Rose of Thorne (30 page)

I refuse to talk about what had happened with Sebastian.
I shouldn’t care and I should be at the police station right now revealing his part in the crash, but I can’t and I never will. I had buried that a long time ago and that is where it will stay. I will never speak of that night again to anyone. Anyway, I can’t even deal with the fact that the silver bracelet remains in my shorts pocket that I am wearing beneath these scrubs. To be honest, I don’t know if I can ever look at it again. Something that once had meant the world to me now represents nothing but pain, sadness and lies.

“Skylar
, please let me in,” he says and I pull my mind back to him.

“I’m never letting anyone in again, Lucas.
I gave him my heart and he crushed it. I don’t want to fix the pieces and move on because I’ve been through enough in my life.”

“What are you going to do now?”
he asks as he pats the leather steering wheel. Traffic has now come to a complete standstill.

Shit! This means I’m trapped in here with him and all of his prying questions.

“I don’t know, Lucas, okay? I DON’T FUCKING KNOW! I know that I can’t go back to work for him. I mean damn it, I can’t even go back to get my damn purse right now. So, I DON’T FUCKING KNOW, alright?” I shout at him. I lean my head against the cool tinted glass. I’m relieved that no one can see me through them and then I close my eyes.

Who the hell does he think he is
anyway? I don’t owe him a damn explanation. Why is he even back here in Austin?

After a few minutes of
silence, I hear him draw in a deep breath and turn to me.

Oh shit, he wants to talk more
. DAMN IT! MOVE TRAFFIC!

“Skylar, we need to talk…
about why it is that I came back here.”

WHOA…
Did he just read my mind or something?

“
Why did you Lucas? Why now?” I ask him. I just want him to explain why I never heard back from him after he left for Paris. I mean, it is true I was confused about my feelings when we were together, but he never even explained his silence. I had cared so much about him and he had hurt me.

“I came because…” he hesitates looking away from me quickly
.

“Because?” I reply
.

“I came because of you
, Skylar. I came back because of you.”

The shock of his words hit me hard in the stomach.

He had come back because of me?
After all these months?

“I can’t let you marry him without knowing something first… I had to explain it to you,” he says and I am still too shocked to respond more than a nod back to him.

“I came back at Christmas to surprise you, Skylar. I was at the Christmas party…I saw the two of you in his office, so I left. I flew back to Paris that same night because I had been so hurt. I had wanted you to care about me the way I cared about you. It had been easier to just leave you and Austin behind. And then…then I got your text at New Years. I didn’t know how to respond back to you. I didn’t even know why you were contacting me if you were with him. I’ve spent the last seven months trying to get you out of my mind with every way possible, but I can’t, because I fell in love with you, Skylar. When I got your wedding invitation, it almost sent me over the edge. I had to come back because I can’t let you marry him without me telling all of this to you.”

“Lucas
, you don’t have to explain yourself any further, I get it okay? I hurt you and I’m so sorry that I couldn’t return what you felt for me,” I sadly reply. “But you act like I cheated on you with him. You are the one who stopped calling and texting me. What was I supposed to think, Lucas? Besides, I got the message loud and clear when I called your hotel that night. I should have known you hadn’t changed.”

“Wait. What are you talking about?
You called my hotel room? When?” He asks me.

“I was worried because I hadn’t talked to you for long. I thought something bad might have happened so I called you room.
I heard the two of you, Lucas.”

“What?”
he says with a confused look on his devastatingly handsome face.

“When you answered the phone
, there was a girl speaking in French and she was laughing. It was 2 am, so what else would you be doing with a girl in your room at that hour?” I shot back at him.

“N
o, Skylar, you were all I thought about when I was in Paris. I remember getting a phone call in my hotel room one night and I couldn’t get anyone to answer me back on the line. The woman laughing was CeCe, my best friend Tomas’ wife. She and Tomas had flown in to visit and they had just stopped by. They were both in my hotel suite when you called me. I would never have cheated on you, Skylar. I loved you. I worked like crazy just to be able to make it back to Austin in time to spend Christmas with you. I had even bought you a plane ticket in hopes that you would come spend New Year’s with me. Of course, when I saw you with Sebastian I figured you had moved on without me.”

I feel like I have been hit in the stomach.
He hadn’t cheated on me? And when he had flown home to surprise me, he finds me in the arms of Sebastian. Of course, now it all makes sense.

“I don’t expect you to love me back
, Skylar. I just needed to make things right between us...for me, not for you. I need us to at least be friends. Do you think we can at least be that, even after everything I have just told you? I think right now you need another friend.”

