“I’m sorry,” he cut me off and blurted out.
“It doesn’t—”
“It does matter. I was an asshole. Worse than that even. I took it out on you and you were the last person who deserved it.”
13
HAYDEN
Why the hellwas it so hard to say sorry?
I’d thought saying, “I love you,” were the hardest words I’d ever have to say, but sitting here with Skye—knowing I’d been a downright bastard—I was right where I was supposed to be, doing what I should’ve done yesterday, a week ago, two weeks ago. Hell, if I’d never lost my shit in the first place and said the things I’d said, I wouldn’t have to. But I did. And I needed Skye to believe how sorry I am.
“It does matter. I was an asshole. Worse than that. I took it out on you and you didn’t deserve it,” I started.
Since I made the decision to come down, I’d been going over and over and over in my head, trying to figure out what it was I really wanted to say. As the plane started to descend, I finally figured it out and thought I had it nailed, but now sitting here in front of Skye who was looking at me warily, words escaped me.
“You were hurting,” she offered, letting me off the hook.
It wasn’t enough though. As much as I wanted her forgiveness, as much as I needed her help, we just couldn’t sweep it under the carpet.
“So were you but I had my head so far up my ass I didn’t see it. Or I didn’t want to. And what I said… the names I called you, it wasn’t okay. Nothing about that day was okay.”
For a long minute, one that felt like an eternity, Skye stared into the bottom of her glass as she sipped her lemonade, her pouty, shiny lips wrapped around her straw. “Thank you, Hayden,” she said softly. “I never wanted to make things harder for you. I really thought I was helping…”
“You were,” I assured her. That was never even a question.
“But…”
“But nothing. When I saw... saw... when I saw her wedding dress.” My voice was tight and I watched as Skye’s face contorted with pain. “I lost it. I shouldn’t have and I didn’t mean to… I just wasn’t expecting…”
“To feel like you’d been junk punched from an angry midget?”
That made me chuckle. “Something like that,” I admitted.
“It’s all good, Hayden. I get it.”
“You do?”
“Of course I do. If I was in your situation I probably would’ve done the same thing. So how about we agree you were an ass but it won’t happen again? Sound like a deal?”
“You’re willing to do that?” Skye was continually surprising me. She owed me nothing. Not a god damned thing, yet here she was calling a truce. One I didn’t deserve but I wasn’t walking away from.
“Of course.”
“You’re a good woman, Skye,” I told her genuinely.
When a wicked smirk crossed her face, she winked at me. “Not that good.” Her words made me chuckle but I knew she was being one hundred percent honest. It was no wonder her and Cassidy had been such good friends. They were trouble waiting to happen.
We ordered our food and caught up. When I’d asked her about working in the cafe, she rolled her eyes and grumbled something about no one else wanting her. That was hard to hear. Even though I’d never worked with Skye I knew how much Cassidy relied on her day in and day out to just survive. Skye made Cassidy’s chaotic world work and even when we threw a spanner in the works, sneaking away for five stolen minutes, Skye took it on the chin, plastered on a smile and kept adapting. Her talents were truly wasted serving coffee, besides, the coffee wasn’t even that good.
“So where to now?” she asked as I wiped my mouth on my napkin and pushed my plate away. Skye hadn’t been wrong about the cheeseburger, but it was the fries smothered in cheese and dripping in barbecue sauce that did me in.
“Well that depends.”
“On?”
Shit. Now was the moment. I didn’t realize how much I had hinging on Skye’s answer. While I’d been at Dylan’s, we’d been over and over everything, trying to find the missing puzzle piece but we kept circling back to Skye. There had to be something she wasn’t telling me. I didn’t think she was keeping it from me deliberately, more she didn’t realize she knew more than she did. There had to be some insignificant detail that was the key to unlocking this, and I was betting everything I had, that Skye was the one holding it.
