35. Under Her Nose
UNDER HER NOSE
Maybe he’d been a little aggressive in that email.
But waiting days to send it had only sharpened the urge behind it, turning patience into something poisonous. The constant presence of family always hovering, always interrupting him had stripped him of peace and fed the pressure to finish this today.
Because Skye had crossed the line with what she wrote.
Questioned his originality. Doubted his intelligence. Accused him of copying. Of being small and unimaginative.
The audacity of it still burned. What he’d done wasn’t imitation; it was strategy. Misdirection. Genius, if they knew how to recognize it. But of course they didn’t. They never did.
Fine.
If she couldn’t see it on her own, he’d make sure she understood.
Some lessons couldn’t be explained. They had to be shown.
She was going to vomit. That last email. That was it.
She couldn’t do this anymore. They were going to have to give her something.
Anything.
It was like this person was taunting her with her childhood all over again.
And walking into the Lancaster’s home now, it made her feel small.
Like the first time she hobbled in on the crutches and was told this was her new home.
She’d had new shorts and a T-shirt on, sneakers, and even undergarments. All the things that Carrie had gone out and bought her once they said she was going to live with them.
Her smoked scented shorts and T-shirt she’d been sleeping in when she climbed out the window had been thrown out. They were the last possessions she’d owned and they were gone.
She didn’t want to lose any of this again. But staring her family down wasn’t going to be easy.
Not with the sympathy in their eyes.
She expected anger again. Expected frustration.
Instead she was getting pity... and more than a touch of possessiveness.
“You can’t stay alone,” Jim said immediately. “I mean it. No arguing.”
Her shoulders dropped. It was on the tip of her tongue to say she didn’t want to be alone, but she couldn’t put anyone else in danger either.
“I’ll stay with Ash or him with me.”
“You can go out and stay in the cabin on my parents’ property,” Ash said. “I just got off the phone with Clay. There isn’t a single person who can touch you there. Not without him knowing they are close by.”
She shook her head. She hadn’t even known that was an option, but the last thing she wanted to be was an obligation.
A burden to the family of the man she was in love with.
“No,” she said. “Ash, you can stay or I’ll stay with you at night. During the day, I’ve got a job to do and so do you.”
“But you’ll be alone,” Carrie said. “Come to the office and work there. We’ll give you space and you’ll have privacy.”
So they could watch over her.
“I’m more comfortable in my house writing. All these fires are when it’s dark. Right?”
She looked at Ash though she knew the answer. “Yes.”
“Then I’m fine during the day. This person, whoever he is, he’s a coward. He’s doing it all under the cover of night. He’s not going to come out during the day. It’s not happening.”
Tate and Keegan’s jaws were set. They weren’t happy she was making sense for them.
“We can have patrol cars circling,” Tate said. “It will help some.”
“Not with as fast as a fire spreads,” Corbin said. “We saw that at the last one.”
“That was different,” she said. “He’s not going to come after me in the daylight. And I keep saying he. Maybe it’s a woman.”
“Statistically, that’s thin. You know it,” Tate said.
She did. But she was grasping. Anything to make this go away.
She blew a breath out. “I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m not sure anyone is. I want it over with,” she choked out.
Then the tears followed.
She hated to show weakness like this more than anything else in life.
It brought back all her memories as a young child and her biological mother yelling at her to cut the shit. To get thick skin. That life was hard and tears didn’t get you through.
“Come with me,” her mother said, taking her hand and pulling her up the stairs to her old room.
She let herself be led. Let herself be taken care of.
It was different this time.
She didn’t feel the need to fight back.
To hold everything in.
To worry that they were going to send her on her way if she didn’t turn out the way they wanted.
Instead, she sat on her old bed and let Carrie Lancaster hold her like she knew Carrie wanted to do thirteen years ago.
Back then, Skye wiggled away. Avoided eye contact. Tried to be tough.
She wasn’t tough anymore. She was tired and weak, and the fight was just out of her.
Out of her wanting to run. To find something she thought she should have.
But she had exactly what she needed in her life right now.
It’d always been here right under her nose and she’d resisted it for so long.
Not anymore.
“I’m so sorry. I feel as if I brought this all to your family.”
“Nonsense,” her mother said. Carrie had become her mother decades ago. The other mother in her life was just Jenny now, even if it felt disrespectful to call her by name. Which was why she didn’t. And why she rarely thought of her first set of parents at all.
“It’s hard to think of it that way. I should have never tried to take on more when I moved here. I should have come home a long time ago. I’m happy now. Happier than I’ve been in forever. But I always had to fight for more. To prove to myself and everyone else I could do it alone.”
Her mother was rubbing her back. Letting her talk. “That has always been a problem you’ve had to work out on your own. I’ve tried to let you, but I can see that maybe you’re just beat down.”
“I am,” she sniffled. “I should have walked away weeks ago.”
“Should haves mean nothing now. And you don’t know that it would have turned out any differently. You do what you do best.”
“What’s that? Run?”
Her mother pushed her back, a soft smile on her face. “You don’t run away, Skye. You take the time you need to gather yourself. I’ve always known that and let you do it.”
“So I’ve been gathering myself for over a decade?” she asked drily.
This was news to her. Shouldn’t she know those things about herself?
“Some things take longer than others. Some people take longer. The time was right, and you returned. When the time is right, you’ll be able to take the next step with this.”
“Time is running out now,” she said.
Or she wanted it to.
“No one is pushing you to move faster.”
She snorted. “Oh, I think someone is. I just don’t know who the asshole is.”
“That’s the spirit.” Her mother wiped a tear from her cheek. “You just keep that attitude. It will take you far.”
She tilted her head. It didn’t seem like the time, but she was going to do it anyway. She was going to have a mother-daughter talk she’d never had in her life.
“I love Ash.”
“I know, honey. I think you’ve been sweet on him for years. We know he’s been on you.”
“How does someone carry that for so long?”
“Because he always knew that things take time. That you took time. And the best things in life would be there if you just waited long enough.”