Page 55 of The Girl I Once Loved

“Don’t be a dick, Noah,” Daisy quickly defends. “Skylar was the one who wrote the book, word for word. I doubt Julia Crawford even knows how to string a sentence together, much less be credited with being a bestselling author.” She scoffs, rolling her eyes.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s her name on the listing. Not Skylar’s. As far as the world is concerned, your sister didn’t write jack shit. Tell me I’m wrong?” I demand, piercing Sky with my penetrating gaze, feeling her anger starting to match the one starting to bubble inside me.

“Geez, Noah. Stop raining on Sky’s parade. This is a huge deal. Ease up, will you?” Daisy rebukes with a warning tone, telling me she’s seconds away from wringing my neck if I so much as say another word.

“Fine,” I grumble in defeat. “Have at it then. Celebrate someone else’s accomplishments for all I care. Be my fucking guest. I need to take a piss anyway.”

Without a further word, I turn my back on the two stunned sisters and storm upstairs, knowing I need a safe space to cool down before I do or say something I’ll eventually regret. With my temper skyrocketing as it is, it’s a fucking miracle I have the frame of mind to keep my distance. If I hadn’t and stayed a second longer in that damn kitchen, I’d just end up running my mouth and escalating things to the point of no return.

But to my dismay, Sky isn’t as eager as I am to let shit go.

My fury increases as the familiar scent of cherry blossoms follows me up the stairs to the second floor, announcing that Sky is right at my heel. And when she pulls me by the arm, forcing me to turn around to face her head on, I reluctantly oblige.

“What the fuck is your problem?” she whisper-yells, keeping her voice just low enough for Daisy not to hear us fighting.

“Isn’t it obvious?” I sneer. “You’re my problem, Sky. You’re always my fucking problem!”

“God, you’re an asshole!”

“Trust me, sweetheart. You’re no prize either.”

Her silver gaze flashes with burning rage, and to my chagrin, it only amps up my own fury.

“You really are still the same arrogant asshole you’ve always been, huh?”

“And you’re still that scared little girl who likes to hide in the shadows, instead of owning up to who she really fucking is!” I bite back.

“Keep your fucking voice down,” she snaps, her attention split between arguing with me and worrying that her sister might hear us and come upstairs to stop us mid feud.

“Fuck this,” I curse, grabbing Sky by the elbow and pulling her into her bedroom.

“Let me go!” she seethes, slapping my hand off her.

“Gladly!” I yell, releasing my grip from her to slam the door behind us.

“God, you’re a piece of work,” she pants furiously.

“Ditto, baby,” I retort, turning my back at her outrage and hurrying over to her closet.

Before she even knows what I’m up to, I reach up to the high shelf in her closet and pull down every notebook I can grab—every last single story that Sky’s imagination was able to materialize into beautiful prose during the years she lived under this roof.

“And just exactly what do you think you're doing with those?!” she accuses, wide eyed in shock when I spread the notebooks on her bed. “Those are not yours to manhandle!”

“You’re right. They’re yours!” I throw my arms in the air from pure frustration alone. “Every last word written in those pages came from you. It came from your incredible mind. It didn’t have to be dictated by some B-list actress!” I yell. “But it’s clear as day that you need me to refresh your memory, since it’s fucking apparent you forgot every dream you ever had. Forgot how fucking talented you are. Too fucking talented to be writing anything that doesn’t come straight from your heart.”

“Noah—” she starts to stutter, my strangled name a plea on her lips, but I’m too far gone to turn back now.

Her whole body trembles with pent-up rage and shame as I start sorting through her books, making sure to pick the ones that mean the most to her.

“Let’s take this story right here, shall we? The one about Pirate Barbosa and his prim and proper captive, Lady Jane. On the surface, it sounds like every other pirate book ever written, but when you delve into its pages, you see it’s so much more than that. It’s about freedom and redemption. You were able to give Barbosa something to aspire to that didn’t include lining his pockets with stolen gold—the love of a good woman will do that to a man. Then, if that wasn’t enough, you gave a gilded-cage aristocrat like Lady Jane something she never dreamed possible—the freedom to use her own voice in a world where a woman was forbidden to have one.”

I go into a tangent, pulling book after book from her bed, and doing a fucking synopsis of all her stories, before I throw them back onto the forsaken pile.

“You…you…read my notebooks…,” she stammers, her eyes starting to water. “You…you…you had no right.”

I shake off the tinge of guilt that accosts me with how vulnerable and raw she looks right now. Like a piece of fragile glass ready to shatter if I so much as touch it. In her mind, I’ve crossed some invisible line reading her notebooks without permission, completely unaware that her words were the only things that kept me going all these years. They were the precious gifts she left behind that kept me from losing myself entirely.

They gave me solace when her absence only ever gave me despair.

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