10. Chapter 10
Skye
S kye wasn’t sure if she should panic or be angry. Maybe both? Everyone knew “can we talk” was the line somebody said right before they broke bad news. Rabble wasn’t someone she would consider everyone though. He’d never operated on society’s standard of normal.
Her hand settled against his warm, rough skin as he entwined their fingers, and Skye let him lead her out of the warehouse, under the glow of the building’s security lights.
The crowd had dissipated throughout the day, many of the families having headed home within the last several minutes.
Only a few dedicated stragglers continued working and would stay late into the night.
They were relatively alone among the crickets and other singing bugs that made homes in the grass and trees behind the warehouse.
He rubbed the back of her hand with his thumb, in soothing circles. Skye didn’t know if it was more for her or himself.
She felt the shift, a subtle change during their conversation the day before while working on the parade float, something almost companionable between them.
His soft lips against her cheek as he brushed a kiss there had solidified her confusion and left her feeling like a silly schoolgirl.
This though, felt different even from that.
The urgency to his movements set her heart racing and made her stomach clench in nervousness.
“Skye…” He dropped her name from his mouth like he wasn’t prepared to speak at all, and he seemed to struggle for the right words.
His throat bobbed as he searched for the vocabulary to convey his dismay. “Dash and, well, I suppose Declan too, made me realize something this morning. It’s eight years too late, but I, I’m sorry.”
Skye sucked in a breath and held it like her life depended on it, her heart thudding painfully beneath her chest, but she stayed quiet as he went on.
“I let you down. I left when you needed me, when we needed each other, and I can’t ever take back these years of doubt and everything that could have been different, but I want the chance to.
I mean I hope, maybe I might get the chance to.
” He cringed as his words rushed out, desperate to be spoken and yet wished they’d remained unsaid.
Skye found his fumbling endearing, but what was she supposed to say to that?
She had loved him since childhood, had probably always loved him in truth.
She’d been waiting to hear him say those words for so long, but too much history divided them.
Too much to start fresh? Could they use the broken blocks of their past to build a stronger future? Was she a fool for wishing they could?
She stared at her hand, linked with his.
“I think I’d been holding out hope, maybe you’d just been held up with something.
Maybe you were just running late. I wanted so badly to believe you still planned to run away with me, that you hadn’t left me behind.
But when I found your enlistment papers,” her voice cracked and she swallowed, disentangling their fingers to distance herself, “I felt like my world finished crumbling completely. All the freedom we longed for was gone. The only person who knew how I felt, gone. It hurt, Matthew.”
Skye watched the blow land when she used his given name, the way he flinched and blanched at the same time. She didn’t say it to hurt him. Even though telling him the truth sounded selfish in her ears and unshed tears blurred her vision, he needed to understand how deep her wounds went.
His eyes darkened in the fading light of dusk, but she could read pain in the lines around his eyes and the tightness of his mouth.
“Did you think I couldn’t handle going with you? That your career choice might scare me away? Did you not think I was strong enough to be there to support you through trainings and deployments?” The vulnerability in her questions made Skye
cringe.
She hated feeling so exposed but there was no other way to convey the way he’d hurt her.
“I would have given anything to stay with you, no matter where that path led.” All of the hurt and confusion bubbled back to the surface, and Skye felt like the eighteen-year-old girl she’d been, betrayed and alone. Scared.
“No! I knew you would go with me. But you had your heart set on college and—.” He swallowed roughly, his warm hand following the path of her jaw to caress her cheek as he rushed on, “
I couldn’t be the reason you didn’t chase your own dreams. I couldn’t take you away from all of that.”
Skye sighed, suddenly exhausted, and pulled away from him to sag against the rough siding of the building. “What a pair we are. I was looking to you for freedom, and all you saw were the chains you thought you represented. I wanted you, Rabble. Just you.”
He closed the distance and leaned in, cupping her face with his huge hands and smudged his thumb across her jaw.
He dipped his head, his lips grazing the shell of her ear before he pulled back and met her eyes with an intensity that awakened some long slumbering part of her.
“I don’t deserve to ask this of you, I know that.
