Chapter 17 #4
I drag a hand over my jaw and turn away for half a second because looking at her right now is dangerous, when she is angry and hurting like this.
“I saw him touching you,” I say, lower this time. “I saw your face.”
“Oh my god, stop saying that. I know what you saw.”
“No, you don’t.” I turn my gaze back to her. “You think I saw some prick and wanted a fight. I didn’t. I saw you cornered on that pavement, your groceries scattered on the ground, his hand locked on your arm, and I could not fucking breathe.”
Her mouth tightens.
“That was not me chasing a fight, Sky.”
“Then what was it?”
Fear.
The word sits there, ugly and honest, taking up more space than it deserves in this small, warm kitchen.
I don’t want to give it to her, hand her another weak thing, and watch her decide what to do with it.
When I don’t say anything, she does.
“And you almost threw your life away again because of it.” Her voice is careful. Controlled. The kind of control that costs something. “It seems like just when we start to—.”
She stops. Starts again. “I am left standing there, watching you risk everything again for me, when I never asked you to.”
Her voice rises now, the control slipping at the edges. “You went to prison, Zane.”
“I remember.”
“I lost you, Zane,” she says.
“I fucking remember.”
Her eyes shine, and she hates it. “You think I need you to prove you’d bleed for me? I already know that. I’ve always known that. That was never the problem.”
“Then what was the problem?”
“You never knew how to live for me.”
That one goes straight through my chest. Clean hit. No warning.
Her voice drops. “I thought you were going to hit him. I thought I was going to stand there and watch you fuck everything you have been trying to rebuild, and I could not… I could not watch that happen again.”
I stare at her.
She blinks fast, furious with herself. “And I can’t do that again. I can’t watch them take you away again because some asshole knew exactly which buttons to push.”
There are a hundred things I could say right now, most of them shit.
So I say the only true one I have.
“I am not asking you to forgive me.”
“Good.”
“I am not asking you to forget, Sky.
“Also good.”
I keep my feet planted in the kitchen because, for once in my life, staying still might matter more than swinging.
Skylar looks at me for a long moment.
Then she says in a lower voice, “You cannot do that to me again because you think prison happened only to you. It happened to me, too, Zane.”
The words hit hard enough to crack bone.
She swallows but doesn’t glance away. “You went inside and I was left out here with the pieces. God, I was so alone and broken, Zane. And so fucking scared all the time because I didn’t know if you were safe and I didn’t know if you hated me for it.”
I cannot move. I cannot speak.
I just stand here like a complete idiot, letting her words go through me and do what they need to do, which is take apart every version of the story I have been telling myself that she was fine now that I let her go.
“So when I saw your hand around Damien’s throat, I thought you were going to leave me again.”
Fuck. That one guts me.
A tiny, broken breath leaves her. Her eyes search my face and I let her.
I stand there and let her look at every ugly thing she already knows exists.
The temper. The damage. The man who wants to be better but still has blood under his instincts and proof that wanting better and being better are not always the same fucking thing.
“I don’t know what to do with you,” she says.
“I love you,” I say.
Her whole body stills and the apartment goes dead quiet.
She stares at me as if I have just pulled the floor out from under her feet and she has not yet decided whether she is falling or flying.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
“I do.”
“Zane.”
“I love you.” My voice steadies because the truth is ugly, but it is mine, and I am done dressing it up as anything else.
“I loved you before I knew how to do anything useful with it. I loved you when I was young and angry and stupid enough to think bleeding for you was the same as being good for you. I loved you behind bars.”
I pause for a second and let that one sit.
“Every night in that cell, you were the last thing on my mind before I fell asleep. Your face. Your voice. And every morning when I came back up, you were the first thing waiting. Not once did that change. Not one night. Not one morning in all that time. Not once in seven years.”
Her eyes shine.
I take another breath and keep going because I have been carrying this weight for so long, and now is the time to put it down where it belongs.
“I love you now, standing in this kitchen, with you pissed at me and probably wondering whether that tin of tomatoes has enough weight to knock some sense into my head.”
Her mouth trembles. “It might.”
“Probably worth a shot.”
Her mouth loses the battle with itself and curves at one corner, just slightly, but enough. “You never stopped loving me.”
I shake my head. “No, Skylar. You have never stopped owning me. Not one day. Not one hour. Not one fucking second since the first time I saw you.”