"Lacey."
Just barely, I could make out someone calling my name but I was in bed and comfortable and warm and the pillow had never felt so great so I pulled the covers up closer to my head and went back to bed.
"Lacey."
I squinted my eyes shut tighter as something poked my arm. There was movement on the bed, causing me to jostle slightly but I tried to ignore it. No one was screaming or crying out in pain so it couldn't be an emergency.
Except, that didn't stop the person from poking me even harder in my shoulder. I peeked, opening one eye and keeping the other shut against the pillow as I looked at Travis.
He was hovering next to me on the bed one arm propped on it and the other suspended in the air from just having prodded me. My eyes moved up and down the length of him, as not only was he on top of the covers but he was also already fully dressed. This got me to open both of my eyes.
"What's going on?" I asked, "Oh, are you waiting for breakfast?"
I threw the covers back and started to get up. It was probably rude if I made a big deal about getting everyone breakfast last night only to sleep in and make them wait for it.
"Shh," he said as I stood.
I turned to look at him but stopped when I caught sight of the view outside the window.
"It's still dark outside," I stated. "What time is it?"
Did I sleep through breakfast all the way until dinner or was there something going on this early in the morning?
He climbed out of bed and came to stand in front of me, placing a finger over my lips in a shushing manner with a calm expression on his face.
"Travis what is-" I whispered against his finger.
"Get dressed."
"Is something wrong?" I asked.
Instead of saying anything at first, he just guided me towards the dresser. He pulled out the drawer I had and looked at me expectantly.
"I'm not opposed to dressing you," he said quietly.
Hesitantly, I changed into new clothes. He grabbed his old jacket that I'd dropped lazily in the corner of the room last night and held it out to me on one of his fingers. I eyed him the whole time I put it on, waiting for him to tell me what the heck was going on. I grabbed my phone and noticed it was about five in the morning. When I reached for my knife, Travis' hand latched onto my forearm.
"You don't need that, we're not going far. But I'm glad to see you grabbed your phone for once."
I narrowed my eyes at him and expected to see him walk towards the door but instead, he headed to the window in the room.
He unlocked it and slowly raised it, like he'd practiced it many times.
Once it was up all the way, he grabbed a blanket and crawled through. The house was only a one story house, so he was standing out on the lawn a moment later beckoning me to follow his lead.
I ducked down and shimmied through the window, pausing when I was halfway in the house and halfway on the lawn.
"You know we have a door. We have two," I told him, pulling my other foot through until I was out of the house. "Three, if you count the one in the garage."
"Shut up," he said, grabbing my hand.
We walked to the side of the house and kept going. They didn't have neighbors so that wasn't really an issue. The grass hadn't been cut in quite a while though so I found myself having to take high steps to avoid tripping on the grass or having it snag against my pant legs. It didn't really help, I don't think. While I was trying my best to figure out the best way to walk, my mind obviously hated me because it decided in that moment, while we were walking through the grass at night, to think of the types of things that hid in long grass. Like snakes and probably spiders. If I was being completely honest, I wasn't sure which I was more afraid of. I squeezed Travis' hand tighter.
"What's going on?" I asked and I could hear the panic in my voice.
"The doors make too much noise when they open and close, the others could've woken up," he explained.
"But what are we doing out here?"
Travis stopped and looked back at the house. "This should be good."
We weren't that far away from it, but maybe ten or twenty feet. Still, that explained nothing and I had even more questions when Travis let go of my hand and started shaking out the blanket he still had under his arm. He dropped it on the grass, stomping down on it in a few places to flatten it out. Travis sat down, resting back on his elbows and letting his legs fall out in front of him as he looked up at me.
He raised one of his hands to gesture to the free space on the blanket next to him for me to take.
I sat, crossing my legs and keeping my hands in my lap. The sun wasn't out yet and the air was crisp. The ground was chilly from the morning dew, which now that I wasn't moving and was actually on the ground, it was starting to nip at me. I put my hands under my thighs to keep warm. The slight chill didn't seem to bother my boyfriend.
