27. Chapter 27 #2
I’ve never been to Skye’s house. Not this one. She moved in sometime after my childhood collapsed, but let’s just say the place is massive.
And lit up like the world’s most expensive Christmas tree.
I bet she purposely left the lights on before coming to find me.
I step into the house first, struck by how pristine it is. It’s a lot like Jake’s home, clean and spacious. No stained carpets or beat-up furniture, not a single dust mote floating in the air. Actual curtains on the windows rather than bedsheets or dented blinds.
I try not to let my boots scuff the floor, try not to breathe too loud. The whole place looks like it would reject my presence if it could. I don’t belong here. But weirdly, Skye doesn’t seem like she belongs here, either.
Still, I hold on to her hand as we walk through each room, checking windows and locks. I even drop to my knees to look under beds, causing Skye to laugh.
By the time we make it back to the foyer, we’ve ensured every nook and cranny in the house is clear.
“Everything looks good,” I say.
For a moment, we just stand there, looking at each other.
“You ready to eat?”
She nods and leads the way into the living room, where she plops onto the sofa. The very expensive-looking sofa.
I hesitate before sitting. “You want to eat on the couch?”
Skye blinks. “Uh, yeah? Unless you want to… sit in the dining room?” She’s looking at me like I suddenly sprouted another head.
“I just want to make sure it’s okay. I mean, I’d hate to get the couch dirty.”
“Boss,” she says, grinning. “It’s a couch. It’ll survive even if we accidentally spill some lettuce.” She pats the spot next to her, so I sit.
She mans the remote while I pull the burgers and fries from the paper bag.
“Our TV has an automatic shutoff. If you don’t switch the channel for an hour, it’ll ask if you’re still watching and then just… shut off,” she says, browsing the guide. “Anything in particular you want to watch?”
I glance only briefly at the TV. “Not really.”
The last time I had true, unfettered access to a television, it was usually commandeered by two tiny people at war with each other over which cartoon to watch. And now I feel like I’m too far behind to be allowed an opinion.
She settles on some reality TV show set on a boat. Strike that—yacht.
She glances at me sheepishly. “Sorry, I know it’s brainrot, but it’s a nice way to unwind. Doesn’t require me to think too much, you know?”
“Hey, you don’t need to apologize. We all have our guilty pleasures.”
She reaches for her burger with a smirk. “Yeah? What’s yours?”
“Uhh… Gyms.”
She blinks. “Gyms?”
“Yeah.” I grab my cheeseburger.
“That’s not a guilty pleasure. That’s just a place.”
“With hot showers,” I say with a duh-tone. “Ooh, can I change my answer? I pick hot showers as my guilty pleasure. I can shower for hours if you let me.”
A laugh escapes her before she can stop it.
“I’m serious,” I insist. “And those soap dispensers they have? Even shampoo. And towels!”
She stares at me. Then starts laughing harder. “The soap dispenser?”
“The soap dispenser.”
“Boston.”
“Stormy, do you know how much soap costs in stores?”
“Like five dollars?”
“Exactly. Free soap.”
She shakes her head. “I cannot believe this is your answer.”
I shrug. “I’m a simple man.”
“Apparently.”
I grin and steal one of her fries. “If you work at the gym, you can even use the washer and dryer for your clothes, which is like—” I press the tips of my fingers to my lips.
Her smile slips. And there it is. That shift. The moment the joke stops being funny because she remembers how I know these things.
She kicks her sandals off and pulls her legs up underneath herself. “Can I ask you something?”
“Depends,” I say and take a large bite, chewing slowly to buy myself time.
“Why’d you leave? When you were seventeen. Why’d you… disappear? What happened?”
I stare at the burger in my hand. “I’d rather not talk about that tonight, Stormy.”
Her eyes drift to her burger, too, like she’s giving me emotional space somehow. “Okay.”
Neither of us says anything for a while. We just eat while some lady on TV yells drunkenly at her husband—maybe boyfriend—before throwing her martini at him.
Skye shifts next to me. “I… Can I ask you about Cassie and Bronx?”
I meet her gaze. “The foster family they’re with is already their third one since March. I came back for them. After my mom was arrested. I’m trying to get custody of them, but…” My eyes drop to her knee. “It’s obviously not that simple.”
I see her nod. “Before Jake’s, when you slept in your car,” she tries cautiously. “Where’d you go? Was there like a place, or—”
“I parked under that large oak tree behind the gym. Privacy and all that.”
“And where’d you keep your things?” She sounds encouraged by the fact that I’m still answering.
“What things?”
“Your belongings,” she says with a shrug.
I can’t help but smile. “What you saw in my trunk was it, Skye. Everything I own. My phone, my charger. Some food. Toothbrush. And my duffel of clothes. That’s all.”
