Skyler
I plop into bed with a sigh heavier than any I’ve ever released in my life, freshly showered and bleary-eyed after a long, but fun, night out with the girls.
My legs are sore from dancing, my throat sore from screaming, and I already know that regardless of not drinking a crazy amount, I’ll have a headache in the morning.
But it was worth it.
Seeing Cassie take a Little, getting to know Tera more, celebrating with all our sisters as our sorority gets bigger and stronger…
it’s the best feeling in the world. Perhaps what touches my heart most is knowing I’m a part of it, knowing these are friendships that will last a lifetime, values that will settle in and help young women grow into professionals, maybe mothers or wives, maybe country leaders.
The possibilities are endless, and I get giddy when I think about how something so seemingly small — a sorority at a tiny private university — can have such huge impacts on so many lives.
On the world, really.
I didn’t even bother getting dressed after my shower, and now I’m wishing I would have thought to plug in my phone to charge and shut off the light before collapsing, because it’s going to take every ounce of energy I have left just to roll over and do those things before I pass out.
Except when I make my move and reach for my phone to plug it in, it vibrates in my hand.
And Kip’s face fills the screen.
I swallow down the knot that immediately builds in my throat, pressing my free hand to my chest to try to ease my racing heart. We haven’t talked in so long, and the only time I’ve seen his face was when I stole Bear’s phone to stalk his Instagram and immediately regretted it.
I let it ring for a long time, debating just letting him hit voicemail.
But at the last second, I answer.
“Hello?”
There’s a brief pause on the other end, and then a half-shocked, half-relieved sigh. “You answered.”
I bite my lip. “Don’t make me regret it.”
He blows out a breath, and even though I can’t see him, I can imagine him — the way he pinches the bridge of his nose, moving his glasses up in the process, and the way he runs his hands back through his hair, the way his eyes look when he’s sad or distraught, how they somehow morph into an even deeper blue.
“What are you doing?” he asks after a moment. “It’s late there. I thought you’d be asleep.”
“It was Big/Little reveal. I just got home from Ralph’s.”
“Oh.” I hear the hesitancy in his voice, the questions he wants to ask but doesn’t dare — like if I was there with another guy, if I danced with another guy, if I kissed another guy, if I’m with another guy in any capacity.
It would kill him.
Just like the thought of him and Natalia has been killing me.
“So, Cassie did take a Little, huh? I bet you’re excited.”
“I am. She’s sweet.” I pause. “What do you want, Kip? Why did you call?”
He lets out another long, slow breath. “I called to tell you I’m sorry.”
My shoulders deflate at the words.
“But not like I did before.”
I sit up a little straighter in bed, pulling the sheets to my chest and waiting.
“Skyler, I hope you believed me when I said I never meant to hurt you, and that I was sorry that I did.” He sighs.
“But… I didn’t fully hear you out. I was stubborn and didn’t want to believe I’d done anything wrong, because I’d been so far up my own ass that I didn’t stop to consider how my actions might be affecting other people around me.
It’s a good excuse, right? To feel like you don’t have to apologize if you didn’t do it intentionally? But I was wrong. I was so, so wrong.”
I close my eyes against the tears building there.
“Not only was I wrong for not seeing your side, for not agreeing with you because you were right — if it were me in your shoes, I would have felt the same way. Hell, I would have been even angrier, I wouldn’t have been nearly as controlled as you.” He pauses. “And you were right about Natalia.”
My heart squeezes so painfully in my chest that I can’t help the choked sob that rips free from me. To see the picture of them together was enough pain to last me a lifetime, but if he’s called now to tell me they’re together, to tell me I was right about them…
I’ll fucking die.
I will die.
“The other night, we got together for a mini premiere night. It was for cast and crew to watch the series before it hits the small screen.”
I can already feel it, my body breaking down, because I know he’s about to tell me that something happened that made him realize his feelings for her.
Bile rises in my throat.
“The show is good, Sky,” he whispers. “It’s so fucking good.”
I want to tell him I’m proud of him, that I’m happy for him, but every word — every breath is lodged in my throat.
“We were on such a high afterward, and we decided to go out. We were at this rooftop club. The music was going, we were all dancing and drinking and…”
My stomach turns again, and I double over on myself, squeezing my eyes shut against the burning urge to cry. Images of Natalia dancing with him, her ass grinding against his crotch, his hands on her waist…
I want to beg him to stop. I want to beg him to hang up and cut me out of his life and just leave me to rot without him.