"What are we doing out here, Travis?" I whispered, studying him as much as I could in the dark.
He wasn't looking at me though, he was looking at the sky.
"Sun's going to rise soon," he said. "I like it."
I thought back to the multiple pictures of the sunrise or sunset he had on his phone, back when he let me look through his phone on our date. The part of my stomach that was eating itself with fear of what was about to happen slowly started to relax upon realizing it was just Travis wanting to watch the sunrise. And then that same part of my stomach started to jump around and bounce around like crazy when I realized that this was Travis wanting to enjoy something for himself. And I wanted to squeal in happiness but held it in.
"And I wanted to have something to look at when I told you about the drugs," he added.
My good mood fizzled out as I looked down at my lap. "Oh. Right."
"You still want to know about that?"
"Yes," I said immediately.
Because I did want to know what Cameron and Annabeth were talking about last night and what was going on but at the same time I was scared. And I really didn't expect him to tell me this quickly without me having to bug him about it. But he didn't say anything at first and we sat in silence. I wasn't going to pressure him, so I looked at our surroundings taking in the serenity around us that tended to fill space in the early mornings before the world woke up.
"Sorry," he eventually said.
"For what?"
I saw him shrug, "I'm trying to decide what to tell you."
"Anything you're comfortable with."
He took a deep breath in and let it out and I figured he was thinking again. I wondered how much there was to sort through.
"The Caseys weren't always the way they were," he said quietly.
I expected him to explain after that but he didn't. Wind blew my hair around my face and I had to hold it back so I could see him.
"I know. Scully was part of them at one point," I said. "He's not exactly a good time."
But Travis just shook his head, still reclining back on his elbows as casually as ever. "No, this was after Scully when Ben and I came along. Cam had already taken care of Scully and a bunch of them but there were still a lot of assholes that didn't respect him. And then they saw Cam bring in Ben and I and they saw us joining him everywhere like new shiny toys and they respected him even less after that. They hated us for it. They wanted us out and then they wanted Cam out."
"Who?" I asked but he didn't answer that.
"When we first joined, Ben wanted to get revenge on his parents, yeah? So he joined and I joined for him and Cam saw how good I could aim and wanted to use it. And everyone knew how good I could was. Cam made me show them. And I tried to scare them because they scared me. I thought if they were more afraid of me than I was of them, it would be okay. So everyone saw Cam talking to me and not Ben but we were there for Ben but they thought it was me that wanted to be in the gang because I was helping Cam but in the beginning I wanted to leave so many times, Lacey," Travis' voice was almost pleading but he was looking at the still dark sky.
I didn't say anything and he continued, "It ate me up being there. But the old assholes hated Cam's new toys and so they targeted us. Or, me because they were afraid of my aim. And if they could get me to want to leave then they thought we would be out of their hair and they could get to Cam, I think."
"But you already wanted to leave," I stated.
Travis nodded and I could see him tapping the tip of his foot idly on nothing, but probably to the beat of a song either absentmindedly or out of nerves, I wasn't sure. What I was sure of, was that Travis would do anything for Ben including stay in a gang when he wanted to leave. That didn't surprise me.
"They should've been targeting Ben," I pointed out, putting his words together.
He nodded again. "Yeah, but hell would freeze over before I would've let that happen."
I let out a soft laugh at his protective streak even at that young of an age.
"What did they do?" I asked, wondering what this had to do with anything.
"Break my things. Threaten me. Try to hurt me. Drug me. They tried drugging Ben a few times but I would throw an even bigger fit when I snapped out of my haze so they focused their efforts on me."
My mouth dropped open. "They did what?"
"Mhm."
His casual answer did nothing to calm my nerves, which had turned to ice at the knowledge that someone, presumably a grown ass adult, was drugging a child.
"You're kidding."
"Why would I joke about that?" he asked.
