Page 34 of Never To Suffer

CHAPTER 16

BLISS

TYLA

Hours passand it’s creeping too close to sunrise by the time any of us think about leaving the diner. The muscles in my face hurt when I laugh, and there’s an acrid, bitter coffee taste in the back of my mouth. Skylar’s hand found its way onto my thigh and never left, and both Connor and Noah have attempted to pry into whatever this is. I shrugged, because I can’t give them an answer. With a loud yawn, Connor leaves first; his arm around Todd as they stumble back to their room. Skylar and I walk out with Noah, watching her round the corner toward the hotel to make sure she gets there with no trouble.

Now, it’s only Skylar, me, and the looming threat of a setting moon.

Billions of words and thoughts crash against my skull, but Sky centers my focus—their eyes, their lips, their hands.

“Dani, I need to?—”

“I don’t want you to go.” The words run out of my mouth so fast they become one, but they aren’t the words they want to hear. The heaviness of the sigh and the way they walk away tell me I’ve fucked up. I’ve imagined every hint, every touch, every glance tonight, which wouldn’t be the first time. They lean against the bike, head in their hands and shoulders slumped. Iwant to take it all back because I’d rather have them back as a friend than chase them out of my life again over some stupid, idiotic emotions.

Their head rocks back and their arms fold over their chest, hard biceps difficult to ignore as they hug themselves. They struggle to find words while I’m busy watching their tongue again, and how it slides over their lips. Whatever battle Skylar has going on in their head, they’re losing. Now I feel like shit.

“I’m sorry, Sky,” I squeak out in this pitiful, mousy voice that I’ve never heard come out of myself before.

“It’s not you.”

I don’t believe them. “Did I fuck this up so bad I?—”

“No! No, you didn’t do anything. I…I don’t know. I thought I had more time to…to figure out something I’ve known for a long time. Shit.” They pull their hair up into a bun—icing on the cake of their entire rude body—while I’m over here struggling not to touch them. “Beetle, when you saw me in the parking lot earlier, you could have brushed me off and gone about your life. But you didn’t, even though I did that to you. I walked away from everything, and you’re, what, okay with that? Do you even know where I’ve been?”

“You had to leave. Life threw too much at you, and no one blames you for that. None of us. No matter what.” I take a step closer. “Life gets messy sometimes. Look at mine. You make these plans and have these dreams about a family and making something of your life, but people do stupid shit, and your sister ends up with one of your best friends, but it’s okay because…wait, where was that going?”

“Dani, you don’t understand. I couldn’t stay. For so many reasons, no matter how badly I wanted to. Nothing felt real anymore except—” Their mouth becomes a straight line as they take a deep breath through their nose. Their blank face can’t hide the struggle behind their eyes. “I didn’t want to cheat. Ididn’t cheat. But since I woke up in the hospital, only two people in the world have made sense to me. Neither one was Steve, and that’s fucked up.”

“So, you blame yourself?”

“I’m the one who kissed you.”

“Steve dared you to kiss me, remember?”

“He couldn’t have known how much that kiss opened my eyes and my mind.” Their jaw muscle ticks as their throat bobs. If I had to guess, I’m pretty sure we’re fighting the same demon right now, and I’m losing as bad as Sky is. “I lost my balance, ready to fall, ready to let go. Steve opened a door with that idiotic dare, and I still don’t know if he did it on purpose. If he could see it before me. Maybe he saw it happening like the train wreck those months of recovery were, when I’d look to you and Xander instead of Steve. You two caught me when the wire finally broke.”

They stare up into the starless sky and I watch them like I have a thousand times before. Struggling, trying to fight everything on their own instead of asking for help. Steve never once questioned Xander or me spending the night with Skylar in the guest bedroom, not that we did anything to question. Nightmares, pills, routines they waged wars against, and a fear I hope to never experience. The injuries and pain tried to take him from us over and over. But losing memories—the missing of chunks of their life they’d never get back—that’s what ultimately broke them. Steve called us because he couldn’t handle it alone and he knew Sky, Xander, and I had become close friends long before the accident. When every other memory tried to fail them, the memories of us stayed strongest in their mind.

“I left, and I fell too far to come home.”

“I’ll always catch you, Skylar. No matter how far you fall, we’ll be there for you every single time.” I sigh and drop my head, rubbing my thumb over the back of theirs and spottinga familiar image. My head snaps up, eyes locking on theirs. “Seriously?”

“I found one of your sketches a while back. You’d tucked it into my guitar case,” they explain as I trace my fingers over the moth. “I wanted to make it more permanent. So, you’d both always be with me.”

“I remember doing that! I wanted to give you something of mine to keep with you, just in case, but I worried you wanted to cut ties completely, so I hid it.” My smile drops as their words hit my brain. “Wait, what do you mean we’d both be with you? You were always the moth and?—”

They pull their sleeve back and I find the matching bumblebee on one side and the scarab on the other. I can’t hold the tears back as my fingers ghost over the images. My heart lodges in my throat, because as close as I grew to Chase, Steve, and Jamie, Skylar felt like something more, something deeper.

We’d talk about nothing for hours, lay under the stars sharing our favorite music with each other, and tell each other everything. I helped Skylar and Steve pick out their rings. Skylar wanted me in the wedding party, by his side, and couldn’t have been happier for them. I also couldn’t have been sadder as I brushed the knots out of their hair while they were in a coma. I talked them through their past and the memories they’d lost of Steve and their relationship. I held them as they cried themselves to sleep night after night.

They helped me, too. They helped me see Xander as the best thing to ever happen to me, even when we break up. They held my hand as I testified against my sister’s abusive ex-husband for the years of violence. They were the first person I trusted to read my notebook of unfinished songs and helped me finish every one of them.

I’d always known we were soulmates on some plane, but didn’t know it could be this one.

“Oh, Skylar. Why did you have to leave us?” I sniffle.

“Because I needed help beyond what you could give me. Sometimes, that’s how life works, Beetle.” They lean forward and left the softest kiss my forehead. The feeling slid down to my toes and through my soul. “You’ve been calling me back since the day I left, like the siren I knew you were. Hell, I’m on my way back. I came here visiting my brother and would have left for LA in the morning.”

---