” Leaning his forehead against hers, his soft breath whispered passed her ear, “Would you give us the chance to find out what we missed, Skye? Let me show you how truly, devastatingly, miserable I am without you.”
The silence that followed was thick with tension, hurt and fear yawned like a chasm between them.
“I…I need to think,” Skye murmured. She wasn’t sure who she was speaking to, maybe Rabble, maybe herself, maybe even the universe.
If she hadn’t known him so well, she may have missed the minuscule way his face fell, but the flash of pain in his eyes disappeared immediately. He nodded but didn’t speak, as if he couldn’t quite trust his voice.
She stared intently into the steely gray depths of his eyes. “Just give me the night, Matthew, please.”
He nodded again and pulled back, offering his hand and a sad smile. “Let me walk you to your car.”
After Rabble saw her safely tucked inside her sensible vehicle and heard the doors lock, Skye watched him walk away in the beams of the headlights.
By the time they finished speaking, they were alone, the last of the others having wandered off at some point.
Rabble refused a ride when she offered and a part of her was relieved.
Admittedly, she needed time alone to reel and think and probably cry, but she would have waited if it made a difference in his safety.
Rabble’s form disappeared into the night long before Skye put the car in gear and began her short commute home. She spent the drive on autopilot, stopping at the red light automatically, driving between the yellow lines marked on the asphalt because it was habitual.
Even putting her key into the lock and letting herself into her house felt automated.
She threw herself onto the reading chair with a groan, her mind drifting as she closed her eyes against reality.
She’d been in love with Rabble ever since that For Sale sign next door came down and the dusty, shaggy-haired little boy appeared beneath that wonderfully tall tree.
He had been her confidant in all things, and anytime she had something to celebrate or cry over, she ran directly to their fence, always to Rabble who waited for her.
Skye knew, in her heart, Rabble loved her, had always loved her as no one else ever had before or since.
Her head however, liked to throw around her insecurities, letting them hurdle through her mind like a bouncing ball.
Did he truly love her? Or had she simply been a convenience of the time, another lonely person looking to escape the confines of the small town.
Did he love her now? Or was she once again, a convenience for the time being.
With her heart and head constantly at war, was it worth the risk of finding out which was right?
Skye’s head spun as she weighed years of history and strife against wishes and plans that had never come to fruition.
He had broken her heart in ways that were ultimately hard to repair as they were such an integral part of who she was now.
Her parents, despite their controlling manipulation, could never have crushed her the way he had, whether he meant to or not.
That type of heartache wasn’t easily forgotten.
Skye glanced around her house. It was small, sure, but it was hers, and it was solid and steady and everything she wanted from her comfort zone.
But we don’t grow in our comfort zone do we, Miss Wellington? she heard herself in her head, as clearly as if she were speaking to her students. She said something similar to a little girl from the previous year who had been afraid to try out the monkey bars.
At one time, Rabble had been her comfort zone… Was it worth it, the probability of heartache if she took the leap and let him back in?
Skye moved aimlessly about the cottage, starting a load of laundry, washing the few dishes that sat in the sink, folding the blanket that graced the back of the couch—anything to put off the inevitable.
She jumped in the shower, taking extra time washing her hair, scrubbing every inch of her skin, and shaving her legs to perfect smoothness.
The water turned cold before she finally shut off the spout, wrapped herself in her fluffiest bath towel, and stepped out of the tub.
With a second towel, she tied her hair up in it, letting the cloth pull the extra moisture from the long strands, and sat on the edge of her bed, her towel dampening the sheets as she laid back, lifting her phone in front of her.
She shot a text message off to Elyza before she could second-guess herself, and a few minutes later a ten-digit number appeared on her screen.
She saved the number to her contacts and opened a blank message.
The cursor laughed at her, mockingly blinking at her.
She typed a few words, then deleted them, and the cursor kept blinking on and off, a bleak reminder that she had yet to write a single word worth sending, nothing that reflected how she truly felt.
Good lord, she felt like a teenager again!
Inhaling deeply, Skye gathered her courage, typed the one word she could manage, and hoped he understood who it was from and what she meant.