"I," I didn't have an answer to that other than the fact that it made me sick to my stomach, "I can't believe that."
He shrugged. "Cam managed to get rid of them so the gang's a lot better now. It's why I don't really talk to anyone besides our group though, I don't know if that was ever obvious..." he said off handedly.
He said it like the fact that he despised 70% of the gang wasn't horribly, incredibly obvious. I wondered if he thought he was subtle about his distaste for the rest of the group because Travis and subtle never really fit in the same category.
"That makes sense," I answered, instead of pointing out how bad of a liar he was about it. "How long...how long did this go on for?"
He scratched the back of his head before resting back again. "I don't really know. I don't know what they always gave me but it would mess with me. I wouldn't know how much time was going by. Sometimes everything was going too fast. Sometimes it was going too slow. It made it feel like a dream. Most of it I blacked out and didn't remember when I finally woke up. So a lot of what I remember, I don't know what's real and what's made up so I'm not really sure how long. Ben would know."
"Seriously?"
He shrugged.
"How much were they giving you?"
This time, a humorless laugh came out. "More than they should've for someone my size."
He let out a loud sigh and I wrestled with my urge to demand names and find these people. I wanted to make them pay for what they did to Travis, who was just a kid and didn't even want to be in the gang at the time. But they were so angry and mad at Cameron for probably dumb reasons, that they were taking it out on a child to get him to leave. But he loved his best friend so much he stayed by his side. My stomach twisted in on itself hard.
I could see the faintest pink of the sun lighting up the horizon and Travis' eyes were glued to it like it was a beacon calling him.
"You know, until Cam and Finn and Annabeth sorted out the assholes, we would leave the house when I couldn't tell up from down because I told Ben if I was drugged, I couldn't protect him and we needed to be somewhere safe. I didn't want anything to happen to him, not after everything with his parents. And we couldn't go to my dad's house when I was high off my ass. My dad would've killed me. So we'd go to the graveyard to see his parents," he said, a soft smile was on his face. "We spent a lot of nights there while I slept off the high and the sunrise was always really nice."
My eyes started to water but I clenched my jaw to keep any tears at bay. I didn't want to start crying and distract Travis from his story but my insides were slowly melting at his words. It wasn't right that a kid that young had to go through that sort of thing. And if I hadn't already realized I loved him, I would've for sure set sail on that love boat with his unexpected honesty.
"You're amazing,"I finally said.
He snorted and rolled his eyes, still watching the sun. "Hardly."
"You are," I argued firmly. "You've given others so much of yourself for nothing in return."
Travis didn't say anything immediately after that so we both watched the sun start to rise. Colors started to spread out across the sky and the grass around us started to shine with dew. The boy next to me started to fidget more than usual and I moved my eyes away from the sky to him, where he was now sitting straight up and playing with the laces of one of his shoes.
"Nah," he said and it took me a moment to realize he was referring to what I'd said last.
Was he really going to keep up this argument? Because I could make a detailed list of everything I knew he did that was selfless and I didn't even know half of the things he'd done.
"It's like this," he started, "After the assholes were kicked to the curb, Ben and I started to actually go to things with Cam. I couldn't take it. Do you know how many people I've killed?"
Travis' arm suddenly grasped mine and desperate eyes looked directly at me. I shook my head, no. To be honest, I didn't want to know.
"Me either," Travis admitted. "It's not that I lost count or never counted. I just don't know. I was high for half of them."
"But I thought the Cameron got rid of the guys," I said, but I already knew where this was headed. When I first came to Melkin, the guys had pointed out that Travis had a problem with drinking and drugs but Travis wouldn't tell me about it.
"The first time I killed someone, it wouldn't get out of my head. It just stayed on repeat again and again. Even now I can still see it, hear the gun going off, feel it in my hands if I think about it and it's been years. I couldn't close my eyes after and not think about it. So I grabbed some of the drugs that I knew we were distributing and I'd take some. I'd take one and nothing so maybe I built a tolerance up I don't really know how things work?"
