Page 27 of The Cowboy's Home
“Your sister was willing to give you a chance,” she ranted, her eyes burning at him in a way that would have terrified him as a child. Even now, as an adult, with a completely separate life from hers, he had to admit that he was still a little scared. “Even with your sinful lifestyle.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong,” Skyler protested, although he didn’t, for a second, think that she would believe him about that. Or care. But he had been kicked out of her house, essentially, for standing up for himself. Old habits die hard, even if they probably weren’t going to serve him right at the moment.
“Your foul, disgusting lies broke up your sister’s wedding,” she snarled, and Skyler took a step back, just one. He hated himself for doing it, but he did it, anyway. As much as he would have preferred for her to have no hold over him whatsoever, she still did.
Before Skyler could think of how to reply to that, he felt a hand on his elbow, warm and comforting. He turned around, expecting for it to be Craig, but it wasn’t. Craig was there, standing back and looking warily at Skyler’s mother, but Jessica was the one there, supporting him.
“Hello,” Skyler’s mother said, her smile tight, but present. There were, it seemed, limits to how much of a scene she would cause in front of a stranger, which was pretty much a relief to Skyler. “I’m Vanessa West. You must be Jessica.”
Craig, she looked at curiously but didn’t say a word to, while she smiled at Jessica and held out her hand to shake. Jessica, head tilted to the side, accepted that hand and then gestured behind them to where Craig was standing.
“I am Jessica, and this is Craig,” she replied, and Skyler might have actually hugged her if he’d been able to make himself move at all. The situation was so exquisitely awkward that his feet felt like they were frozen to the ground, but Jessica just stepped in and took over, polite but not particularly warm.
Her message was clear, at least to Skyler, but he could have told her that it would be lost on his mother. She didn’t do more than flicker her eyes toward Craig for a moment, managing to put so much disdain into that small movement that she might as well have screamed it at him. But then, she was good at that. She’d always been good at that.
“I want you to know that I don’t blameyoufor what happened with Hannah,” the older woman informed her, with another of those eloquent little eye flickers over toward Skyler. “And if you ever make your way back out this way, I would love to spend some time getting to know you.”
Skyler rolled his eyes, pretty sure that his mother wouldn’t notice, but not much caring if she did. After all of these years, she was still trying to fix him up. He had been completely open with her about the fact that he was never going to marry a woman, that he was gay, but the moment that she saw a woman in Skyler’s life, in any capacity, she started assuming things.
Of course, Hannah had known that would happen. She had tried to manipulate it. And look at how that had gone for her.
“Let’s just go,” Skyler said, and he looked away from his mother then. He wasn’t sure he would be back to Seattle for a while. Maybe not ever. His first trip back had hardly gone amazingly.
“Skyler, you’re being very rude,” his mother scolded, and Skyler snorted softly, looking away from her, from the hurt that he knew would be in her eyes if he did look her way. The thing was, he knew that it would be a real hurt, too. That part of her just didn’t understand, and couldn’t understand how he could make the choices that he had.
And what she really didn’t get was how it had never been a choice at all. He was a gay man, and that was just how it was. He had tried to hide it, but he hadn’t really been able to, not for very long.
“I don’t care,” Skyler replied, his voice tired, and that seemed to rob her of her voice. She didn’t make so much as a peep of protest as they all slid into the car. Jessica took the wheel, which was a damn good thing because Skyler wouldn’t have trusted himself to be able to drive at the moment.
Craig took the backseat, but Skyler sat up front, beside Jessica. It wasn’t anything he thought about consciously, not a decision that he made to hurt the other man. He just wanted to be alone at the moment, and Jessica didn’t have any demands to make of him. That was what he needed at the moment.
It probably would have been better, if he had gone into the back with Craig, let himself comfort and be comforted. But on some level, he wasn’t used to being with anyone else. He wasn’t used to having to make decisions based on anyone else.
It was a mistake, but he wouldn’t know that until later. Right then, he went back to his old, single habits, where he let himself be alone because that was more comfortable for him.
Jessica looked at him, and there was something in her eyes like she would like to say something to him, but she didn’t. So, each of the three of them were wrapped in silence, in their own gloomy thoughts, as they drove away from Seattle. They had come there for a cheerful occasion, for a wedding, a celebration, but in the end, it had ended up being anything but joyous.
There wasn’t a single person who was happy with the way things turned out. Not Skyler, Craig, Jessica, Skyler’s mother, Matthew, and most definitely not poor Hannah. It didn’t seem right, but there it was.
Eighteen
Craig
Time passed, weeks turning into months, and Craig still had no idea what to do with his life. Even more than he had before the disastrous wedding, Craig went away. He mostly just drove around, though, having gone to all the schools in the area, attended numerous information sessions.
At this point, his life purpose wasn’t going to come to him unless it literally stood in the middle of the road and waved him down. But he couldn’t just sit around at home, either. His time in the military had taught him to go after what he wanted.
Now, if only he knew what that was, he would have a much easier time.
He sighed as he rolled into the driveway again, very late at night. So late that, at first, he didn’t notice that there was a strange car in the driveway. Curiously, Craig got out of his own vehicle, letting the blessedly cool air wash over him. In the summer, like it was now, it was only really comfortable at night.
Who was visiting? The car wasn’t familiar, and the people who still lived here were not the sort of people to casually bring someone over. It couldn’t even be one of Mary Anne’s friends, not this late, not on a school night. Malcolm, who had stepped in as a sort of paternal figure for the teenaged girl, would never allow it.
Craig peered in the window and let out a highly undignified little scream, one that he regretted seconds after he gave it. To his credit, though, he hadn’t expected for someone to be sitting in the car. How could he have?
“Wait, hold on, calm down.” Came a familiar voice, but one that Craig really wouldn’t have thought he would ever hear again. Not here, anyway, and probably not anywhere. He had even been in Seattle, and he hadn’t looked up his wayward brother.
The car door swung open, and the small, plump little man stepped out. Even though Wyatt was half Craig’s size, he eyed him as warily as he would have looked at a rattlesnake, and not for no reason.