I don’t know what to say to him.

Had he really loved me?
Is he saying he still loves me? SHIT! I can’t deal with this right now!

I can’t wrap my mind around any of this. The sad thing is that I have really missed him.
He looks at life so optimistically and always made me laugh. He is the complete opposite of Sebastian and I found his happiness very contagious. When we had been together, he made me feel like I was the most important person in the world, even right now. He was always honest with me about everything.

It makes me sad that perhaps I hadn’t given him the chance he had deserved, but that was in the past. Sebastian had ruined that for me, just
as he had ruined everything else. I would never be anyone’s anything anymore. It is the only way I could protect what little bit of myself I had left.

“Just so you know Lucas, that this can never be anything more.
I don’t want that ever again. I just don’t want you looking for something that isn’t going to happen.”

“I understand, Skylar. So… friends then?”
he questions with raised eyebrows.

I nod and smile back, before replying, “Friends.”

Lucas

I lay in my bed that night thinking about her.
She isn’t getting married. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I was more than happy by her news, over- joyed even. I just wished it had not been at the expense of my gorgeous girl’s pain. The girl I had left back at Kylie’s apartment building was a sad and broken one. It was as if she had no more tears to cry over losing him. I couldn’t help but wonder what he had done that she couldn’t forgive him for. I knew it had to have been incredibly bad, because she was probably one of the most forgiving people that I have ever known.

Had he cheated on her? If he
did, he was a fucking fool!

I watch the sun come up across the Austin skyline and blow on the steam of my fresh coffee.
I had forgotten just how beautiful mornings are here in Austin. I study my watch again willing the time to move faster this morning
.

6 am. Shit! It is still too early to go see her.

I didn’t know how she would handle the news I had, or whether she would even seem interested.
I just hope either way she would keep an open mind at what I had to say. I think I have a solution to help her. What she didn’t need to know was that in the end, I wasn’t just doing this for her. I had selfish interests of my own.

When it is finally 9
am, I make my way into Kylie’s apartment building. Hopefully, she will still be here because I have no other way of contacting her if she isn’t. Bravely, I ring the buzzer in the lobby and listen closely as a groggy voice come over the speaker.

“Yeah?” Kylie says through a yawn.

“Is Skylar there?” I ask.

“Who wants to know
? Because if you are one of Sebastian’s spies, you can FUCK OFF; she isn’t here!” Kylie’s voice shouts into the speaker with a bitchy tone. I have to laugh, because she is definitely a force to be reckoned with, that is for damn sure. I know she will certainly lay into Sebastian as soon as she gets the chance.

“It’s me
, Kylie, Lucas Drake. I just wanted to check on Skylar, and I also have something that I need to discuss with her that’s important. Is she home?” I ask.

“I’ll be down in just a minute
,” Skylar’s sweet voice echoes across the abandoned lobby.

I start pacing the lobby for the next few minutes in order to try to work out some of my overwhelming anxiety.
While I am waiting on her, I rehearse my speech over and over again, about how I am going to do this. Suddenly, the elevator door chimes and I see her slowly make her way in my direction. She looks completely exhausted and completely breathtaking, all at the same time. She is wearing a pink camisole and white shorts that showed off her sexy as hell legs. She forces a smile at me, but her eyes remain cold and empty. Actually, they hold no life in them at all.

As I motion for her to sit down, I
vow with everything in me that I am going to do whatever it takes to put life back in those gorgeous eyes of hers. I will help her put her broken heart back together and hope, at the same time, to put mine back together too.

Mia fell in love with the literary world at a very young age and began putting her active imagination to pen and paper at the age of six.
Over the years, she has filled up numerous shelves with her notebooks and journals of her favorite stories. Twelve years ago, Mia began drafting
The Rose of Thorne
Series and through encouragement of a close friend, decided to finally take the leap of faith to bring her dream to life. She openly admits to having a hopeless infatuation with her Kindle and suffers from the one-click book addiction (No intervention required).

Mia is currently a stay at home mom who has mastered the fine art of making a PB&J sandwich in between laundry and shuttling kids to ballet and swimming.
In her spare time (“What spare time?” She laughs), she enjoys photography, traveling, and having a girls night out with her pals. She enjoys the simple things in life: such as sleeping more than 3 hours per night and 10 minute showers without being interrupted by children yelling “mommy” from the other side of the bathroom door.

Mia Michelle resides in Tennessee with her soul mate and husband of 18 years and their
two beautiful young children. She is currently working on her Masters in Counseling and drafting her new
Chase
series. 

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