“I’m fine, Stevie-girl. Go show those boys how it’s done.”
She sent him a wink and a salute, then nudged her horse and took off after Lane and Reed.
He waited till they were out of sight to close the distance between us, going practically nose to nose with me. “You think you know everything about Skylar, but did you know his parents are loaded?”
“We’ve never talked about his parents,” I admitted.
“Ever wonder why? Or had you just never bothered to ask about who he was as a person?”
That drew me up short. Rowdy wasn’t wrong—I hadn’t ever asked Sky about his family. Or much else. Hell, I didn’t even know what his birthday was.
“I deserve that, but you need to know that I care about him a lot. And we do talk about his life, but it’s all the current stuff. The business, refocusing on orthopedics. Making moves with his money so that he can get a positive cash flow going, that kind of thing.”
“I’m sure he appreciates that. But the thing he’ll never admit out loud is how much he wants a partnership. How much he wants to be loved for exactly who he is.”
“I think he’s great,” I said, the words limp and insufficient to describe how I really felt.
“Then I’d like you to imagine the kind of upbringing that would make someone asgreatas Sky is doubt himself. I know he’s sassy, but I can promise you that embarrassing him in front of his boss, and then acting like the big hero in front of Rich probably triggered all sorts of shit for him. He might show you his anger, but he will never let on how much you actually hurt him.”
I wanted to run a marathon on this decrepit knee just to show Skylar how sorry I was.
“Can you tell me what the deal is with his parents? I’ll ask him, too, but I want to hear it from you.”
We had made our way to the feed shed, and Rowdy followed me in.
“His life had been planned out since infancy. Private schools from kinder through high school, then on to his father’s alma mater, then get married to an appropriate girl, then take over the family business.”
“What was the family business?” I asked, ignoring the part about Skylar marrying someone not me.
“Something in finance. I can promise you that what Sky wanted out of life and who he was inside meant very little to his parents.”
“What happened?” I asked, though I could guess.
“He came out. Told his parents who he was, let them see the truth of him, and they kicked him out. Shut down the bank account they had for him, canceled all his credit cards.”
“Shit.”
“Thing is, he didn’t know how to be poor. He didn’t know about ramen. Or how to do his own laundry. Ended up going to Austin Community College instead of Yale, working part-time jobs, even though he hated them. So, when a sugar daddy offered him what looked like a sweet deal, he took it. He had one teacher—one—who encouraged him to transfer to UT and go for his masters.”
“What about his friends?”
“Only friends he had at that point were the sugar daddies paying for his college education and his fellow sugar babies. Everyone else was connected to his parents and the church they went to.”
I covered my eyes, biting the inside of my lip till it bled. Rowdy had painted a heartbreaking picture.
“I’ll only share this with you,” Rowdy said, raising a brow at me, “but I met Skylar in a group counseling session, and as we grew closer, we shared a lot of things. Things we didn’t share with other people. He never judged me because he understood what it was to be judged, to lose the acceptance of people he adored. Because he is someone who has always,alwayslonged for family. And not like that bullshit he came from.”
I sat with his words, quiet as we approached the feed that my animals were ignoring.
“You know, I’ve spent weeks feeling like I didn’t know up from down, left from right, but . . .” I swallowed thickly. “I didn’tdo none of that alone. I hadn’t been kicked to the curb and told to figure it out. I always had a home to go to.”
Some of the anger bled out of Rowdy’s features. “And now you know why I’m so protective of him. You can’t yank him around like that, Kit. It’s not fair, and he doesn’t deserve it.”
“You’re right. I . . . I did apologize, and I’ve been working to earn his trust back a little at time, keeping tabs on him, trying to brighten his day,” I said, painfully aware of how I wished I could just snap my fingers and fix it. “Iwillearn it back.”
Rowdy let that go without comment and nudged the pile of feed in front of us. “When did you buy these?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Last month.”
