Skylar keeps his back to me. “Work.”
“For how long?”
“Till I’m fucking done.”
He’s in motion again, blowing past me through the living room and towards the front door, and though I know it’s the worst idea in the world, I catch his arm, tugging him back?—
Skylar explodes, using the momentum I’ve given him to come at me fast enough to be in my space before I can blink.
His chest hits mine, barrelling me back a few steps, and I fight every combat instinct I have as his stare cuts as if something inside him is trying to slaughter its way out and leave us both dead.
And that’s a fucking mistake too. Skylar sees me temper my reaction and his face twists, like he hates me for it. “Stop,” he spits. “Stop getting in my face andlookingat me. I don’t want it. I don’t wantyou.”
Given he’s just fucked my brains out, his daggered words should raze as deep as him saying I don’t care about Jack. But they don’t—at least, not in the same way. It hurts more to see the gaping fear behind the rage he’s shoving down my throat. To see him drowning in his own skin.
I take a breath, hoping he will too.
He doesn’t. His eyes go hazy, like they were the night I met him, when I thought he was fucking drunk, and I know I’m on borrowed time.
“Skylar.” I bring my hands to his face and hold him there, wrapping my palms around his jaw, knowing I have less than a heartbeat before he pushes me away. “Don’t leave. Not like this.”
“Leave?” He laughs that awful laugh again, barbed and joyless. “Where the fuck would I go? I’m not like you. I don’t get to throw myself into another universe because I’m bored of this shit. This is it for me, and it fucking follows me everywhere.”
It’s the closest he’s ever come to admitting there is anit. But it’s not an opening—a way in to catch him as he fucking falls. He speaks with fatalistic finality and wrenches himself free again.
And this time, I let him go. I have to.
I back up and mould my spine to the wall. He has to pass me to get out, but I can’t do anything about that.
Skylar retrieves the bag that’s slipped to the hardwood floor, his movements stilted with false calm while I still see that wildness humming beneath his skin. The naked pain in his gaze as he looks at me because he has to. To get past. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Look at me like I’m a kicked dog.”
“Sky, I’m not looking at you like anything.”
“Liar. You’re fucking killing me.”
It’s not me that’s killing him. But maybe it’s me who’ll die first.
Skylar moves past me and a breeze filters through the hallway window I left open this morning. It’s all in my fucking head, but I feel like it carries Skylar’s rain and eucalyptus scent more than he does right now, and I close my eyes to it, defeated in the silence he’s leaving behind.
Then he speaks again. One last time. “Whatever this is between us—whatever itwas, it’s fucking over. Don’t come near me anymore.”
The words echo in my head, and I wait for the sound of the front door to fell me. I brace for it, that quiet click?—
The door slams.
Brutal.
Loud.
I jump out of my skin, shit that hasn’t happened to me since I was a kid. My heart ricochets, and I turn my head to the door.
It’s broken.
Cracked and hanging from the frame by one hinge. The other is bust and scattered on the floor like the sickest metaphor, and I know what it means. It means I brokehim. Because I saw him.