5. Skye
— ? —
Skye
Josh has Jaime’s curls.
I knew the second he was born. That dark, messy hair was never going to behave.
I still try to smooth it down every morning, and every morning it springs right back up like it’s mocking me.
So I just kiss those curls instead, breathing in baby shampoo and the graham cracker he’s somehow already snuck into his car seat.
“Mama, look.” He holds up a soggy piece of cracker, grinning with all of his tiny teeth. “I sharing.”
“Thank you, baby. That’s very generous.”
“You eat it.”
“Mama’s good. You eat it.”
“No. Sharing.” He shoves the wet cracker toward my shoulder from his booster seat with determination, and I take it because picking my battles is the only parenting strategy I’ve mastered.
The daycare parking lot is chaos at this hour. Minivans and SUVs jockeying for the three good spots near the door. I wedge my car into a space that probably isn’t legal and pray the parking enforcement guy is running late too. It’s rush hour after all.
“Bye-bye, Mama.” Josh waves a chubby hand as I unbuckle him. “Love you.”
“Love you more.”
“Love you most.”
“Love you mostest.”
It’s our game. Every morning, the same words, the same squeeze that lasts a beat too long because I’m terrified of the day he stops wanting it. I hand him over to Miss Patricia with the same pang I feel every single day.
“He’s been talking about dinosaurs all week,” Patricia says, settling Josh on her hip. “Very passionate about the T-Rex.”
“He gets that from me. I have passionate opinions about everything.”
Patricia laughs. Josh waves again, already distracted by the toy bin in the corner, and I stand there for three extra seconds because leaving him never gets easier.
The drive to work takes twenty-two minutes.
I know because I’ve timed it, optimized it, eliminated every unnecessary stop.
Coffee comes from the gas station because it’s cheaper.
Breakfast is whatever I can eat one-handed at red lights.
Today it’s a granola bar I found in my glove compartment. The expiration date was optimistic.
Four years ago, I had a fiancé, a future, and a savings account that didn’t make me physically ill to check.
Now I have a son I’d die for, a job I can’t afford to lose, and a coffee I drink out of spite.
I badge into the building at 8:14, exactly one minute before late. The receptionist gives me a nod. The security guard pretends not to notice that my badge photo looks nothing like me anymore. Four years and twenty pounds of baby weight will do that to a person.
Shelby is already waiting at my cubicle, coffee in hand, eyebrows at her hairline.
She got me hired here two months after Josh was born.
Called the HR director’s office and said “You need an operations coordinator, and I need you to trust me.” That job is the only reason we survived that first year.
She has never once let me forget it. She joined me in this company one year after I got in.
“Layoffs,” she says before I can even set down my bag. “That’s the word going around.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“I’m serious. Emergency meeting in ten. The whole company.”
My stomach drops. “Define layoffs. Like, trim-the-fat layoffs or burn-it-down layoffs?”
“Nobody knows. That’s why everyone’s panicking.”
I sink into my chair and pull up my email, but the words blur.
Layoffs. The word bounces around my skull, picking up speed with every pass.
Josh’s daycare costs four hundred dollars a week.
His health insurance is through this job.
His prescription for the ear infections that plagued him all winter costs five hundred dollars a month even with coverage.
“Hey.” Shelby’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Breathe. We don’t know anything yet.”
“I can’t lose this job.”
“You’re not going to lose this job.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you’re the only person in operations who actually understands the filing system. They’d collapse without you.”
“The filing system is a nightmare that I created specifically so they can’t fire me.”
“See? Job security through chaos. Brilliant strategy.”
By the time we reach the conference room, the rumors have crystallized into fear. The whole company crammed into a space built for a fraction of us, everyone whispering, nobody making eye contact with management. Shelby saves me a seat near the door. Escape route, she mouths.
The CEO stands at the front of the room, looking like he hasn’t slept in days. His tie is crooked. His hair is doing something unfortunate. He thanks us for our service. He acknowledges the difficult year. He assures us that the company’s legacy will continue.
“We’ve been acquired,” he finally says. “Effective immediately.”
The room exhales.
Acquired works. Someone else’s problem now, and the paychecks don’t stop. Josh’s medical insurance holds for another month, maybe longer, as long as the new CEO decides we’re worth keeping.
I slump back in my chair, dizzy with relief.
“Everyone keeps their jobs,” the CEO continues. “Our new owner has assured me that there will be no immediate changes to staffing. This is a growth acquisition, not a cost-cutting measure.”
Shelby squeezes my hand under the table. See? her face says. Told you.
“I’d like to introduce you all to our new parent company.” The CEO gestures toward the screen behind him. “They’ve been nothing but professional throughout this process, and I’m confident this partnership will take us to new heights.”
The presentation screen flickers to life.
MILLER INDUSTRIES
The logo stretches across the wall in blue and silver, sleek and polished and corporate. And then, below it:
Jaime Miller, CEO
The room spins.
I grip the edge of the table, knuckles white, lungs refusing to expand. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead, too bright, too loud, drowning out whatever the CEO is saying now.
Shelby’s hand clamps around my wrist under the table. Her nails dig in hard enough to bruise.
“Skye.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “Skye, look at me.”
I can’t look at her. I can’t look at anything except that name on the screen, that name I’ve spent four years running from.
I moved states. I changed my name, made it legal, sat in a courthouse with Shelby and watched a judge sign the paperwork that turned me into someone new.
Skye Warren didn’t exist on paper before four years ago.
I deleted every trace of my old life. Every photo, every document, every connection that could lead him back to me.
I buried her so deep that not even Google could find her.
