Chapter 55: Skylar

I ran from my old room to my new one. I was headed toward my closet of ski gear, because I needed to be outside, carving tracks down the white crest of a mountain. What good were desire and angst if I couldn’t pound them out by slapping my skis against the snow? I mean, screw it. My knee was almost healed. I’d go skiing against my physical therapist’s advice and suffer the consequences. But as I went to my closet to change into snow pants, my gaze snagged on my laptop, which sat innocently atop my dresser. Before I even reached for the snow pants I made a detour, grabbed my computer, and plopped down on my bed. Maybe I’d just found a more productive outlet for my torment. The raw emotion spinning through me could be fuel for my novel.

I opened the file and scrolled down to where I’d left off: the pivotal love scene between Mary and Edmund.

Mary wrestled with her self-control. She pushed him away but he wouldn’t have it. As his kisses travelled down her neck and burned her skin, a chilling recognition eroded her consciousness. She belonged to him and even murder couldn’t change that.

“Leave me now,” Mary insisted. She pressed her hands against his chest, creating room enough to speak. “You don’t understand what I am.”

“I understand enough,” he answered.

“No, if you did, you would realize that we can’t be together.” She struggled from his grasp, stood, and tucked her tangled auburn locks behind her ears. Cheeks flushed with desire, eyes watering from anguish, she faced him. “You stay. I will leave and never come back.”

“No.” He stood and peered into her eyes. “You must not deceive yourself, Mary. You must not deceive me. If you do, you have killed us both.”

She could tell him how close he was to the truth, how he teetered on the edges of her dark reality, but to do so would be to sacrifice his love, and with no possible recourse.

“The privilege of leaving me doesn’t belong to you,” Edmond continued. “There is no force of God or power on earth that can truly separate us. If you attempt to leave me, you will break my heart and I will wish to die from the pain of unrequited love. Without your kisses, without your breath against my cheek, I will drown in a dark, unforgiving sea and I will long for you, my life raft, with each broken breath that pulls me under.”

My fingers hovered over the computer keys. Christ, I’d made Edmund practically beg Mary to kill him. But I couldn’t let her do it. She had shed the blood of several other suitors but now I realized that ultimately, she couldn’t wield that knife again. Because every time I pictured Edmund’s throat being slit, it was Mitch’s eyes I saw widening in betrayal and disbelief as the knife entered his flesh. Phantom sobs began at the back of my throat, a mixture of bile and tears, and I understood that love and hate are not opposites, that instead they sit next to each other on a circular spectrum with no real beginning and no real end.

I sprang from my bed, went to my closet, and grabbed those snow pants after all. I quickly changed clothes, gathered up all my ski gear, and left the house making as little sound as possible.

Soon I was travelling up the ski lift toward my favorite run, Holy Moguls, which Jo Beth and I had raced down together countless times. A wave of misery cleaned me out from the inside, washing away any unseemly dust mites of lust or longing. What would my sister say to me now? I squeezed my eyes shut. Jo Beth was dead; she would never say anything to me again, and here I was, falling for a man who possibly had a hand in her death. It was like East of Eden, and I was half horrified, half proud, to realize I resembled Charles, the younger, stronger sibling, and Jo Beth was Adam, who was taken in by the charms of a soulless beauty. Yet in the end, it was Charles who left her money; it was he who could never distinguish the line between hate and love.

I heard the familiar groan of my chair reaching the end of the lift. I opened my eyes to the exquisiteness of the mountain and made myself focus. I shouldn’t let my mind take such random leaps; Jo Beth never even read Steinbeck. Once I began skiing, I could clear my head, knocking each terrifying thought from my brain with each mogul I bumped over. I didn’t fall, nor did I twist my knee in any unnatural sort of way; still, I could feel the strain I’d unnecessarily put on myself. Hours later I limped home, and with every step, my knee whined and protested. But worse was that the closer I got to home, the more tangible Jo Beth’s presence (and the sting of her disapproval) became.

When I entered, I expected the condo to be dark, for Mitch to be safely tucked away in his room, or perhaps in the nursery with Bijou. But the living room lights were turned all the way up and Mitch sat on the couch, waiting for me.

“Where’d you go?”

“Skiing,” I answered.

He stood and came toward me. “So soon? I thought you had a couple of weeks before the doctor cleared you.”

