by Megan Crane
Angelique blinked. “I thought you were upstairs. In bed.”
Skylar pushed away from the front door and walked further into the house, still smiling. Because she thought that if she let the smile slip, everything else would fall apart too, maybe.
“No,” she said. And that was all.
She’d never done the infamous walk of shame before. She hadn’t slept with Thayer until they’d been together for a while and he’d had his own apartment that she’d practically lived in. There had been no walking back somewhere with the night before all over her. She almost wished there had been—it would have meant she hadn’t wasted all that time waiting. Waiting and waiting to honor a future they’d never have.
She expected the very thought of Thayer to wash through her like an indictment, but it didn’t. All she could think about was Cody. What they’d done out in that field. And then inside that streamlined, gorgeous Airstream that had felt like him. Exactly like him. All those clean, masculine lines and yet surprisingly comfortable despite that.
Skylar was a little surprised she could even stand. She hadn’t gotten much in the way of sleep. And a whole lot more exercise than her usual three-mile run that was more often a walk.
“Skylar.” Angelique’s voice sounded something a whole lot like scandalized. Appalled, even, which made Skylar’s skin feel tight. “You weren’t with… Not that bull rider?”
What Skylar wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for a few hours, but she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Even if she somehow fast-forwarded through this unexpected inquisition, her father liked to get up pretty early himself and would no doubt want a head start getting ready for the weekend at the arena. She could maybe catch a little catnap—that was all. If she went and crawled into bed right now.
But Angelique followed her when she walked toward the kitchen in the back of the house, and she decided she needed coffee to deal with this. Whatever this was. She tossed her sandals by the back door and then padded over to the coffeemaker, which in a house with small children was always programmed for five a.m. She heard Angelique go into the laundry room and then come out again, and she wasn’t surprised to find her stepmother on the other side of the kitchen island after she dumped enough hazelnut creamer into her giant mug of coffee to sugar up the world.
Not happy, certainly. But not surprised.
Especially because Angelique didn’t look appalled. Or horrified. She looked concerned.
“This isn’t you,” she said quietly.
Skylar took a long pull from her coffee and let it work its magic. Because it was that or throw it at her stepmother.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“You don’t run off and spend the night with random bull riders.” Angelique wasn’t the sort to wear pearls, but if she had been, she’d be clutching them then. And something in Skylar knotted up into a hard ball. “If your father comes down here and sees you in last night’s dress I think he’ll have a heart attack.”
Skylar counted to ten. She reminded herself that she wasn’t a misbehaving fifteen-year-old and even if she had been, this woman wasn’t her mother. Then she did it again because the first round didn’t take.
“I appreciate your concern, Angelique, I do.” She sounded much more Southern when she was pissed, and she was pretty sure she sounded like a magnolia tree or a mint julep right about then.
“Did he take advantage of you?”
“What?” Skylar snapped her mug down on the counter and stared. “Do I look taken advantage of?”
“You’re not the sort of person who runs off with a man like that, that’s all.”
“A man like what?” Skylar asked, maybe a little dangerously. “And I’m not sure what kind of person you think I am in this scenario. A very spineless one, apparently?”
But Angelique didn’t seem to hear her. “I never dated any cowboys, but I can’t imagine they’re much different from any other athletes and believe me, I know how they are sometimes.”
“We’re not dating, Angelique.” Skylar smiled then, but it wasn’t a nice smile. It hurt her cheeks, but it was better than the bitter thing she was biting back. “What we’re doing or not doing isn’t anyone’s business but ours.”
Angelique sighed, and the unfairness of this whole thing gnawed at Skylar. Aside from the fact that this was no one’s business but hers, Skylar was the only member of the entire, extended Grey family who hadn’t openly condemned Angelique and Billy when they’d gotten together. She’d bitten her tongue and kept her thoughts to herself, because everyone involved was an adult and none of those adults were her or someone who’d made promises to her.
How quickly people forgot.
“Skylar, come on.” Angelique folded her arms across her middle and clearly tried to look patient. It was the trying that made Skylar’s temper roar in her ears. “You’ve been through a really dark time. It’s not actually surprising that you might give in to a few self-destructive impulses—”
“I had sex with a remarkably good-looking man. I didn’t go on a meth bender and wake up in a prison cell with blood on my hands,” Skylar snapped. She regretted the words instantly, but it was too late. She’d not only had her first walk of shame, she’d also become the sort of person who screeched about her sex life in public, like an animal. Kill me now. “And this may come as a shock to you and the conservative morals I was unaware you held dear until this morning, but sex isn’t particularly self-destructive.”
Sex with Cody was life-altering in a completely different way, and certainly destructive—but not in the way Angelique meant it. And there was no need to get into all that now. Especially when Skylar hadn’t had any time to process it herself.
“I feel like this is my fault.” Angelique sounded genuinely sad and that made it worse. It put Skylar’s teeth on edge. “I thought you needed your space, so I gave it to you. I thought that was the right thing to do.”
