Previously…
– Molly and Brent put pressure on Travis and Rosie to bow out of the custody fight over Gabrielle. Although they refused, Travis began to express doubts about the viability of his and Rosie’s case.
– A mysterious woman observed Tempest and Samantha together on several occasions.

The faucet runs as Travis Fisher scrubs a dirty dish in the sink. Foamy soap covers his hand as he traces the sponge back and forth on the plate’s surface, trying to remove some stubborn dried food from its surface. As he continues his task, he hears a door slamming closed.

“Hello?” he calls out, suddenly feeling confused as to who it could be.

“Where is she?” a voice demands. Mere seconds later, a dark-haired teenage girl arrives at the entrance to the kitchen. 

“Your mother?” Travis asks his daughter.

“Yeah. If I can even call her that.” Gabrielle’s gaze burns with rage. “How could you not tell me?”

“Not tell you what?” Even as he speaks the question, though, Travis’s stomach tightens, and his heart feels as though it is about to jump through his throat. He has been dreading this day forever.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Gabrielle snaps. She runs both hands back through her dark brown, almost black hair, and Travis notices the long, crystal-embezzled pink nails she is sporting. 

When did she get so… so grown-up? he thinks. The young woman standing before him wears light-wash jeans and a plaid shirt over a white tank top, and she is so familiar, even though he cannot shake the sense that he has also never seen her before. At least not like this.

“You kept me away from my real parents and never told me?” Gabrielle asks. “What is wrong with you? With both of you?”

“Let’s sit down and talk about this,” Travis says with as much calm as he can muster. “Your mother will be home soon–”

“She’s not my mother. And you’re not my father. Great-aunt Molly and Great-uncle Brent are my parents.” Gabrielle shakes her head. “God, that is so weird.”

“I know. This must be a lot to handle. How did you find out?”

Gabrielle ignores the question and shoots another searing look right at him.

“I hate you,” she says at last. “I hate you both!” She storms out of the kitchen, and Travis hears footsteps rumbling up the stairs.

“Gabrielle! Wait!” he calls out, and he tries to move after her. But when he reaches the edge of the kitchen, the hallway in front of him seems to stretch out longer, lengthening before his eyes. And his legs won’t move.

“Gabrielle!” he shouts, but he feels as though he is stuck in quicksand, trapped in place.

—–

“Gabrielle,” Travis exclaims with a start as he shoots up to a sitting position. He looks around. He is back in the room that he and Rosie share in Juanita’s home. Everything looks as it normally does. Streaks of daylight are coming in through the blinds, indicating that it must be early morning.

“What’s wrong?” Rosie asks, and he turns to see his wife with her head still on the pillow, her eyes wide open.

“I had a nightmare.” He struggles to catch his breath and slow his heart rate. 

“About Gabrielle?”

Seeing the anguish in his wife’s face, Travis bites his tongue.

“It was weird. That’s all,” he says. 

“Weird how?”

He hesitates again. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Travis…”

He looks toward the bedside, where the grainy black-and-white of the video baby monitor shows Gabrielle sound asleep in another room on the same floor of the very house that they are in right now. She is curled up tightly and still so small, so young. Travis is relieved that she is still a child, only a toddler.

“What if we can’t stop this?” he blurts out.

Now Rosie sits up. “Can’t stop what?”

“Any of it. Aunt Molly and Uncle Brent taking her. Or– even worse, maybe…” He swallows hard. “What if we get to keep her and she hates us for it?”

“She wouldn’t hate us,” Rosie insists. “We’re her parents.”

“And so are they,” Travis says. “Someday, she’s going to find out about all this. And she might hate us for it.”

—–

The light of dawn is still peeking over the horizon, diffusing a pinkish glow across the sky, as Tempest Banks parks her used sedan in the parking lot outside Edge of Winter Arena. She has been coming to work earlier than usual the last several weeks to handle the uptick in business that always comes with the holiday season, so she is used to the peace and quiet when she first arrives. As she is locking the car, however, that peace and quiet is broken by a frantic yelp followed by a female voice: 

“Dammit!”

Glancing about, Tempest sees a woman with light brown hair standing near the open back door of a silver SUV with a dent in the back bumper. 

“Are you okay?” Tempest asks in a raised voice.

The woman turns, surprise and then embarrassment quickly cycling across her face.

“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I’m… I’m fine.” She turns fully, gesturing at the front of her boat-neck heather gray sweatshirt, which sports a large stain. “I just… ugh.” Tempest sees one of the light blue to-go cups from Thaw sitting at the woman’s feet amidst a puddle of what appears to be coffee.

“One of those mornings,” the woman says with a shrug before bending down to pick up the now-empty cup. “My kid had me up all night, so I thought I’d get a jump on the day and treat myself to one of those fancy holiday coffees. Bright idea that was.”

“I bet if you go back in, they’d remake it for you.”

The tall, thin woman lets out a caustic laugh. “I don’t really have the money for that. This was my splurge for the day. That’s what I get for loosening the pursestrings, huh?”

“I work here,” Tempest says. “It’ll be on the house. I promise.”

“You don’t have to do that. Besides, I just got my daughter strapped into the carseat, so…” The woman trails off and gazes into the empty cup in her hand.

“Wait with her. I’ll go get it.”

“You really don’t have to do that.”

