Page 37 of Reckless Skye

These days, she barely ever bothered, and when she did, like tonight, it was solely because her vanity and Holden’s voice in her head whispered, You look so much better when you make an effort.

She wondered what her mom was doing at that moment. Maybe she was reading in her favourite chair while Holden locked himself in his office. Maybe she was standing in the kitchen, worrying over dinner. Holden never commented when he didn’t enjoy something she’d cooked, merely left the table, leaving his food largely untouched.

More than anything else, she wondered if her mom was as lonely as she had been over the past three months. Because for a long time, before Andrea and Stevie, all they had had was each other.

And now her mom had nobody.

Despite her promise to sever contact, Skye picked her phone up off her nightstand.

She pulled up her mom’s number and dialled before she could change her mind. She slowly raised the phone to her ear, counted four long, mournful rings before her mother’s voice answered with, ‘Hello?’

Skye was too afraid to speak, too afraid to break that connection. She gripped the phone tightly, as if she could somehow reach through it and wrap her mom in her arms.

For a long stretch of time, the only sound was of each of them breathing, and then, so quietly, her mom said, ‘Skye?’

Skye swallowed down the sob that climbed so easily into her throat. ‘Hi, Mom.’

‘Oh, Skye. I’ve been hoping you’d call.’ Caroline whispered, as if talking to her only child was a crime of the highest order. ‘We were all so angry last time.’ Skye closed her eyes, knowing what was coming before her mom said, ‘But your dad is sorry. He misses you.’

Skye wanted to snap Wake up, Mom! But she didn’t. She was too desperate to hear her mom’s voice, too anxious that she might break that fragile connection if she started pushing.

Instead, she said, ‘I bought a horse, Mom.’ Those words conveyed all the things she didn’t say: things like I got out, I’m free, I’m living.

There was a beat of stunned silence. ‘Oh, Skye. That’s amazing! I’m so very—’

The sound of a door opening cut Caroline off. Before Skye could even ask, her mother’s false laugh trickled over the line. ‘Mary, Holden just got home from work. I better go. But let’s talk about the fundraiser tomorrow.’

Skye opened her mouth to say goodbye, but no words came.

‘All right. Bye-bye.’ Her mother hung up.

The silence echoed in Skye’s ears as she slowly lowered the phone back down.

Grief took her by the throat and squeezed. Guilt laughed maniacally in her head. But the shame … The shame of what she had done nestled in the deepest pocket of her heart and made its home there.

She rocked gently back and forth in an attempt to self-soothe.

‘Shit,’ she mumbled when she realized that she was crying. She swiped angrily at her face, and when her fingers came back black with mascara smudges, Skye laughed bitterly. ‘Great. Just fucking perfect.’

She pushed off the bed to go and fix her face. But as she quickly and efficiently cleaned up the black smudges around her eyes, all she felt was tired.

Nobody, including her therapist, had told her that leaving would be the easy part. They all said, Get out, Leave, and Don’t look back, as if breaking the cycle was all there was to it. But none of them knew how difficult it was to start at zero, to build from a foundation that somebody else had slowly and systematically torn down, to build with no knowledge of how such a feat was done. Nobody knew how much effort it took to constantly pick yourself up when you lived with another person’s voice in your head, calmly telling you how stupid and weak and worthless you were.

With each upward stroke of the mascara brush, her anger grew. And it wasn’t anger at Holden. It was anger at herself, at her own inability to cut his voice out of her head. Anger over the fact that she had left her mom behind, with nobody to look out for her, nobody to love her.

With that anger came a wild need to do something reckless, to prove to herself that she could do whatever the hell she wanted, be whomever she wanted to be, her father be damned.

TJ didn’t see that wildness in her when she first stepped out onto the porch. He was too distracted by her stunning face and lean legs, left bare between where her white shirt ended and her black boots began. His shirt, he belatedly realized, and welcomed that flood of greedy approval. ‘I was looking for that.’

‘I didn’t have a dress,’ she informed him, and walked past him with a sassy smirk.

TJ followed, aware that he was acting like a dog, drooling at the end of a leash. He waited until she reached the passenger door of his truck, then reached for her hand. Because he figured kissing was fair game now, he walked her backwards into the cold metal door and lowered his mouth to hers in a gentle kiss.

Skye didn’t tense or seem scared. Instead, she rose up on her toes, gripped his shirt with both hands and took the kiss further. Her mouth was hot and desperate on his. Her body, pressed close, vibrated with need and something that felt eerily like anger.

His hands shifted to cradle her face.

It was then that he saw that blue wildfire burning. And it was as hot as it was dangerous.