Skylar fought to keep herself under control, which wasn’t as easy as it should have been, because she wasn’t as numb as she’d been for the last couple of years. Something else to think about when she wasn’t busy defending herself.
“I’m not a teenager who had a bad breakup and is now acting out after school.” She thought she deserved a medal for that even, cool tone. “And I mean this in the nicest way possible, Angelique, but I didn’t ask for your input.”
“You have to realize this isn’t who you are,” Angelique insisted, her brow creased with concern.
Real concern.
“Who am I?” Skylar demanded, and that even, cool tone was gone as if it had never been. “Who do you think I am? Because let me tell you something, I think you’re talking to a person who doesn’t exist anymore.”
“I know this isn’t the way you act, that’s all. You’re careful. You consider things from every angle and you don’t jump into anything rashly.”
“True story,” Skylar agreed hotly, something bubbling up from a dark well inside of her she hadn’t known was there. But once she started, she couldn’t stop, even though the things that were pelting out from that place unnerved her. “And what did that get me? I waited and waited and waited. I planned everything so carefully. Thayer and I were together for eight years. Eight years. We could have been living the life we were planning instead of just talking about it happening someday. You’ll forgive me if I’m not quite so hot on the virtues of careful consideration these days.”
“Thayer—”
“Is dead.” Skylar knew the starkness of that should have taken her knees out. It should have felt like a punch to the gut. But if it did, she didn’t feel it, because whatever was inside of her was stronger. It was a storm and it was sweeping her along with it as it raged and the funny thing was, she didn’t have it in her to mind. “He is dead. I tried to pretend otherwise and guess what? He’s still dead. He’s never coming back. No one knows that more than I do, Angelique.”
“He was so nice,” her stepmother said, her voice rough, as if s
he was emotional too. As if all of this hurt her, somehow.
But Skylar had been soothing the fractured emotions of other people about her own damned loss for two years too long. She was over it.
“He was,” she agreed, and she wasn’t sure if she didn’t sound like herself at all or if she sounded more like herself at that moment than she had in years. “He was very nice. He was funny and he was kind and he lit up the room when he walked into it. People wanted to be around him and I felt lucky that he wanted to be with me. There are stories about me only he could tell and he never will again and do you know what that feels like? I’ll tell you. It feels like all the parts of me that only he knew died with him. But I didn’t.” She slapped her palm against the counter in front of her, as much to see if she could feel the sting as for emphasis. “I didn’t.”
“What the hell is going on?” Skylar didn’t turn toward her father’s half-sleepy, half-annoyed voice as he walked into the room. She kept her gaze on her stepmother. “Jesus Christ, Skylar, did you just get in?”
Angelique didn’t actually say I told you so. Her expression did it for her.
But Skylar had already had enough. And her palm hurt.
“I’m not going to defend myself to either one of you,” she said, and she left her coffee behind as she started for the stairs. She thought she should have been shaking, but she wasn’t. On the contrary, she wasn’t sure she’d ever felt quite so calm.
One more thing to process when she got a minute to breathe.
“You can’t stay out all night—” her father began as Skylar walked past him, skirting him by a wide, possibly dramatic margin as she made for the stairs.
“Why can’t I?” She turned toward him as she said it, and didn’t back down. “Give me one good reason.”
“This is my house,” Billy threw at her, which was like a trip down memory lane. She remembered him yelling exactly that at Jesse years ago. That teenage, Goody-Two-Shoes version of her would never have believed she’d ever give him cause to say it to her.
“Then I’ll move out sooner than planned. Problem solved. I’ll start packing as soon as I get upstairs.”
Billy rolled his eyes. “Maybe take the drama down a notch or two.”
“I’m being practical, not theatrical. You have every right to dictate how people behave under your roof.” She shrugged. “I have every right to find another roof.”
“Skylar, I’m not trying to make you feel bad,” Angelique said from over by the kitchen island. “But I would hope that if the situations were reversed you’d give me a heads-up if you saw me running straight for a cliff.”
“A cliff,” Skylar repeated. She looked from her father to her stepmother. Then again, but neither one of them backed down. “You mean, like the time you came home for Christmas—”
“That was different,” Angelique said tightly.
“Leave it alone, Skylar,” her father growled, because of course, the cliff in question was him.
“You’re right,” Skylar agreed, locking eyes with Angelique and ignoring her father. “It’s a lot different. You were actually cheating on my brother when you hooked up with my father under the same roof. This roof, in point of fact. The difference is, I’m not cheating on anyone.”
She wanted to add, because I wouldn’t do something like that but didn’t, and thought she deserved applause for her restraint. She headed for the stairs instead, aware that there was some kind of marital communication going on behind her, but she didn’t care what it was. There was nowhere good this conversation could go. She wanted it over.
