“So pretty…” she breathes as the deer walk across the clearing and disappear in the thick trees on the other side.
We huddle together, enjoying the view and the quiet stillness, waiting for the cold to force us to go back in the truck.
“What made you want to do this tonight?” she asks softly.
I reach for her hand, because it’s always easier for me to talk when we’re touching. I take a deep breath, and decide to tell her the whole truth. “I wanted you to know I want to be with you and I’m not just spending time with you because we’re conveniently in the same house. And I wanted to share my favorite place with you.”
“This is the place on your back, isn’t it? Your tattoo?”
I nod, impressed she recognized it. “Yeah, it is. This place is like my zen. It always calms me.”
“I can see why. So many wishes waiting to happen.”
“What do you mean?”
“Any one of those stars could shoot at any second, and then you can wish on it.”
That does it. I’m totally crazy about her.
“This is where I came up with the idea of marrying you. I rode my bike up here and sat right there with my legs hanging over the edge.”
Her lips press together as her gaze settles on the spot I pointed to. “Really? I can’t believe you actually thought about me.”
“I think about you a lot. Non-stop since our wedding kiss, if you wanna know the truth.”
My admission puts her into a few moments of silence. “Do you regret it?” she finally asks. “Marrying me?”
Taking a deep breath, I weigh my answer. “I only regret the things that happened to you because of me. But I don’t regret helping you.”
“What about the other parts? Us being more than friends?”
I push my hair out of my eyes. “In some ways, I do.”
Her gloved hand tenses in mine, and she tries to pull away. I don’t let her. “Wait, don’t do that,” I say. “Let me finish. The only thing I regret is that I don’t know how to treat you better. I don’t know how to do… this. I’ve sucked you right into my dysfunction. You’re only eighteen, you—”
She interrupts me, whipping her hair over her shoulder. “Jude, don’t bring my age into this, please. We’re so past that.”
I sigh and soften my voice. “I just don’t want to be the reason you get hurt any more than you already have. And I don’t want to be the reason you make bad decisions.”
She studies my face and shakes her head slowly “What happened with Erin isn’t your fault. Not how she turned out, and not what she did when she came back.”
“Actually, it is. I never should’ve been bringing drug dealers to my house—where my mother and my little sister lived. Erin never would’ve met Jimmy—”
“You don’t know that, Jude. Maybe she would’ve met someone worse. Maybe she would’ve run away all on her own. She made her own decisions. I wanted to run away at sixteen, too. The only thing that stopped me was Gus. As crazy as it sounds, I couldn’t bear the thought of hauling her around in a cat cage, making her live in strange places. Otherwise, I would’ve disappeared, too.”
“You had a way worse life than her, Skylar,” I say. “Erin was just a brat who didn’t want to deal with her curfew. But she met Jimmy because of me. He’s the one who got her into drugs and every-fucking-thing else.”
“You have to stop blaming yourself. Who got you into drugs? Sometimes it’s just in people’s genes to turn to drugs and alcohol. I think she would’ve gone down that path whether she met Jimmy or not.”
That might be true. There was no one person or incident that made me start to do drugs, it just happened.
“I dunno,” I say sadly. “The whole thing’s got my head fucked up. For years, all I did was think about her and miss her. I agonized over what happened to her. All I wanted was for her to come back. To find out she just left, and never even thought twice about maybe sending me a fucking text message to put my mind at ease, is doing my head in. She said she saw me on the news, she knew how fucking wrecked I was, and she just let me be that way. That fuckin’ hurts.”
“She was young and messed up,” Skylar says softly. “Teenagers are selfish, Jude. I can admit that. We have our moments where we just don’t care about anything but ourselves. I was a little bit like that when I was younger.”
“Maybe that’s what I’m afraid of. Not just that I might hurt you, but that you might hurt me. I’m sick of being forgotten and tossed aside. So fucking disposable.”