Page 28 of No Apologies
Chapter Six
“Stupid goddamned men.”
Skylar threw another shoe back into her closet when she couldn’t find its mate. Her room was a mess. She’d been throwing things for an entire twenty-four hours and she couldn’t seem to stop. Just like she couldn’t seem to put her fight with Colt out of her mind and move on the way she should have.
She’d been mad at him before. Oh, she’d been mad at him plenty of times throughout their friendship. But it was more than that this time. This time, she wasn’t just mad. She was also hurt and confused and so damn frustrated. She couldn’t stop obsessing over every single word he’d said, every twitch of his lips and flash of emotion in his eyes.
There was something between them. They both knew it. But he refused to admit it, refused to do a thing about it. And when she’d all but called him out about it, he’d used Trey as a deterrent.
Trey. Her boyfriend. The cute, kind, good guy that she was dating. The same guy that was best friends with her brother and adored by her parents. The same guy that was, even at that very moment, fishing with her family and had called to apologize that he wouldn’t be back in time to pick her up for dinner tonight. Trey, who she hadn’t had a chance to break up with yet.
Skylar threw another shoe and cursed the men in her life again. She’d had this all planned out. She’d already told Trey that they needed to talk. She’d thought he would come over before dinner with her family tonight and they’d be able to do it nice and civil but no, of course it couldn’t be that easy.
Instead, Trey had spent the day with her family members, bonding over beers most likely. She’d have to drive herself, sit through dinner and pretend everything was okay. She didn’t know when she’d get a chance to talk to him alone and have the important conversation that she needed to have now.
Soon, she had to talk to him soon. She’d already put it off too long. The moment she’d realized that her heart wasn’t in it, she should have cut him loose. Her heart had never been involved in her relationship with Trey. How could it be when it already belonged to another man? A frustrating, difficult, bastard of a man had stolen her heart and despite his attempts to push her away, she didn’t want it back.
God, she was such a mess. Involved with one man and in love with another. Wanting something she couldn’t have. Obsessed with someone that had told her time and time again that they were nothing but friends.
But it was the things he didn’t say that kept her coming back when he shoved her away with both hands. The way he looked at her sometimes, as if he were amazed she was even standing in front of him. The way he’d touched her when she was sick, as if she were important to him. When she’d held his beautiful bruised face in her hands yesterday for just a second there she’d seen heat flash in his eyes and felt that flare of need respond inside herself.
She hadn’t made that up, hadn’t dreamed it. There was something between them no matter what he said. If he was going to push her away until she got rid of the barriers between them, then she could get rid of the first one, her boyfriend.
Skylar blew out a rough breath when she finally came up with the shoes she’d been looking for. As much as she loved her stilettos, wearing them out to the family land was a recipe for disaster. Between the gravel drive and the grass, she’d twisted her ankle more than once. Besides, her father and brother loved nothing more than making fun of her fancy footwear so she stowed the heels for another day and slipped on a pair of sandals.
A last glance at the mirror confirmed all of her tattoos were covered as well. She hated hiding them but like the footwear it was simply easier to avoid the conversation. Her mother’s thin-lipped looks of disapproval were one thing but her father had voiced his condemnation loud and clear for years. She wasn’t going to win an argument with her parents about the beautiful artwork that covered her body and they would never understand what it meant to her so she’d simply stopped fighting.
The yellow cardigan she wore covered the shoulder piece well. The flowered maxi dress she’d paired it with fell to the ground and hid the smaller ankle tattoo as well. She still looked like her, just softer, more like the girl her parents wanted her to be than the girl she actually was.
With that depressing thought dragging her mood even further down, she grabbed her purse and headed for the door. It was probably a good thing she was driving herself because she was running late as per usual. The shoe fiasco was what she would blame but in reality she’d been slow to get dressed because she didn’t really want to go to dinner.
She wasn’t looking forward to her parents interrogating her about her recent illness. She wasn’t looking forward to watching Owen and Trey trade inside jokes. She wasn’t looking forward to holding Trey’s hand and kissing him as if nothing was wrong.
Not when everything in her life felt wrong all of a sudden. Ever since she woke up yesterday, she’d had the feeling she wasn’t where she was supposed to be. Like she wasn’twhoshe was supposed to be and hiding her tattoos only scratched at that uncomfortable itch and made it worse.
She was in such a rush that she almost missed it when she jerked the door open. If she’d only flipped the door latch instead of stopping to turn the deadbolt behind her, she probably would have. She was in the middle of inserting her key to lock up behind her when she saw it.
An envelope was taped to her door. Strange, but that wasn’t what caught her attention. It was her name scrawled across it in that messy, almost indecipherable script. She’d joked about his inability to write legibly a dozen times or more, asked how it was possible his writing could be so bad when his drawings were always so precise and intricate.
Colt. It was Colt’s writing. He’d left her a note.
Skylar smiled as she snatched it off the door, her keys all but forgotten. Her hands shook slightly as she carefully ripped it open. There was one sheet of paper inside the envelope, folded in half and when she flipped it over her breath caught in her chest.
There were only a couple of scrawled words on the page. If she’d been expecting some big explanation for why it was he’d behaved the way he did yesterday, she would have been disappointed. Colt was the more talkative of the twins, that was for sure, but this letter wasn’t important because of the number of words but simply for the few.
I’m sorry.
Her bottom lip trembled and she had to bite it to hold back a whimper. Sorry. He’d said he was sorry. He’d apologized. The man that never apologized for anything had apologized to her. And if that wasn’t enough to ruin her heart forever, he’d topped it off with a gift.
Just beneath his scrawled words, there was a drawing he’d done for her. It was the tattoo that she had mentioned she wanted to get a while back. They’d been discussing ideas over lunch and she’d commented that she thought a lace garter for her upper thigh would be sexy. She remembered it clearly because Colt had sobered instantly, said her boyfriend would love something like that and then changed the subject. Now, here it was, the sexy tattoo that only someone she was intimate with would probably ever see and Colt had drawn it for her.
What did that mean? When had he drawn it? Why had he chosen now to give it to her? Was it supposed to tell her that he wanted to be the one to see her new tattoo? Or that she should accept that he didn’t care, that he was fine with another man seeing this tattoo on her body?
Her eyes traced over the sketch, trying to take in all of the tiny details he had included. It was elaborate in design and she knew it must have taken hours to draw. The delicate lines were made to look like lace. The bow looked more like chains and gave it a harder edge. Small roses were even worked into the design to match her other tattoos. It was perfect.
The sound of heavy footsteps drew her gaze up and she swallowed another whimper. Colt. He’d come out of his apartment on the other end of the building. He stopped and their eyes met across the distance. He hadn’t expected her to be standing out here, she could see that much by the way his eyes widened with surprise. It was the other thing she saw there that kept her from moving towards him.
He looked almost… scared.