He shook his head at his lack of knowledge but didn't slow down, "Two pills or even three and I would snap right to not having a care in the world and blacking out. If I took it quick enough after I shot someone, sometimes I could convince myself it was a dream. But I started to rely on them because Cameron would send me out, I'd do well, and the Dacostas would send out more guys after me and I'd have to take care of them, then I'd take even more drugs. I was taking too many."
Travis sighed and finally let go of my arm to rub his hands out along the blanket before he continued, "I know the highs would make me happy. Any emotion I wanted to have would just come out like that. Like, I remember thinking things were so bad they were funny. I'd get hurt, I'd laugh. I'd see Finn catch something on fire, I'd laugh. Ben would always know and he told the others early on. That's how they knew to tell if I was high or not. Cam couldn't depend on me if I was high because I'd be shot, bleeding out, but I wouldn't feel so I'd still be trying to fight. I don't remember half of the people I hurt or how I got some of my scars and do you know much that kills me?"
I scooted closer to him on the blanket and held one of his hands in mine, stroking the top of it with mine.
"So when you were laughing yesterday when you saw Dylan," I pointed out.
"Yeah. It's not really a big deal because I'm not on drugs and I haven't been in awhile but I thought you should know that's why they were freaking out about it. It was gruesome. I hadn't seen anything that bad in ...awhile. And I couldn't believe we were this close to leaving and Scully did this and I just started laughing."
I didn't think it was that big of a deal that he laughed when he saw Dylan if that was his reasoning. But I did think that it was a big deal that he went through that sort of thing in his past and had to live with those types of skeletons in his closet.
"Annabeth was worried about how loud you were," I said.
Travis rolled his eyes, "Cameron gets to be the one in charge. Officially now. I don't have to be responsible for shit. Do you know how great that is? I can mess around again."
We sat in silence as the sun came the rest of the way up. Pink, orange, and yellows filled the sky. I rested my head on Travis' shoulder and he put his head on top of mine. The Travis I was with right now was the opposite from the Travis that stomped around Melkin with his gun out that shot first, asked questioned never. He walked around with a constant eat shit glare on his face and had others cowering at the sight of him. But here he was, sitting in the middle of a field with me on a blanket watching the sunrise and telling me about the things that would keep him up at night when he was younger. I wondered if this was the version of himself he would've been if he never got in the gang at all. If he would've always been this softer side or if the hardened side was always bound to surface.
"I wish you didn't have to deal with this stuff," I whispered.
I felt him shrug.
"I mean it. It's not normal. And it's okay to not be okay all the time," I reminded him.
"I'm okay."
"You were shaking last night."
He sighed, "Lacey."
"Travis."
"I didn't tell you that stuff so you would worry about me."
I pulled my head back from off his shoulder, causing him to raise his head. With the sun out now and my head not tucked against his, I could see him clearly. My eyes scanned his bruising face and stuck to his neck, which was a deeper purple than the sky earlier. "I would worry about you no matter what. Knowing about that doesn't make me want to worry about you more, it makes me want to find all of those people that hurt you."
"I took the drugs the second time on my own," he said.
Unable to stop myself, I reached a hand out and gently brushed my finger over his throat because it was so discolored it didn't look real. He didn't flinch away so I don't think I was hurting him but I still tried to be as light as I could. His skin was warm against my finger and I wanted to cover up as much as I could with my hand but couldn't.
My vision started to water and I removed my hand before I spoke, "You shouldn't have had to. You shouldn't have been in a situation where you felt like you had to in the first place. I just want to wrap you in bubble wrap and keep you somewhere safe so no one can touch you ever again."
Travis smiled and brushed the top of my cheek, "Now you know how I feel about you."
I wiped my eyes just to make sure no tears were leaking out, "So you're not on drugs?"
Despite how angry he was whenever anyone asked him yesterday, he answered softly, "No."
"What are we going to do when we get out of here?" I asked softly.
