18. Skylar
Charlie’s whole body vibrated, a fine frequency running through his hands where they cradled her face, through to the broad plane of his chest pressed against hers. The resonance traveled through bone.
She’d come to the Ironwood Motor Lodge to feel alive. To bury the sound of dirt hitting a coffin lid beneath warm skin and a living heartbeat. Charlie was supposed to be the easy part. The boy who moved through women the way quarterbacks moved through playbooks: efficient, practiced, forgettable.
He was none of those things.
Every movement carried a question. His mouth against the hollow beneath her ear paused until her breath gave permission. His palm skimmed the curve of her hip and stilled there, waiting, reading her response before he continued.
“Are you sure?” The pad of his thumb brushed the corner of her mouth.
Her fingers curled into the sheets beneath her. “I want this.”
A small smile broke across his face. Not the wide, bright version that lived on Thorndale’s recruiting posters and alumni magazine covers.
A quieter thing, shy and crooked, one corner lifting while the rest of his expression stayed stripped bare.
She’d seen flashes of this smile before, at the diner counter, in the car, in the seconds before he caught himself and corrected the display.
Tonight she saw the full frame of it, unguarded and trembling, and the image burned into her memory with the permanence of a photograph she’d never be able to unsee.
Because real men could be lost.
Her parents had been real. Kate had been real. Grandpa Hanson with his oil-stained hands. They’d been real but now they were buried in Ironwood Cemetery.
Charlie’s mouth found hers, and she kissed him with the terrifying certainty that she was in trouble. Deep, irreversible, no-exit-strategy trouble.
She arched against him and as he found her core, he made a sound low in his throat that held a rawness that matched the desire pressing against her own ribs.
He moved slowly, letting her adjust inch by inch.
The delicious ache of being stretched warred against the gentle nips at her neck, along her collarbone.
When he was fully seated, his forehead dropped to hers and his breathing fractured. “Skylar.”
Her heart slammed in her chest at what he might say next. So she captured his lips with hers and dragged her tongue across his. She pushed for more and he gave, moving to her rhythm, never more.
The tenderness in his hands undid the logic she’d carried into the room.
This was supposed to be heat and confidence, an experience she could file under grief and adrenaline.
Instead, Charlie held her with the careful deliberation of hands steadying a camera in low light, and the reverence of the contact shifted the lens through which she saw him so completely that the old image, the shallow one, the billionaire’s son in the highlight reel, went permanently out of focus.
“You’re . . .” Charlie stumbled. “Unbelievable.”
The heat that simmered when Charlie was around pooled in her stomach.
With every thrust, her muscles tightened, rushing toward release.
His thumb found her clit and the combination of his touch there and his lips against the base of her neck propelled her over the edge, flashes of light exploding behind her closed eyes.
He rocked against her, dragging out the orgasm as waves of pleasure crashed until he shuddered against her.
When he withdrew, his onslaught of touches and kisses continued as he coaxed her back to reality, her name on his lips.
His arm drew her against him and his fingers traced the lines of her body until they eventually stilled on her hip.
His breathing slowed to the rhythm of a man falling asleep.
Outside cars whizzed by on the highway. Through the thin curtain, the gas station sign buzzed orange across the ceiling.
Skylar lay in the circle of his arm and stared at that orange glow and waited for the numbness to return.
The numbness didn’t return.
For once she didn’t reach for the old distance, didn’t lift an invisible lens to hold the room at arm’s length. She let the weight of his arm settle over her. Let the slow pull of his breathing set the pace of her own. Let herself stay there until her eyes drifted closed.
Dawn crept through the gap in the curtain and painted a stripe of pale light across the foot of the bed. Charlie’s arm still curved around her waist, heavy and warm, his face pressed into the bend of her neck. His breath stirred her hair at intervals so steady she could count them.
Waking in his arms. Again.
The first time had been a gas station on the outskirts of Ironwood, folded against him in the back seat of a hired car, grief so thick she could barely see. This was different. No emergency justifying the contact. Just her body tangled with his in a queen bed because she had chosen to come here.
Kate never got a chance to fall in love.
The sentence arrived without warning. Her pulse kicked against the base of her throat.
