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It’s not racing my bike or winning money from those rich fuckers that I go to school with that has blood pumping through my veins.
The only times I’ve ever felt truly alive is when she’s near.
Fighting me.
Hating me.
Coming for me.
And that epiphany is too much for me to take.
I’ll fucking cut my heart out of my chest before I ever let her realize the hold she has on me.
She’s taken too much as it is.
Like hell I’ll let her have my heart too.
Chapter 16
Skylar
Seventeen years old
Iflip the page of my book, pretending to read, when in reality, I can’t stop staring at my mother and Curt on the other side of the porch from under my eyelashes. I lower my head to hide my smile as they continue to send sweet discreet glances to one another, whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears as if they were the only two people on earth. My insides warm, witnessing how acutely in tune they are to each other, even when doing something as trivial as my mother cutting her husband’s hair on a Sunday afternoon.
After all this time together, they still act like they’re on their first date, completely smitten and in awe of how they got to be so lucky to find each other. No matter the hardships we’ve had to overcome, I’ve never questioned the sincerity of their love. It’s as clear as day how devoted they are to one another, and only a blind fool would think otherwise.
My mother is happy.
Truly and unequivocally so.
Just as that fleeting joyful thought crosses my mind, there is a pang in my chest as I recall how that wasn’t always the case. How she suffered at the hands of my cheating father and all the tears she shed over not being able to save her first marriage and keep her little family together. As if her first heartbreak wasn’t enough to cause some serious damage to her heart, then the loser boyfriends who came after my deadbeat father made sure to shatter her already fragile self-esteem. It’s no surprise that most of them didn’t stay long enough for me and Daisy to even remember their names. Not that Mom went out of her way to introduce us to many of them, though. It’s almost as if she already knew that they wouldn’t stick around since none of them wanted to be settled down with a woman who had two young children and was living paycheck to paycheck. To them, Mom came with too much baggage to be worth the trouble. She might have been good for a few laughs and worth a night or two of fun, but that was about it.
It’s a damn miracle Curt came into her life when he did, considering his own broken heart.
Maybe that’s why they were always fated to find each other.
But if that’s the case, what was the point of having them suffer such loss and misery before getting their happily ever after? Was it a test? Was such heartache inserted into their lives just so they wouldn’t take the real thing for granted when they found it?
If I were an expert in the rules of love, then maybe I would venture a guess to answer that question. But since I’m clueless to all matters of the heart, I wouldn’t be able to tell you. I’m just happy they found each other, even if it had to be later in life.
Still, I can’t help wondering what it would have been like if my mom met Curt first before she ever met my father. But just as I imagine that alternative universe, my lips flip into frown. If that had been the case, then maybe I wouldn’t exist, or at least not this version of myself.
Or worse, I would and so would Noah, making him my full-fledged brother.
A sick shiver runs down my spine at the thought.
I couldn’t live in a world where he was my brother.
That would be all sorts of messed up.
Especially considering last weekend’s events when he barged into my room to play his latest game on me. I close my eyes and let another shudder run through my body at the memory of how his breath stalled and his blue eyes darkened with the way my body responded to his forbidden caress.
A brother couldn’t touch me like that.
I’m not sure a stepbrother should touch me like that either.
In fact, I know he shouldn’t have.
