But of course he had. He did.
“I—I don’t know,” she said at last, turning back to the painting. “If I can ever quit wasting my oils on half-finished skies, then yes. Maybe.” Her gaze flickered to the other canvases of all shapes and sizes against the wall, all abandoned with stretches of black, blue, and silver paint streaked across them.
Theo stepped toward the painting on the easel. Carefully moved his eyes over the painting.
He felt her presence beside him. She crossed her arms over her chest, silently gazing at it as well.
“I never was able to cut it down,” Theo said at last.
“I know,” she said after a moment.
“You should’ve seen the lengths I had to go to to keep the family from doing so.” Theo chuckled, recalling the number of times he had to make his case to the twelve brothers, parents, aunts and uncles, and cousins. “I almost resorted to making PowerPoint demonstrations. I was almost at the level of strapping myself to the tree in protest.”
“The newspapers would’ve loved it,” Skye replied. “That was your chance for front-cover exposure.”
They both chuckled quietly in the vast room until their gazes slowly turned to each other.
Theo raised a brow. “Well, I suppose our ramen is getting cold out there.”
Skye grinned. “Cold ramen. The only thing possibly less appetizing than warm ramen.”
Tentatively, he extended his elbow. “Shall we?”
Tentatively, she took the crook of his arm. “We shall.”
As they entered the field once again, the toads in the distance began to hum. For several minutes, they just listened, walking in step, Theo feeling her arm pressed against his side. The grass Skye’s father mowed each week bowed beneath their feet with each step. Each fir shivered lightly in the breeze as they passed.
The world, in that moment, was perfect.
“I haven’t been completely honest with you, Theo,” Skye said, breaking the silence. But instead of feeling her pull away, she seemed to cling tighter to his arm.
A part of him didn’t want to ask. The bigger part of him couldn’t resist. “How so?”
“I said I got over it a long time ago. Up until three months ago I really believed I had.”
“Until you moved back?” Theo said, raising a brow.
“Just before that. I was at my parents’ house and found something that . . . that just made me believe the worst in you all over again.”
He swallowed, the burn lingering in his throat. What had she found? An old picture? A memento?
“I need to talk with you about it,” Skye continued. “I need to get this off my chest before I could even possibly take one step further.”
“Of course,” Theo said, pulling her tighter, not wanting to let her slip away. “Anything.”
Their feet hit the gravel driveway and he stopped, letting go of her arm to face her properly and look her in the eyes. “What do you need to ask?”
Skye’s eyes glimmered as she pressed her lips together and looked up at him. He saw the hope in her eyes and his tension eased. Whatever she was about to ask, he could see she wanted him to reply with the right answer. Whatever it was.
“When I was with my parents—” Skye began.
The sound of a car rolling onto the gravel cut her off. Skye stopped as they turned, blinking into the beam of two small headlights.
He knew that car.
Skye’s voice was low. “Who is that?”
She withdrew her hands from his, already bracing for what she didn’t understand.
The car hit the brakes twenty feet away.
Theo felt his jaw flex. “It’s a woman I know. Ashleigh. It’s not what you think—”
Skye started moving backward, spotlit like an actress onstage. Her hands were balled at her sides. “Why is she here?”
“I—” Theo squeezed his eyes shut. If Skye had found some trinket that reminded her of how he had broken her heart, and she was struggling to get over that, he couldn’t imagine what reliving this horrible moment in their history might do. He pressed his hand against his temple. “I’m not sure. If I’m honest, I’m not sure. I broke it off with her today—”
“You have a girlfriend?”
But already Skye was waving him off, her bracelets banging against each other with the movement. “You know what? I don’t want to know. I don’t want to be a part of this.”
The driver’s door opened. Ashleigh set one high heel onto the gravel and stepped out. “Theo?”
“Skye, wait,” Theo called, but it was no use. Skye, hiking up her pantlegs, was walking as fast as she could toward the woods.
He could hear Ashleigh’s door slam shut, but Theo didn’t turn his head. He called out to Skye. “What did you expect me to do? I only ran into you yesterday. I did everything I could to get things right here.”
“See, now there’s where you’re wrong, Theo. You didn’t do everything you could. Fourteen years ago, you didn’t do everything you could. If you had, we wouldn’t be doing this right now.” Skye turned. For the first time, he saw Skye’s eyes spark against the moonlight.
Theo’s forehead creased. “But I did. I ran after you. I even got a broken nose running after you. And I called and apologized to your voicemail more times than I could count, until you flew all the way across the country and changed your number—” He halted. Threw out a hand. “What else could I have done?”
“What you should’ve done is flown out to Seattle and begged me to come back. You should’ve banged on my parents’ door until they gave you my address. You should’ve given up UVA and flown out to Seattle and found some crappy apartment as close to me as possible and apologized every day of your life until I took you back. I gave you everything, Theo. I got into that Seattle school two years before I went and turned it down to stay near you. To be with you.” Skye lifted her chin. “You should’ve put it all on the line for me too. Just like I put it all on the line for you.”
Theo swallowed as Ashleigh took a step toward him. “But you told me to leave you alone. You said in no uncertain terms—”
Skye threw her head back in exasperation. “I was lying, Theo. I was angry and hurt and I was lying. And I blindly assumed you cared about us enough not to give up based on a few words.”
“Your words,” Theo said quietly, taking a step toward her. “I thought it was what you wanted.”
For several moments they faced each other in silence, Skye’s face drained of color. Finally, she waved an arm at Ashleigh, who was sliding back into her car. “Clearly you have some things to sort out. I’ll leave you two to it.”
She stalked three more steps before turning one last time.
“You know? All day I kept trying to understand how the person I knew could treat my father this way—”
Theo put up a hand. “Wait, what?”
The gravel sputtered as Ashleigh’s car flew into reverse.
“I saw the letter, the one with your fancy letterhead detailing his salary.” She shook her head. “Honestly, Theo, you treat my father as unfairly as a migrant worker straight out of the Depression. He’s devoted his life to making an organic tree farm actually successful—which takes a lot of time and labor—and you can’t give him more than minimum wage.”