I can’t handle it.
I can’t take this pain.
“She said she needed air, needed a break, and asked me to go with her. We went to this little corner garden with benches and a fountain, and we were just sitting there, talking, looking out over the skyline.” He pauses. “And then… she kissed me.”
I can’t fight against it this time, the guttural cry that rips free from me, the tears that pour down, the ugly sobs that free themselves.
“Skyler, baby, don’t cry,” Kip pleads, and I swear he sounds like he’s in just as much pain as I am, like hearing me cry is a dagger to his chest.
I can’t even catch my breath long enough to tell him not to call me baby, not to coddle me as he breaks my heart.
“I saw it then,” he says. “I saw everything you’d been telling me, everything I’d been ignoring, everything I’d said was innocent even when I knew deep down that it was suspicious, that it was maybe a hair too much.”
“Kip, please,” I finally manage to beg. “Please, stop. I can’t breathe. I can’t…” My next sentence is robbed by another painful squeeze of my chest.
“I know. I’m so fucking sorry, Sky. I didn’t want to tell you, but I knew I had to. I wanted to be upfront and clear about everything. If I stand another chance at having you, at getting back into your heart, there can’t be any secrets between us.”
Those words make me pause, though my rib cage is still painfully tight around my lungs. “What?”
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I should have listened to you. I should have respected you. I should have sat Natalia down and had a conversation with her about professionalism, about drawing a clear, dark boundary so she understood. More than anything, I should have been there to pick you up.” His voice catches.
“I should have been there. And I’ll live every day of my life regretting that I wasn’t. ”
I sniff. “I don’t understand. What happened between you two? After… after she kissed you?” My stomach knots.
Kip blows out a breath. “Well, I grabbed her arms and pushed her back to stop her. She basically said I was fighting it and she knew I wanted her too, which I immediately informed her was a gross misinterpretation.”
My chest kicks in my chest, and I can’t help but feel a small twinge of petty victory.
“I told her she’d been drinking and needed to sleep it off, then the next day, I sat her down and told her it was out of line.
She was pissed,” he adds. “But I was disappointed more than anything. Disappointed that I didn’t see it, that I’d hurt you, that she was the star of my first show, that she plays the most amazing woman in the world, the woman I love, and I can’t go back and change that now. ”
I swallow. “You can’t go back and change it,” I finally say. “And maybe it happened for a reason. You said it’s good, right?”
“It is,” he admits. “But now, it all just feels… tainted.”
I nod, even though he can’t see me, because I can only imagine how contrary those feelings must be — pride and shame all at once.
“I don’t ever want to work with her again,” he says after a while.
“And I don’t plan on it. I just wish I would have seen it sooner.
I wish…” He curses. “God, I wish so many things. Most of all that I was with you, right now, holding you in my arms and looking into your eyes when I tell you that I love you, that I’m truly, truly, sorry, and that I’m begging you to give me another chance. ”
His words release another wave of tears, but they’re silent, slipping down my tears like assassins in the night.
“Will you ever forgive me?”
I swallow down a sob, and it takes me a long while before I can answer.
“I want to,” I admit, my voice raspy and strained. My heart is already breaking before I say the words. “But I don’t know how.”
My face warps with the admission, with the truth that Kip has hurt me so much — possibly past the point of fixing. But it’s the truth.
And if there are no more secrets between us, then I won’t keep one, either.
“You know more than anyone how hard it is for me to trust,” I say. “How hard it was for me to trust you again, specifically, after what happened with your dad and Vegas and… just… everything.”
“I know. I know,” he says, and I wait for more, but he doesn’t say anything else.
“I love you,” I whisper. “But I’ve forgiven you once. I… I don’t know if I can do it again.”
I hear something on the other end, something that sounds like a restrained cry, like a grunt of a grown man trying to hold it together when he’s on the verge of breaking down.
For a long while, we sit on the phone together. Sometimes it’s just breathing, sometimes one of us is crying, sometimes it’s more silent than a desert in the middle of the night.
After what feels like an eternity, Kip speaks.
“Hold onto us, Skyler,” he pleads, his voice rough. “You know me. You know my love for you. Hold onto that. Hold on.”
I close my eyes, sending one last set of hot tears rolling down my cheeks.
And though my heart surges in my chest with the urge to do what he’s asking, and I can already feel every molecule of my being latching onto him, onto our memories, onto everything I know and love and trust in him, I end the call and force myself to make peace with the truth.
It’s over.