She blinks like she’s trying to make sense of it. “But… how do you eat? Where do you shower? What—”
“It depends. It’s easier at Jake’s obviously, but my talk about showering in the gym wasn’t a lie. I do my laundry there, too, or at the laundromat. I eat at AJ’s or I live off snacks and stuff that doesn’t require cooking. That’s just… life.”
“God, Boss, I never knew.”
I smile. “You weren’t supposed to.”
Her brow creases. “But you work so much.”
I know where she’s going with this. “I keep a couple hundred bucks for food and gas. The rest gets deposited. To get Cass and Bronx, I need a place to live and money for legal fees.”
Skye doesn’t say anything, but I can feel her watching me. I, on the other hand, stare at the TV where the angry drunk lady’s still screaming.
“I didn’t leave Stillwater because I wanted to.” The words come out rough. Unstoppable. “I left because I had to. To protect my family.”
My throat tightens.
“And in the end”—I shake my head—“I still failed.”
I feel her hand move to my knee, the warmth seeping through my jeans. I look at her, at those ocean eyes that have always been so beautiful and somehow carry both sadness and warmth. “Boss,” she breathes. “You didn’t fail. You’re here. You came back for them.”
“Yeah, but I can’t—”
“Not yet,” she cuts in. “But you’re trying.”
I don’t know what to say, so I just nod.
“Anyway, enough about me.” I shift, cracking my neck, desperate to shed the heaviness.
“Tell me what you’re going to do once you graduate college.”
She withdraws her hand, and my knee immediately feels cold.
“Well, if it was up to me I’d go to law school after graduation.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “What do you mean if it were up to you?”
She shrugs. “I’m not sure Archer would love the idea.”
“Why wouldn’t he?”
Another shrug. “He says it’s a waste of time.”
“I don’t understand.”
She exhales deeply, her lips pressed into a thin smile. “You have to understand, Arch grew up in more of a traditional household. Stay-at-home mom and all that.”
“Uh-huh?”
She shrugs yet again. “So I kind of think he’s envisioning that for, you know, his own life.”
I nod once, my jaw tight.
“And yours,” I say. “When he marries you.”
She doesn’t respond, so I soften my tone. “But I gather that’s not really what you want. The charmed life of feminine leisure that’s somehow supposed to come with raising kids and keeping house?” I gotta work on my tone.
“I don’t have anything against people choosing that for themselves,” she says contemplatively.
“I just don’t think it’s for me. My mom’s such a badass.
She helps so many people. She makes a difference.
And she still got to have that fairy-tale love story with my dad.
That’s what I want. And, you just never know, right?
What’ll happen? I want to build something for myself because… because—”
“Life sometimes has a way of fucking things up,” I finish for her.
“Yeah. Growing up, my mom always told me to be with someone because I want to be with them, not because I have to. I just… what if I make myself dependent on someone else and then something happens? What if he leaves? What if he can’t work?
I don’t ever want to be in a position where I have no way to take care of myself. ”
I nod at her impassioned reasoning.
“I mean, as someone who’s been in exactly those shoes—well, kinda—I couldn’t agree more.
When my dad died… we lost everything. My mom didn’t have a degree.
No job experience. No savings.” I sigh. “But Stormy, it is up to you. Only you. And I have no doubt you’ll go to law school. You’re the smartest person I know.”
She huffs a half-hearted laugh. “Oh, please.”
“I’m serious. Look at all the things you’ve done. You were a rock star at mock trial. You graduated valedictorian of our high school class. And you’re majoring in economics at Northwestern, which, I’m pretty, sure is ranked like top ten in the whole world,” I point out.
Her eyebrows dip and her lips part, then close again. “You are… well apprised, Mr. Rawlings.”
I narrow my eyes at her. “You really think I don’t know what you guys were up to while I was gone?”
Her eyes widen.
“Stormy, just because I disappeared from your life doesn’t mean you disappeared from mine.”
Her breath hitches just barely, but her face speaks volumes. She was not expecting that.
“How… how do you know all this?” she asks.
I shrug. “Social media. I kept up.”
A smile tugs at her mouth. My eyes fall to her lips for the briefest of seconds.
“I can’t believe you were spying on me,” she says, shaking her head.
“I wasn’t spying.”
“You were absolutely spying.”
“I was observing.”
She laughs. And suddenly we’re seventeen again. No. Younger. Way younger. Before life got ugly for me. Before everything fell apart.
“You know,” I say, unable to stop myself from grinning widely, “I saw that picture you posted of yourself in that ratty Cinderella dress when you were seven.”
She gasps. “It wasn’t ratty. It was beautiful.”