited, trying to let his words roll off her, trying to convince herself that she was untouchable. It hurt to hear her own pathetic attempts at an apology spat back at her, but she knew that even now he was affording her far more grace than she’d done anything to earn. Whatever worthless excuses she made for herself, it would never be enough. Maybe he was right. Maybe she’d never earn his trust back.
“I thought I would die in that town. I thought– Hell, ain’t you ever been so scared that you’ve done something you’ll regret for the rest of your life?”
She knew he had. She knew that the two of them had spent their life hiding from the very things that kept trying to destroy them, that they’d both been tarnished with the same, filthy brush and branded worthless without being given a fighting chance to prove otherwise. Maybe that reminder would soften him at his edges, and remind him that she loved him something fierce and meant every sorry that she was sending his way, or maybe it would just infuriate him more.
“I’m so sorry, Travis. I’ve never been more sorry about nothin’ in my whole life. I can’t undo the damage I did. An' I sure as heck can’t erase the fear I put you through, baby, but I am sorry. An’ maybe that’s not enough,” she finally relented, bowing her head in agreement. “If you wanna walk on away right now and never hear from me again, I won’t stop you. But I ain't ever gonna stop bein' sorry, I swear it.”
“‘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.
