by Lee Wardlow
Luna was taller than most women at five feet nine inches there was hope still for his daughter. She was still slender even though she had given birth to five boys. She always said it was them that kept her so tiny. She was always chasing after one of them. “You’re home,” she said. He nodded.
“For good or is this just a visit?”
“I promised my daughter I was home for good. A daughter I didn’t know that I had thanks to my family keeping it from me.”
His mother leaned against a post at the top of the stairs. He knew her. He knew she was contemplating what to say to him. How to fix this? That was what Luna was good at; fixing things.
“You be mad all you want,” she finally said. “I did what Skylar asked of me. We both knew when you left her like you did that you were taking a chance.”
He snorted. Luka looked away from his mother. He shook his head at her. “I deserved to be told dammit.”
“Maybe you did Luka but she was devastated when you left. I wasn’t sure the poor girl was going to survive then a month after Ava was born John and Nancy Bradford were killed coming home from a show.”
He dropped his head low towards the ground. I would have known had I come home, he thought. He shook his head sadly. “Is Ava why you told me about their death?” He asked.
“Partially,” she replied. “I hoped you would come for Skylar. Then you would have known about Ava too. She was so lost, not that John and Nancy were that great of parents to the girls but suddenly Skylar felt she was responsible for four sisters and a newborn. An aunt came to live with them until Skylar turned eighteen. Then she was all alone.”
“She could have had my support Mom. I would have been here for her and Ava. You know that.”
His impassioned plea didn’t fall on deaf ears. His mother shook her head in agreement. She had lived with her guilt and her regrets for ten years. Luna had kept a secret from her son that she knew would tear him apart if he ever found out.
Then she strolled down the steps to walk towards Luka. She stood before him and noticed all the ways that he had grown and changed. Luna reached up and cupped his face with her delicate hands. “I know.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?” He snapped.
“I’ve explained that already Luka. Skylar wouldn’t have been able to handle you coming home because she was pregnant. Don’t you see?”
Hell no, he saw nothing but the fact that he lost ten years of his daughter’s life. When he didn’t respond Luna continued. “Luka, she was the talk of Haley Cove. Most people assumed that you left because she was pregnant. Ran away from your responsibilities.”
“Great,” he snarled looking away from his mother’s face in shame.
“Oh, your brothers beat the hell out of anyone who said anything bad about you or Skylar. I’ve bailed Brett and Dalton out of jail more times than I care to remember because somebody said something about one of you they didn’t like.”
“Traitors, they didn’t tell me either.”
“Don’t,” she told him. “Don’t turn your back on them. They’ve had your back. They’ve taken care of Skylar and Ava like I have. We respected Skylar’s wishes that you not be told. She didn’t want you back that way. Luka, she never got over you. Can’t you see that?”
He shook his head and rubbed his boot in the dirt. “The woman I saw this afternoon didn’t appear to still have feelings for me. She called me a bastard.” His mother chuckled. He didn’t think it was funny. “She told me to get the hell off her property. That our daughter didn’t need me.”
“She’s hurt Luka. Give her time.”
Luka couldn’t remember the last time he had cried. He pressed his fingers to his eyes to stop the flood of tears wanting to escape. He had a child. A little girl that looked a great deal like him. A little girl his brothers and his mother had been here to watch grow up but not him because nobody told him about her.
In ten years, not once had he made an effort to come home to Haley Cove. He talked to them on the phone regularly. He kept that tie that bound him to Haley Cove just in case he found it in himself to return home. He couldn’t sever it completely and he knew why. Skylar Bradford.
No matter how many women crossed his path, laid in his bed they weren’t Skylar. He had never stopped loving her and that is why it hurt so bad that she kept this from him. “Luka,” his mother’s voice was so soft. “Are you going to let the past control you or are you going to make the best of your future?”
He removed his fingers; his lashes damp with unshed tears. Luka was filled with immense regret that he hadn’t been here for Skylar. If only she had told him that night before he left Haley Cove. If only he had known.
Chapter 3
Luka spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the sofa in the living room looking through pictures that his mother had taken over the last ten years. Pictures of Ava. Some of Skylar as well.
She even had a few of Skylar’s baby shower that she and Nancy had apparently thrown for her. Only her best friends and a few relatives were present for the special occasion.
One picture stood out. He just kept going back to it. She didn’t look happy but he thought it was because they were taking a picture of her. Her hands were cupped low under her belly to make her loose fitting sundress tight over her rounded stomach. He ran his thumb over the picture and he sighed. Luka could see the sadness in her eyes. A sadness that he had put there.
Then a few from the hospital. She held Ava in her arms. She wasn’t looking up in any of them except one. Her eyes were lovingly focused on the child she cradled against her chest.
Ava had a head full of hair when she was born. Her round face was peeking out of a blanket wrapped snuggly around her body. Skylar looked a little happier in these pictures. She definitely loved their daughter. He could see it in every one of them.