Tempest looks at this woman, clearly an under-rested, overworked mother with a young child, and feels a twinge of sympathy. She has helped Alex and Trevor out with Chase enough to know how overwhelming childcare can be, and she hasn’t even been the one responsible for the kid for more than a few hours at a time.

“It’s no big deal,” Tempest says. “What kinda drink was it?”

The woman tenses, but then lets out a big breath and seems to relax. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Tempest tells her with a friendly smile.

—–

“Don’t say that,” Rosie says, sounding wounded as she pulls herself up and leans her back against the wooden headboard. “We are the only parents Gabrielle has ever known. The only parents she will ever know.”

Travis’s mouth twitches with a rebuttal, but he can’t quite form the words. All he knows is that he has a terrible, sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“I’m scared,” he finally says. “What if…”

“Don’t.” She presses her index finger to his lips and then pulls him closer. Travis scoots in, eager for the comfort of her touch. He drapes an arm over her midsection and rests the side of his head against the side of hers.

“We are gonna get through this,” Rosie says, unable to conceal the quiver in her voice. “We are.”

“I hope so.”

“We are.”

He raises his eyes and takes her in. Even without a stitch of makeup, with her hair pulled back into a casual ponytail, she is beautiful. The mere sight of her usually brings him such peace, but this morning, even that is fleeting. His nightmare, and the growing sense of dread he has felt ever since Molly and Brent’s visit on Thanksgiving, is all too much.

“I love you,” is all he can manage.

“I love you, too.” She turns her head and kisses his lips. “I love you.”

“Mmm.” Travis kisses her back. He feels an animal intensity flooding through his body, a desperate need for connection and reassurance. His lips press against hers more fervently, parting her lips, searching for her tongue.

Rosie speaks through heavy breaths: “Travis…” 

“I need you,” he says, his hands roaming over her body. “I need you.”

“I need you, too,” she says huskily, giving in to the passion and the need, as she pulls him even closer and traces her fingernails over his bare torso.

—–

“Here you go,” Tempest says when she returns to the silver SUV in the parking lot with a new cup from Thaw.

“You really didn’t have to do this,” the woman tells her as she accepts the cup with her left hand. “But thank you.”

“No problem.”

“I’m Sienna, by the way.” She reaches out her right hand, and Tempest shakes it. 

“Tempest.”

“You work in the coffee shop?”

“Nah, in the rink.” Tempest points to the sign that reads Edge of Winter Arena above the main entrance. 

“Oh, great.” Sienna hesitates, taking a tentative sip of her beverage, before asking, “You don’t happen to know if either place is hiring, do you? I’ve been desperately trying to find something…”

“I can ask,” Tempest tells her. 

“I’d really appreciate that. Would it be okay if I took your number so I could follow up?”

“Yeah, no problem.” 

The women quickly trade phone numbers. Tempest glances into the open back door of the SUV and sees a toddler girl in a car seat, her little legs covered by pink leggings and dangling down from the seat. 

“What’s your daughter’s name?” Tempest asks, waving at the little girl, who is staring back at her curiously. She notices that the child must be biracial, maybe half-Black.

“Noelle,” Sienna says. “She’s the light of my life.”

“I can see why. She’s a really cute kid.”

“Thank you. Well, Tempest…” Sienna pulls open the driver’s door of the SUV. “Thank you for going out of your way to get my coffee replaced. You made my day.”

Tempest shrugs. “Holiday season and all.”

“I hope it’s okay if I reach out about those job opportunities, too.”

“Yeah. Definitely.” Tempest waves into the backseat. “Bye, Noelle.”

“Say bye-bye,” Sienna tells the toddler, who simply continues staring as her mother closes the back door. “Thanks again, Tempest.”

With a nod, Tempest heads toward the arena’s main entrance. Sienna climbs into the SUV and starts the engine. 

“That couldn’t have gone better,” she says to herself. “Isn’t that right, baby?”

She savors a sip of the coffee as she looks at her daughter in the rearview mirror.

—–

“That was nice,” Travis says before giving Rosie one final kiss on her forehead.

She smiles. “Really nice.”

“It’s good for us to have a little, well, us time.” 

As Rosie murmurs her agreement, Travis rolls back over and checks the time on his cell phone.

“I should get moving,” he says. “I told Landon I’d meet him to catch up over breakfast before I head into work.”

“And it’ll be good for you guys to have some you time,” she replies with a smirk. 

Travis slips out of bed, fully nude, and takes his robe from the hook on the back of the closed door. He pulls it on and cinches the belt around his waist.

“I’m going to take a quick shower,” he says. “Is she still asleep?”

Rosie glances at the baby monitor and then nods. “Sound asleep.”

“Good. She needs her rest.” He opens the door, then turns back. “I love you.”

“I love you, too, Travis,” Rosie says, and she watches as he moves out of the bedroom and into the hallway. Once he has gone, the satisfied smile on her face dissolves into a troubled frown. Travis’s words from earlier ring in her head: “Someday, she’s going to find out about all this. And she might hate us for it.”

“No,” Rosie says under her breath. “We’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. We will.”

END OF EPISODE 1205

Are Travis and Rosie about to find themselves at odds?
Why did Sienna arrange a run-in with Tempest?
Talk about all this and more in the comments below!

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