And he found me anyway.
“-and Mr. Miller is already in the building,” the CEO says. The words reach me through a fog, distant and distorted. “He’s requested to meet personally with his new executive assistant.”
Executive assistant. I work in operations. I file things and attend meetings and pretend to understand complicated spreadsheets.
“Skye?” The CEO is looking at me now. Everyone is looking at me. “Skye Warren? That’s you.”
The room tilts.
“I’m in operations,” I hear myself say, from very far away. “I’m not anyone’s assistant.”
“Not anymore.” He shuffles his papers, not meeting my eyes. “The transfer came over with the acquisition paperwork this morning. Requested by name.”
Requested by name. Fifty pairs of eyes, curious and confused and slightly impressed.
A coworker leans over, whispering too loud. “Girl, the new CEO wants you personally? That’s either really good or really bad.”
I can’t answer.
The meeting ends. People file out, buzzing with relief and speculation. I stay frozen in my chair until Shelby physically hauls me to my feet.
“Bathroom. Now.”
She drags me down the hall, shoves me through the door, and locks it behind us. Everything feels surreal, like I’ve stepped into someone else’s nightmare.
“How.” My voice comes out cracked. “How did he find me?”
“I don’t know.”
“I changed my name. I moved states. I don’t exist, Shelby. I made sure I don’t exist.”
“I know.”
“So how is he here? How is he standing in this building, buying this company, requesting me by name?”
Shelby’s face is pale. I’ve never seen her look scared before. Angry, yes. Determined, always. But never scared.
“You’re not going up there alone,” she says.
“I have to.”
“No, you don’t. We can leave. Right now. Out the back door, into my car, gone before he even knows you were here.”
“And then what?” The laugh that comes out of me is hollow. “He bought the company, Shel. He knows I’m here. He’ll buy the next one too. And the one after that. He has infinite money and infinite time and apparently infinite patience for hunting down women who don’t want to be found.”
“So we go further. Different state. Different country. I hear New Zealand is nice.”
My hand presses flat against the bathroom wall, steadying myself. “If I run again, he wins. He gets to keep chasing me forever.”
“And if you go up there?”
“Then at least I find out what he wants.”
My desk phone is already lit up when we get back to my cubicle. A single message, red and urgent.
Report to the CEO’s office.
Shelby watches me gather my purse, badge, and phone, along with the photo of Josh I keep hidden deep inside my desk drawer where no one can ever see it.
“Call me,” she says. “The second you’re out of there, you call me.”
“I will.”
“I mean it, Skye. If you’re not out in an hour, I’m coming up there with building security and a fire extinguisher.”
“What’s the fire extinguisher for?”
“To blind him? I don’t know, I’ll figure it out in the moment.”
The walk to the executive floor takes an eternity. The elevator dings, each floor ticking by in slow motion. The hallway stretches.
The door to his office looms at the end. Massive. Imposing. The nameplate is already up.
JAIME MILLER, CEO
My hand shakes as I reach for the handle. Four years of running, and it ends here. In an office building I’ve worked in.
I open the door.
Jaime stands at the window, silhouetted against the city skyline, his back to me. Four years have changed him in ways I can see even from behind.
He remains perfectly still without turning around, staring out at the city landscape as if he has spent a very long time waiting for this exact moment.
“Close the door.”
His voice. Deeper now, rougher around the edges, but still the same voice that used to whisper against my hair in the dark. Still the same voice that lied to me for months and made me apologize for noticing.
I close the door. The click echoes in the silence.
He turns.
His eyes. I forgot how dark they are, how they always seemed to see straight through me, how they made me feel seen and known and completely transparent. Those eyes fill with tears now, wet and desperate, and for one horrible second I almost believe them.
“Skye.” His voice cracks on my name. “I finally found you.”
I stand perfectly still and silent, refusing to give him a single word or movement to work with.
He takes a step toward me. Then another. His hands shake at his sides, reaching for me, and I take one sharp step back.
“Don’t.”
He freezes. “Skye, please. Just let me-”
“Don’t touch me. Don’t come near me. Don’t say my name like you have any right to it.”
“I’ve been looking for you for years.”
“I know. That’s the problem.”
His jaw tightens. The tears are still there, hovering, threatening to fall. “I need to explain.”
“You already did that.”
“That’s not-”
“I saw the photos, Jaime. Her hand on your face. Her walking out of your building in the morning. Consoled by the assistant. Ring any bells?”
His face completely changes all of a sudden, and I can see this brief look flicker across his eyes that I honestly just can’t read at all. “That wasn’t what it looked like.”
“It never is.”
“Skye, I swear to you-”
“Stop.” My voice comes out steady, and I’m proud of that.
Proud of the woman I’ve become in the four years since I last stood in front of him.
“I don’t want your explanations. I don’t want your apologies.
I want to know why you’re here. Why you bought this company.
Why you transferred me to a position I didn’t apply for. ”
He stares at me for a long moment. The tears don’t fall. His hands stay at his sides.
“Because I love you,” he says. “Because I never stopped loving you. Because I’ve spent four years trying to find the woman who ran out of our wedding, and now that I’ve found her, I’m not letting her go again.”
The words land. I absorb them, steady myself, and meet his eyes.
“I’m not the same woman who ran out of that church.”
“I know.”
“I don’t love you anymore.”
Something breaks in his face. “You don’t mean that.”
“I mean every word.” I take another step back, hand on the door handle. “Whatever you came here looking for, it doesn’t exist. I buried her. And I’m not digging her up for you.”
He found me. But he’s never going to find Josh.