I shrugged. “I was fine.” But I knew I would pay for my little adventure tomorrow. I tried to move past him, but he blocked my path.

“Sky, you’re limping.”

“I’ll go elevate my knee and rest.”

Mitch put his hand against my shoulder and I tried to resist his touch. “Bijou is still at your mom’s. I’m leaving town tomorrow and she wanted as much time as possible with her granddaughter.”

I stumbled back. “Where will you go?”

“To Florida. My dad is there… and Magda.” He saw me wince. “She’s not that bad, Sky.”

“You can’t let her near Bijou! Jo Beth would hate that more than anything!” I moved toward him like a beggar. “Please. I’ll give you everything, this condo, all the money that Jo Beth left me—everything will be signed over into Bijou’s name and you’ll have discretion over it all until she’s grown. But keep Bijou away from Magda.”

Mitch’s voice was nearly as pained as his face. “I can’t do that.”

Anger flamed inside me so bright that I saw red. “Yes, you can!” I yelled. “Let my mom raise Bijou; she wants to! You can go be with Magda and I’ll still hand over all that I have!” Something compelled me to hobble over to the little showcase at the other end of the room. It had been built to display Jo Beth’s Olympic medal. The medal sat behind glass, always shiny, always lit from above, yet when Jo Beth was here she’d never even look at it. I’d asked her about that once, and she’d said, “It reminds me that I lost.”

I removed the medal from its display and thrust it toward Mitch. “Here. Take this too. It’s yours.” In a moment of insanity, I pressed the medal against his chest and his hand flew up to grasp mine.

“Have you lost your mind?” he asked.

I pulled away from his touch, took the medal’s ribbon, and put it around his neck. “Probably,” I responded. “I’ve lost everything but it doesn’t matter. Everything I have already belongs to you.”

His puzzled eyes blinked several times in astonishment. He looked down at the medal that sat against his chest and then he looked at me so deeply, so intently, I was sure this was the first time in my entire life I’d ever been seen at all. In a flash, his arms were around me and we held each other, my craziness a virus that I’d just infected him with. We were both close to tears but frantic laughter came out instead, bubbling between us in inappropriate bursts.

“I don’t want anything from you,” he said. “I’ve asked for nothing.”

“Well, I can’t say the same.”

He turned quiet, the laughter dying on his lips. “What? What can I give you?”

There we stood, our arms around each other, and I longed to lean against him, to let him carry my weight so that my knee wouldn’t hurt so damn much. But I couldn’t show weakness, not now.

Not ever.

I sighed. “Jo Beth made me promise her, to never fall for the charming, beautiful guy. She said that guys like you are trouble, so I swore I would never, ever, give my love away. Now I see that I was wrong to make such a promise. At the time, I assumed that I understood love, but I knew nothing.”

His fingers grazed my hairline, my earlobe, my bottom lip. “And now?” he asked gently.

“Now?” My laugh was soft, meant to caress. “Now I understand even less.”

My fingers reached back to massage the tendons in the back of his neck. They were tight like thick, coiled wires, which was why, when he started to unzip my fleece with a quivering, uncertain hand, I was shocked at the contrast between hard and soft. After he removed my fleece and my silk thermal shirt and then my bra, I stood naked from the waist up in front of him. I tugged on his sweater and he complied by lifting his arms and letting me pull it up and off over his head. I’d seen his tattoo before, when his shirtsleeves had been pushed up, but now I let my fingers brush over the tiny pi symbol on his bicep, and then I let my fingers brush over his shoulders and chest too.

He sighed, like my touch made him quiver. “You’re the beautiful one,” he said.

Intuitively, my body curved toward his and he let his hands explore the lines of my back and hips, up and down the contours of my stomach and chest, and then I was gathered into his arms. Our warm, pulsating bodies pressed into each other. Our mouths met in a series of slow, profound kisses that left me feeling weak yet strong.

After several moments, I had to pull away and look him in the eye. “Are you sure this is what you want?” I asked.

“Oh, Skylar…” his voice was desperate. “It’s not about what I want, it’s what I need and I need you. I need you to make the craziness stop.”

Under the glaring living room lights, Mitch’s eyes were as dark as the cold night that had descended outside. But inside we were warm, and that enduring heat—born of our kisses and thriving as our bodies merged together—that is what will stay with me whenever I think of our night together.

It’s what I’ll remember whenever I think of Mitch.