“You got me,” Angelique said from behind her, and it made Skylar’s stomach ache to hear the hurt tone of her voice. “Your father and I are terrible people. But we’re not talking about us and the stupid things we did that caused pain all around. We’re not talking about things neither one of us can change. We’re talking about you.”
“You are talking about me.” Skylar stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back over her shoulder. “I didn’t want to have this conversation.”
“Thayer wouldn’t have wanted to see you turn into just another buckle bunny,” her father blurted out then. As if he’d even known Thayer beyond family gatherings over the years. As if he was the last remaining defender of Thayer’s interests on this earth—or hell, any kind of decent father himself. “Neither do I.”
Something inside of her snapped. Skylar turned, very slowly, and glared at the two of them. So hard she was surprised her head didn’t tear open.
“I’m going to ignore the amazing hypocrisy flying around here this morning,” she said, very distinctly. “The fact that you opened up your home and let me stay here is wonderful, but it doesn’t give you the right to comment on my life or how I live it. I could have spent years commenting on your all’s, but I didn’t.”
“I’m your father,” Billy protested.
“And I’m not the daughter you think you know,” Skylar retorted. She waved a hand over her surprisingly uncrumpled dress, trying to encompass all of her. “I’m not the same person I was two years ago and I never will be. That’s not sad. That’s just a fact. If Thayer was alive we wouldn’t be having this conversation. I wouldn’t be here. But he’s not. And I have to figure out who I am and what I want without him. That might not be pretty and guess what? You don’t have to watch.”
“Skylar.” Angelique shook her head. “You can’t tell me some bull rider with a death wish—and don’t kid yourself, they all have a death wish, they ride bulls—is a logical first step in your new life.”
“My life, Angelique,” Skylar replied tightly. And maybe a little loudly, so there could be no doubt. “Mine. And if I want to sleep with the entire American Extreme Bull Riders Tour, I will. Whether you’re worried about me or not.”
Chapter Seven
“I don’t actually want to sleep with the entire tour,” Skylar told her father tersely, many hours later, and resented the fact that she had to say it at all. But she’d had time to think about throwing that ridiculous thing at him and storming off, very much like the teenager she wasn’t, and regretted it. It made her look like a spiteful child. “In case you were actually concerned that was a possibility.”
“For the love of all that is holy, I don’t want to talk about who my daughter is sleeping with,” Billy retorted immediately, sounding as if he was being tortured. Or would prefer a round or two of torture to this. “I don’t even want to think about it. I’d rather pound nails into my own head.”
They were both standing in the Grey Sport booth in the Rimrocks Auto Arena, where they’d been pointedly not making eye contact ever since the doors had opened and the people had started pouring in ahead of that night’s show. Before that, they’d managed to not discuss anything directly all day. They’d sold their specially branded tour apparel and the usual collection of rural-edged sportswear that the local farmers and ranchers and the ever-growing community of Billings hipsters might wear, ironically or otherwise.
But now the show was due to start any second, which meant they were supposed to leave the booth in the hands of Billy’s genial manager—who’d been working overtime to pretend she didn’t notice the chilly weather between Billy and Skylar today—and take their seats in the much-coveted VIP section Grey Sports had gotten as a perk of sponsorship.
Skylar thought she might have to go ahead and throw herself at the mercy of one of the bulls if she had to sit in the stands in this same barbed, unpleasant silence, surrounded by other local folks with VIP tickets who knew the both of them and would be paying attention to what went on between them.
Or maybe only knew Skylar as the woman who’d gone off with that bull rider last night.
It had been bad enough to spend the whole day pretending not to notice the speculative glances thrown her way everywhere she’d gone, particularly here in the arena. The conversations that ground to a halt when she approached. The whispers when her back was turned.
Because, of course, that cocktail pa
rty had been for local vendors, and they all knew her. Or Billy. Or both of them, plus the rest of the family besides, because the Greys had been a part of Montana forever.
There was probably a consensus going around that Skylar did, in fact, plan to sleep her way through the whole of the tour and might have made a big dent in that goal last night. Leaving from that party with Cody was as good as taking out a full-page ad in the Billings Gazette. The only upside was the fact that today was the first day since she’d returned to Montana that no one had told her how sorry they were for her loss.
Baby steps, Skylar thought resolutely.
“I never wanted to talk about it with you either, Dad,” Skylar pointed out now, and it was a struggle to make her voice sound that reasonable.
“Angelique was just trying to look out for you,” her father retorted, his jaw set in a mulish line.
She reminded herself that this wasn’t about being right, it was about being comfortable, and that wasn’t going to happen tonight if Billy was nursing this grudge the whole time.
You could leave, a sharp little voice inside reminded her. And yes, she could.
But Cody was riding tonight and did it make Skylar everything Angelique had accused her of being if she wanted to watch him?
“I really appreciate that,” she said. Still aiming for calm and reasonable. “I do. But I’m fine.”