Only Her

His head shot up. “Look me in the eyes and tell me that you don’t love him still Skylar. I can see it. If you tell me that you are lying to me and yourself,” he declared.

She was focused on him when he said that to her so she turned her head away. She couldn’t tell him that she didn’t love Luka because she did. Did she want to? Sometimes. Sometimes not. She was still afraid of being hurt. “Is this about your pride?” Skylar asked Tag.

He slammed his palm down on the table. “No goddammit. It’s about never being good enough. I kept trying Sky. Daddy was always on the sidelines. Run faster. Reach farther. Lift more weights. Build your strength. Always on my back.”

“I remember,” she replied.

“I didn’t get into the Division I school he wanted me to. My academics were great. My football skills were not. He wanted to watch me play college football like he did at The Ohio State University.” She never realized how bitter he was.

“You went to Ohio State.” She knew that he did so Skylar was confused.

“I did,” Tag responded swallowing the beer faster and faster.

“You didn’t play football,” she guessed.

“I did not. I was great for the small town of Haley Cove. Skylar, I still hold most of the records I set my senior year but I wasn’t Ohio State Football material not like he was. I didn’t really care. He never got over it.”

“Man, our town has some fucked up parents,” she said.

He chuckled. “Yeah, the Bradfords weren’t exactly cream of the crop either. Were they?”

“No, Tag. They weren’t.” He finished off the second beer.

“Neither was Jacob Shaw,” Skylar suggested.

Tag laughed. Then he leaned forward on his knees. “I know. I remember as kids Luka coming to school with bruises.”

That was something that she didn’t remember because she was three years younger. “Brett too,” she told him.

He nodded. “He was a mean SOB,” Tag agreed.

“He was but he was great with my sisters and me.”

He laughed again. “Shame, he didn’t have all girls.”

“Tag, did your father treat you that way?” she asked.

His eyes traveled up to her face. “No, my father was more of a verbal abuse kind of guy. His words cut deeper than any belt could.”

She smiled at him. “So now what Tag?”

“Can we just keep talking?” He asked.

She couldn’t believe how she had missed the hurt that was buried beneath the bravado of the man that she had dated for thirteen months. The man she should have known since she had gone to school with him but hadn’t really known him at all. Skylar wondered if anyone did.

They talked until midnight about their childhoods. The pain that their parents caused them. How her parents’ death had affected her and her sisters something she had never thought about before today. Each of them had their own hang-ups curtesy of Nancy and John Bradford.

Their death had made each of them stronger though. “How so?” He asked. Tag had kept drinking throughout the night. She was getting hungry. She knew that everyone at home had to be worried. Skylar wanted to reassure them she was all right.

“We had no one else but each other so we became dependent on each other but independent of relying on anyone else for anything. We learned to fix things at the ranch. The Shaw boys were good at helping us learn what we needed to run the ranch. Brett taught me how to fix fences. I worked side by side with him.”

“Will Chloe and Roxy stay away from Haley Cove?” Tag asked.

“There’s nothing there for them,” Sky told him. “Roxy is doing well where she is and she’s working on her master’s in Psychology. Chloe is loving her school. Why come back to a town that holds nothing for you.”

“It has you and Ramona. Ava,” he added as an afterthought.

She nodded. “We are there for them. They need to visit us more often,” she agreed. “Could I fix us something to eat?” She asked.