Page 35 of Skylar

Turning her phone off, Skylar reached up and put it on the counter. She didn’t want to know if anyone else was trying to contact her. She just needed to be alone.

Once she’d been tested, she should have caught the first flight back to Las Vegas and her calm, solitary life there.

It wasn’t that she didn’t want to be there for Shiloh and her family. It was just so hard to not be there as the mother to the child she’d given birth to. And she didn’t know how to deal with that.

And it had been so hard to look at Shiloh and see only a shadow of her previous vibrant personality and healthy body. Her baby was in the fight for her life, and Skylar didn’t know how to help her.

Out of the blue, tears flooded her eyes, making her equal parts angry and sad. The wall she’d worked hard to put up around the deep emotions she’d felt in the weeks and months after Shiloh’s birth had been shattered.

That was not good. Especially if she was going to have to continue to interact with Aiden and Shiloh.

If Skylar had realized how much revealing Shiloh’s parentage to her would devastate her, she would have fought harder against that happening. But it was too late now.

Anger flooded her then. Anger at Aiden for how he’d treated her. Anger at herself for not being strong enough to keep her baby, the way Charli had kept Layla. Anger at cancer for invading her child’s body. And anger at cancer for having brought Aiden back into her life.

How could she get rid of the anger and regret? The guilt and the hurt?

The words she’d thrown at Aiden came back to her as she sat there, and part of her regretted them. But another part of her felt like he needed to know exactly how much he’d hurt her.

Though he’d seen her hurt when he’d broken up with her, she’d had to tell him about the baby over a text because he refused her calls. He’d needed to know the pain she’d felt at having to give up their child. How shattered she’d been, not just by the breakup but by his words when she’d told him about the pregnancy.

The fact that Shiloh knew who they were now didn’t magically make everything better. In fact, right then, it felt like everything was worse.

Skylar had no idea how long she’d sat there when she became aware that her behind was going numb from the hard floor. Her emotional outburst had drained her energy, and it took a lot of effort to get herself up off the floor.

When she was finally on her feet, Skylar decided that she was just going to go to bed. She didn’t have the emotional capacity to have a conversation with anyone.

Grabbing her phone from the counter, she left the bathroom without removing her makeup or even brushing her teeth. She peeled off her clothes, leaving them strewn across the floor in a manner that was very much unlike her. Then, clad in just her underwear, she climbed under the covers.

Once she was settled, she turned her phone back on and sent a message to her mom that she was going to bed and would talk to her the next day.

Skylar saw there was a missed call from Charli, as well as a text message, but Skylar didn’t read it or call her back. She would deal with everything the next day.

Hopefully, a good night’s sleep would help her shore up her defenses.

After a restless night, Skylar dragged herself out of bed just as the sun was rising. Though she was exhausted on every level, she dressed in her running clothes and shoes. She didn’t fix her messy braid or wipe away her smeared mascara before grabbing her phone and earbuds and leaving her room.

The house was quiet as she headed down the stairs on light feet. She went into the darkened kitchen to get a drink of water, then let herself out of the house.

The early morning hour was cool and quiet, which her mind most definitely still wasn’t. She stretched a little, trying to limber up her legs before setting out.

When she was finally running, she tried to let the music in her ears and the rhythm of her stride soothe her. And for the most part, it worked.

Twenty minutes into her run, she was so in the zone that when a bird flew across the road in front of her, it scared the life out of her. Her instinct was to step away from the bird, and without watching where she was going, her foot landed on the edge of the asphalt.

A tearing pain shot through her ankle as it twisted sideways, and she landed on her hip on the packed dirt mixed with gravel that ran alongside the road. Panting, she rolled onto her back and stared up at the sky that had lightened to a clear blue while she’d been running.

“Ahhhhhhhh!” She pounded her fists on the ground. “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!”

It felt like the rotten cherry on top of a wretched sundae. Tears filled her eyes, blurring the sky.

“Why, God?” The question was yelled at the sky, and had anyone been in the area, they probably would have thought she was crazy.

It felt like the world was conspiring against her lately. Nothing was going right.

And even though she wasn’t the one in the family with a medical degree, she was fairly certain that her ankle was pretty messed up. If it wasn’t broken, it was likely badly sprained.

Either way, she wasn’t going to be able to escape back to Vegas or go back to work as soon as she’d hoped.

---