Page 79 of Skylar

“Yes, ma’am.”

Once they were done eating and had cleared away the breakfast dishes, they prepared to leave for the church. Though her parents offered to drive them all, Cole said he was taking his own car, so Skylar decided to go with him.

“Surprised you’re coming this morning,” Skylar said as Cole pulled away from the house.

“You and me both,” he replied with a laugh. “But I figured it couldn’t do any harm. Have you gone on the Sundays you’ve been here?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Not sure. I guess I just thought it would keep everyone from pestering me about it if I didn’t go.”

“Yeah. That’s kind of how I feel.”

“When are you leaving?”

“I don’t have a definite departure date,” he said. “What about you?”

“I’m waiting for the blood test results to come back and my ankle to heal.”

“How long will that take?”

“I expect we’ll have results within the week, and I hope my ankle will be good to go not long after that.”

“Are you going to be happy leaving?”

Skylar pressed her finger against her lower lip. Over the past few days, she’d purposefully triednotto think about leaving. It pained her to think of not seeing Shiloh for long stretches of time.

Aiden’s face came to mind, but she quickly refocused on Shiloh. She was doing better, and Charli said she was gaining strength every day. It was possible that she wouldn’t even need a stem cell transplant.

If that was the case, Skylar tried to convince herself that she wished she hadn’t gone to Aiden already. But that wasn’t entirely the truth.

Though she hadn’t wanted to, she believed him when he’d said he hadn’t really thought she was pregnant.

It still hurt that he’d thought her the type of person to try to trap him that way. Or maybe he’d convinced himself of that in order to abdicate responsibility. That alone might have made her think that he was lying.

But when she had combined that information with seeing how he was acting now, she thought that there was a good chance he was telling the truth.

She was glad that Cole didn’t mention anything about Aiden, since she was feeling very conflicted about the man.

Because Cole had mentioned that Aiden was going to be at church, she wasn’t surprised when she saw him and his family there. And by the time the service started, she was in a pew, sitting between Cole and Aiden.

It was a seating arrangement they’d used many, many times in the past. Although, back then, she’d definitely sat closer to Aiden than to Cole. This time, she was equidistance between them, and she was not holding Aiden’s hand, nor was his arm around her.

The memory of that opened up a hole in her emotions. A yearning for that time when everything had seemed so simple. When she’d trusted that they would be there for each other.

She was glad when the worship leader led the rest of the team up onto the stage, distracting her from her thoughts wandering down memory lane.

Skylar felt movement as Aiden leaned a little closer to her. “Is that Jay’s son on the drums?”

“Yep. Gareth taught him, and now he’s taken over.” Her tall, lanky nephew, Peyton, sat behind the drums, a spot that Gareth had occupied plenty over the years.

“Incredible. Where has the time gone? He’s like a young adult now.”

“He is, and it sounds like he’s following in Misha and Gareth’s footsteps to become a doctor. He’s helping out some at the clinic over the summer.”

The conversation ended there as the man behind the podium led them in an opening prayer, and then moved into a song. The worship leader encouraged them to stand, which meant Skylarhad to maneuver herself up to her feet, keeping most of her weight on her good ankle. That meant she edged closer to Aiden, since it was her right leg that was good.

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