18. Skylar #2
If Jake ran the shop and the panel got fixed, the reason Skylar had left Ironwood in the first place still stood. Kate’s unfinished life waited, and Skylar had no excuse left to abandon the living of it. She avoided glancing at Charlie. “What about the license renewal?”
“My name is on the business.” Grams pulled her robe closer around her neck. “Jake brought the new estimate on replacing the electrical panel.”
Charlie leaned against the counter, arms folded, a careful four feet from Skylar. “How much?”
“Forty-four hundred,” Jake answered.
“I’ll cover the repair.” Charlie’s arms still folded, posture loose, as if he were discussing the weather.
“No.” Skylar didn’t meet his eye.
“At the funeral, one of the townsfolk told the story of your grandfather helping a stranger with car trouble and refusing payment. Call the panel a return on that investment.”
Skylar almost laughed at the thin excuse. This was Charlie, always trying to help. How had she missed this in the beginning?
She forced herself to look at him. “It’s very generous Charlie.
Thank you. But I have it covered. Between the promotional events and the bonus at the end of the semester.
I can wire the deposit this week and the balance after the last game of the regular season.
” She turned back to her grandmother. “If I can’t be here to help, it’s the least I can do. Let me do this.”
Her grandmother studied her for a long beat. Then she nodded.
Jake stood. “It’s settled. I’ll help out here and you’ll go back to school.”
Skylar stood as well, her arms wrapping around Jake. “Thank you.”
Jake gave her a quick squeeze. “I only want you to be happy.” Then he pulled away, kissed her grandmother on the cheek and extended a hand to Charlie. “Watch out for Skylar, will you?”
Charlie’s shoulders straightened. “When she’ll let me.” He shook Jake’s hand.
The sentence landed with a hushed accuracy that stung more than it should have. Skylar handled every crisis, bridged every gap, carried every weight, and the cost of that competence pressed behind her navel, a weight she had swallowed years ago and learned to breathe around.
After Jake left, Charlie stepped forward. “I’m sorry, but I have to get back to Thorndale. I can’t miss my game tonight.” He looked in Skylar’s direction, but not at her. “I’ll get a ride to the train station then send the car back for you.”
His ride. Her car. His game secondary to her comfort, the way every decision he made seemed to orbit everyone except himself.
The observation landed in her like a photograph she hadn’t meant to take: Charlie Carnell, framed in her grandmother’s kitchen, making himself smaller so everyone else had room.
“If it’s okay, we can go together.” She looked at her grandmother. “I don’t think I’m needed here.”
Her grandmother cupped Skylar’s cheeks. “You are always wanted here.” Then she clasped Charlie’s cheeks in the same manner. “You to.”
Charlie’s eyes flashed, then his jaw softened. The wide, symmetrical curve he wore for cameras dissolved, and what replaced it was fragile and brief. Directed entirely at the small woman holding his face in her hands.
“Thank you for being there for Skylar. Your parents raised you right.”
“My mom will be proud to hear that.” He blinked twice in quick succession and stepped back, clearing his throat. The composure reassembled itself.
Skylar packed her bag, kissed her grandmother in the kitchen and forced herself to walk out the front door.
Charlie sat on the top step of the porch, elbows braced on his thighs, staring out at the waiting car.
The morning light found the tired slope of his shoulders.
If she’d had her camera, she would have shot the frame from behind.
The broadness of him against the narrow porch, solid and warm.
Her fingers traced the lines of those biceps last night.
Those arms held her through her grief and her ecstasy.
He stood, turned to her and his entire face opened, a lift of his lips that never lasted long enough. Except this time, it held. Aimed entirely at her. A fracture line split through the wall she’d spent all morning rebuilding.
He reached for her and she stepped back. This couldn’t happen. These feelings couldn’t be allowed to be more than a moment of weakness. They couldn’t become … anything. Her brain scrambled for a way to put the genie back in the bottle.
“It was a mistake.”
His words on the porch a week ago.
She tracked his retreat in stages, the way she might track a shift in exposure: the slight widening of his eyes, the tightening at the corners, the quick breath drawn through his nose.
Then the machinery engaged. The highlights flattened.
The shadows filled in. The bright, wide, camera-ready version assembled itself across his features.
“Yeah.” He nodded, chin lifting. “We were both emotional. Grief does that.”
The ease of his agreement cracked her composure clean through. She’d expected resistance. Wanted resistance, maybe, the way a person testing a railing wants to feel pushback.
“We should be friends.” She forced the sentence out flat, careful, stripped of every frequency that might betray the wreckage underneath. The word “friends” was a rope thrown across a gap she couldn’t bear to leave open. “I can’t afford any distractions. And you have a season to finish.”
“Friends.” The word was repeated with the same bright inflection he used at alumni dinners. “Of course. Friends makes sense.”
He took her bag, handed it to the driver, and held the door to the car open. As she brushed by him, careful not to touch, Skylar understood, with a clarity that made her knees ache, that she’d just asked a man who never got to be himself to perform for her, too.