Page 33 of The Man in the Cottage

"That doesn't make it okay," she continues. "You still should have told me. You've been living here for weeks, letting me think you were just some guy, and the whole time you were hiding this."

"I know."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

The honest answer is complicated. The honest answer is that I liked who I was when I was with her—just Travis, not Travis Howe, not the guy from the headlines. The honest answer is that I was scared.

"Because you looked at me like I was a person," I say. "Not a story. Not a cautionary tale. Just a guy who fixed things and helped with your book and showed up for coffee in the mornings. I wasn't ready to lose that."

"You thought you'd lose it if I knew?"

"Everyone else did." I spread my hands. "My teammates, my friends, my family. Once they saw the video, once they read the headlines, that's all I was. The guy who snapped. The guy with anger issues. Didn't matter that I'd never been in trouble before. Didn't matter what he said to me. All anyone saw was the violence."

"I'm not everyone else."

"I know that now."

She's quiet for a moment, processing. I watch her think, watch her turn it over in her mind. I have no idea what she's going to say next. I have no idea if this is the end of something or the beginning.

"There's more," I say. "About why I'm here. About your grandmother."

"Okay."

"My grandmother and yours were friends. For decades—they met at some church thing in the seventies and stayed in touch ever since. When I needed somewhere to go, somewhere to disappear, my grandmother gave me this address. She said Eleanor would take care of me. That she didn't ask questions and didn't judge."

Kelly's face shifts. "Your grandmother sent you here?"

"Before she died. When things were falling apart and I didn't know what to do. She told me to come here, and I did." I pause. "And then she died, and your grandmother was all I had left of her. So I stayed. I told myself I was honoring a promise, keeping an eye on Mrs. Dawson the way my grandmother would have wanted. But really I just... I couldn't leave. This place was the last connection I had to her."

"You stayed for your grandmother."

"At first. And then I stayed because of yours. And then..." I meet her eyes. "And then I stayed because of you."

The words hang in the air between us. I didn't mean to say them. But they're true, and I'm tired of hiding things.

Kelly doesn't respond right away. She just looks at me, her dark eyes searching my face for something I hope she finds.

"Why didn't you tell the press?" she asks. "About your grandmother, about what he said. If people knew the whole story—"

"It wouldn't matter. The video is the video. People see what they want to see." I shrug. "And I didn't want to drag my grandmother into it. She was private. She would have hated being part of some media circus, having her death used as an excuse for what I did. It felt wrong to defend myself with her story."

"So you just let everyone think the worst."

"Yeah."

"That's..." She shakes her head. "That's either really noble or really stupid."

"Probably both."

She laughs, just a little, and the sound breaks something open in me. I didn't know how much I needed to hear her laugh until right now.

"So what happens now?" she asks.

"I don't know. That's kind of up to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you own this property. You've got a guy living in your backyard who beat up a photographer and made national news for all the wrong reasons. If you want me gone, I'll go. I should have left months ago."