Skylar took Kate’s scholarship, lived the semester Kate never started, and the first thing Skylar had done with that borrowed future was sleep with a billionaire’s son in a motel room ten miles from where Kate lay in the ground.
Heat flooded her cheeks. She eased out from under Charlie’s arm, slow enough to avoid waking him, and dressed in the dark. Her grandfather’s flannel on a girl who’d just betrayed everything the clothes represented.
Charlie shifted in his sleep and reached for the space where she had been. His fingers curled around the empty sheet, then released.
She closed the motel room door without a sound.
Her grandmother sat at the kitchen table, a pot of tea and two mugs before her.
The overhead light made the room smaller than Skylar remembered, every surface sharpened by the absence of the man who should have filled the other chair. Her grandmother’s blue housecoat hung loose at the shoulders.
Gram’s blew on her hot tea. “You were out late.”
Skylar’s hand drifted to the hollow at the base of her throat. “I couldn’t sleep so I went for a walk.”
Her grandmother held her gaze long enough for the lie to curdle between them, then sipped her tea. “Sit.”
Skylar sat. The chair scraped the linoleum, too loud in a house that had grown cavernous overnight. Steam rose from the mug her grandmother pushed across the table.
“Grams, I’ve been thinking. The shop needs someone to cover the front desk, answer phones, deal with the customers. December is six weeks away. I can take the semester off. Come home. Handle the business until we figure out the long term.”
Kate would have done this. If she’d had the chance.
Her grandmother set down the mug. The ceramic met the table with a quiet click that carried the weight of a gavel. “No.”
“Grams.”
“Skylar Marie.” The full name made Skylar’s spine straighten out of habit. “Your mother sat in my kitchen twenty-five years ago and told me she was pregnant with Kate, and I asked her what she planned to do about school. You know what she said?”
Skylar shook her head.
“She said, ‘I’m going to do both.’ Claire went back.
She finished. She raised two girls and taught high school and took photographs that mattered, and she didn’t once make herself smaller to fit someone else’s emergency.
” Her grandmother’s gaze held hers. “You’re going back to Thorndale.
There will be no wasting the scholarship you earned.
You’re not sacrificing your education to run an auto shop, because your grandfather would haunt us both. ”
The ache behind Skylar’s eyes sharpened. She opened her mouth to argue but a screech from the front door interrupted her.
Her grandmother’s chin lifted. “Besides, I have help.”
Skylar turned to find Jake hanging his coat on the hook.
Skylar’s grip tightened on the mug. Jake in her grandmother’s kitchen at seven in the morning meant he’d driven thirty minutes before sunrise.
The commitment of the gesture sat heavy between her ribs.
“I brought my toolbox to look at the bathroom sink.” He thumbed behind him. “Met this guy loitering outside.”
Jake moved aside to reveal a tall blond with kind eyes.
Charlie.
The sight sent a jolt through Skylar’s abdomen. His hair was mussed and stubble darkened his face. Her knuckles went white against the tabletop.
He set a cardboard tray of gas station coffees on the counter.
“Morning.” His gaze found Skylar, held for a half second too long, then moved to her grandmother. “Mrs. Hartley.” His mouth locked into his fake smile with a speed that made Skylar’s teeth ache. “Wasn’t sure how everyone takes their coffee, so I brought black. Cream and sugar are in the bag.”
Jake’s eyes tracked from Charlie to Skylar and heat crept up her neck at the recognition in her ex’s expression. He cleared his throat and picked up a cup. “I needed this. We’re out at the shop.”
Skylar’s gaze whipped to Jake. “Why were you at the shop this morning?”
He glanced at her grandmother. “You didn’t tell her?”
“She just—” Her grandmother glanced at Charlie. “—woke up.”
Skylar folded her hands on the table. “Tell me what?”
“Mrs. H and I talked on the phone last night.” Jake met Skylar’s stare. “I want to run the shop through winter.”
“Jake, that’s too much. You have a job.”
“I have a flexible schedule and I learned engines from your grandfather.” His jaw tightened on the word grandfather. “I owe the man more than I can pay back. The best way I know to honor that is to keep the doors open.”
Her grandmother reached across the table and squeezed Jake’s wrist. “He would be proud of you.”
Jake turned to Skylar. “I’ll take care of the cars and your grandmother can handle the customers. Until you finish school. Then we reassess.”