Travis kept his hand on my chin and I leaned into it, "Sleep. Maybe watch a lot of sunrises. Keep that last one a secret from the others, though."
"Maybe more hanging out on blankets. You seem to like it," I gestured to the one we were on.
"I could think of a few more things we can do on blankets," he smirked.
"Stop it," I protested, blinking to clear my eyes from possible tears. "Let me be angry about your childhood for a little bit before you start being a perv."
Travis laughed and moved his hand from my face to around my shoulders.
"Thank you for taking me out here," I said.
Silence found us but it was comforting as we both observed the field around us, consumed in our own thoughts. By now, the rest of the world was waking up and moving, but here, in the middle of nowhere on the blanket with Travis, it was just us.
"Here as in right here or here as in Melkin?" Travis eventually asked slowly, like he was weighing his words as he spoke and they hit me hard.
I had meant out here on the blanket. But I suppose coming to Melkin had been a good thing, at least because I was able to keep him in the end. My mind flashed to a few years ago when we first met.
"Do you remember when we made that deal?" I asked, not answering his question right away.
"Of course," Travis sounded offended. "I try to remember most things. Especially about you."
I wondered then, if his memory was a precious thing to Travis. If so many of his memories were fleeting from when he was younger either by others drugging him or by his own hands, and when he couldn't remember what was a dream, if he worked hard to commit things to memory. Did he try to remember everything - including the bad? Or just the good? What about when he had a gun in his hands? He said he didn't do drugs now so how did he deal with the aftermath of that? I wanted to personally meet every single Dacosta in that moment so I could make them pay for the years of damage they'd done to him because they'd been the threat during his childhood.
"You definitely held up your end of the bargain," I said.
Travis laughed. "I said I'd take you places. I've only taken you to one shit hole of a place really. I mean, we're in other towns now and then but they're all shit holes. I'll take you somewhere great one day."
"Hmm...Like where?" I asked like I had a preference. When really, he could take me to a dump and he could make the view spectacular.
He grinned, proving my point as he put the field to shame and set my heart speeding. "Anywhere you want."
"Rome?"
"Roam where?" he asked, confused.
"No," I laughed, pushing his chest slightly. "Rome, Italy."
Travis looked down like he was embarrassed for a second so I wrapped my arms around his chest and kissed his cheek.
"We can go there if you give me another kiss," he said with a grin as he turned his head to face me.
I wasn't going to say no to that, so I leaned in and found his lips. His fingers wound themselves in my hair, pulling me closer and everything felt right. Like kissing Travis was what I was supposed to do for the rest of my life and it could be my profession. My heart started beating in my ears and my blood started rushing faster through my veins and I wanted to squeeze him even more but it took every ounce of self control in me not to because I didn't know how many bruises he had under his shirt.
"Lacey," Travis whispered against my lips.
"What?" I asked but my voice was hoarse and annoyed because why was he stopping.
He hesitated but didn't say anything else. Instead, he just pushed me down on the blanket and hovered over me which I liked a lot more because I didn't have to worry about hurting him. His lips found mine again and my heart yelled that I was home and my body turned into jello beneath him.
At others, his mouth snarled cuss words more often than not and his hands took multiple lives. His body was covered in scars, some from fights he couldn't remember. But he kissed me gently and his hand brushed along my cheek and down through my hair like I was made of glass like he was afraid I was going to break.
And maybe I was glass. And maybe I wanted him to break me because I kissed him harder. I wanted him to give me his pain and suffering and skeletons until it consumed me and I was a mess. And I wanted to pick up the broken shards of glass of myself off the ground and put one through every single person who hurt him.
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I hope you liked this! I had to split what I was writing because it was getting too long so the next one will be out super soon because it's about 90% finished.
QUESTION: Are you guys drawn to book covers with people on the cover (trained one for example) or without people on them (stung as a loose example but there's a lot of examples of this lol)?
Have a great rest of your day! <3