Page 21 of No Apologies
If they were having Sunday dinner that meant Owen was going to be home from his extra assignment this weekend which was good, because she missed her brother, but also bad because he and Trey were practically inseparable when they were on the same schedule. They’d made fast friends on the rig and Owen had dragged the guy home with him because he didn’t have anywhere else to go on leave. That was how she’d met Trey and now that she had made the decision to break up with him she realized how stupid it had been of her to get involved with her brothers friend in the first place.
Owen loved Trey like a brother. Her parents adored him. And when she broke up with him, they were all going to be upset, probably even more so than she and Trey were going to be.
“Yes, is that a problem?”
“No, of course not, I just haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet so I didn’t know.”
“Well, now you do.” Her mother smiled as if she’d just given Skylar a big, fat present instead of something to dread. “And you need to call that boy back, darling. He was worried about you.”
“I know. I will.” She sighed and glanced at the clock, “I’m glad you stopped by but I have to get to work, Mom. I’m running late as it is and since I was out yesterday, I have no idea what’s on the schedule. I need to get going.”
“Oh, of course…” Melanie paused and looked around, “Why don’t I stick around for a little bit, clean up for you? You were sick and…”
“Out, Mom! Now!” She ushered her towards the door.
She had a lot in common with her mother but cleaning habits weren’t one of them. She was not OCD. She didn’t move the furniture every time she vacuumed. And if she left her mother in her apartment unsupervised, she might come back to findhersuffering from heart palpitations after one glimpse into the bathroom.
“Okay, okay, fine. I’m going.”
“Bye Mom. See you tomorrow.”
“Love you darling.”
“Love you too.” She waved as her mother got into her expensive BMW.
Like the woman herself, it looked out of place here in the run-down apartment complex where Skylar lived. She knew her parents didn’t like her renting an apartment here. They’d offered multiple times to buy her a place if she didn’t want to move back home but she’d refused. It was part of her independence to pay for her own place and she liked her apartment.
It was hers.
Sometimes the water heater kicked off after only five minutes in the shower, but that was okay. The pipes creaked like they were being abused whenever she ran the dishwasher. The appliances were put in about a decade before she was born and the carpet was a terrible, orangey brown color, but she’d made it her own.
She’d painted the walls herself. She’d bought rugs to cover the awful carpet. She had lamps to help with lighting. With her knick-knacks and throw pillows, the bleak apartment took on a decidedly girly feel that was completely hers.
And it had the added benefit of being right next door to her favorite Bomar boy.
Ugh, she just couldn’t go five minutes without thinking about him could she? She shot a look at his door but it was shut and the lights were off. His truck was gone, hinting he’d already left for work and she tried not to let it get her down that she hadn’t heard from him this morning. It wasn’t as if last night had been a date.
She hadn’t heard from Trey either but apparently she had a date set up with him courtesy of her mother. She groaned and banged her head against the steering wheel of her car. Trey, her parents adored. Colt, they would hate.
Colt was a Bomar and they would dislike him on principle alone. She didn’t like to think that her parents were snobs buteveryonein this town thought they were better than the Bomars. They were criminals and thugs and the fact that Colt was neither wouldn’t mean anything to her parents.
He owned the tattoo parlor. That made him a successful business owner. But all her parents would hear was tattoos and then they’d put together that he was the one that had inkedherskin and oh, how they hated her tattoos.
They said they were cheap, which showed just how little they knew about the art form. They wanted to keep her their perfect, pristine, little girl and the more ink she added to her skin, the harder it was to reconcile that image of her with the person she truly was. That was one of the reasons she’d gotten her very first tattoo but they were never going to understand that.
They barely understood her and Colt wouldn’t stand a chance.
Not that it mattered. It didn’t matter what her parents thought of Colt because much like her tattoos, their opinion didn’t change what she wanted. She wanted him. If she was honest with herself, she had for a long time. And after last night, she was done letting him push her away. First things first she was going to stop by his shop and thank him for taking care of her last night and then… who knows.
Today, the sky really did seem like the limit.