He began to look through the stack of photos again. First birthday. She was a mess when she was done with her cake. Skylar was holding her away from her in one; most likely on their way to the bathtub.
A cheesy smile on her second birthday right after blowing out the candles. She had already begun to look so much like him it made him ache. He rubbed his hand across his whiskered jaw. Her third she had a cast on her arm.
“Mom, what happened to Ava? Third birthday she has a cast on her arm,” he shouted to his mother who was in the kitchen.
“She fell off a horse.”
He swallowed hard. “Skylar has been putting her on horses since she was three?”
“No, Brett and Dalton have. She was with them. Skylar about handed them their balls when she arrived at the hospital.”
He chuckled at his mom’s term of choice. She was probably right though; he could see Skylar being tough if they hadn’t protected her as they should have. He could see Skylar’s love for Ava. A love he should have been able to experience as well.
He rose from the sofa and went to the kitchen where his mom was working on cleaning her oven. It was a Thursday. Nothing had changed since he had left home. She still had her routines. Her list of things that she did on certain days without fail. His mother was still a creature of habit. “What’s she like?”
“Ava?” Luna clarified with her head still stuck in the oven scrubbing away. Her oven was old. It didn’t have a self-cleaning option on it.
“Yeah.”
Luna sat back on her heels and thought for a moment. Her voice was soft as she answered her son. “She’s everything that is good about both you and Skylar.”
He nodded, agreeing with his mother. “She looks a ton like you when you were her age.”
“I gathered that from seeing her.”
“She is a little hyper and excitable like Skylar. No sugar or she’ll climb the walls,” his mother warned him.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“She’s a lot like Skylar in personality. Sweet and gentle just can’t sit still. She’s gotten in trouble at school a few times because of it. Ava is very smart and gets bored easily
.”
He had noticed some of those things too. “How was it for Skylar, Mom?”
“Being seventeen, unmarried and having a child in our small town?” He nodded. “Most felt sympathy for her because you left. She dropped out of high school, got her GED. She tried college but it was just too much for her with Ava. So she trained horses like her Daddy did. She’s good at it too.”
“I know she’s never married unless you all were lying about that too but does she date?”
Luna went back to scrubbing her oven. “She’s never been married.”
“Are you avoiding the part of the question about dating Mom?” He asked.
Luna glanced up at her son. “She’s been dating someone for about a year now.”
He nodded. The twisting of his guts let him know how much he hated the fact that another man had touched her. Hell, it wasn’t like he had been a saint himself though but Skylar was his. Had he expected her to not be with another man in ten years? Hell, fucking, yes, he had.
“Anyone I know?” He finally asked.
His mother sighed. “Luka, I hate this you know. You need to discuss these things with Skylar not me. Don’t put me in the middle.”
“She’s dating Tag Richardson,” Dalton offered.
Luka turned and saw his brother standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. His arms crossed over his chest. Damn, Dalton had grown since he left. He was fourteen years old last time he had seen his little brother. Dalton was staring at Luka like he was an alien from another planet.
“Tag? High school quarterback, year younger than me?”
“That’s the one,” Dalton responded. “You visiting or home for good?” He asked with a toss of his head. The arrogant little prick.
“Home for good.” Luka saw Dalton and Luna exchange glances. “I already know about Ava. I stopped by Skylar’s on my way here.”
Dalton’s eyes shot up to his brother’s face. “My guess is that you are pretty pissed off right now?”
“You would guess correctly.”
Dalton laid his ball cap on the kitchen table. He had a buzz cut now. He ran his hand over his shorn hair. “You have to accept part of the blame for how it turned out Luka. You left her high and dry.”
“Fuck no, I don’t Dalton. I didn’t know she was pregnant.”
“Watch your language Luka,” his mother admonished him.
“You broke her heart man,” Dalton explained.
“No excuse for not telling me that she was pregnant with Ava.”
Their voices were getting louder and louder. Luna rose from the kitchen floor in case she had to intervene between her two, much larger sons. She wouldn’t put it past these two to start throwing punches.
“Good enough reason for Skylar.”
“So that is how it is going to be. You’re taking her side.”
Dalton rubbed his hand across his jaw. “Luka, man…I’m not trying to take sides. I was here when Mom told her that you were gone. I saw what you leaving did to the girl. She was crushed when you left.” His brother’s voice had gone soft.
“You didn’t even say goodbye to her. If you had you would have known about your child. She would have told you. Mom, Benji and I were here when she came looking for you. She was expecting you Luka…after school and you didn’t show up.”
Luka wasn’t sure he wanted to hear this.
“The pain that came from that girl when Mom told her that you left in the night about tore my heart out.” Dalton looked at his mother. “I picked her up off the porch and carried her in the house for Mom.”
Luka turned his head and stared through the patio doors that led outside to a large deck that ran the length of the big ranch sized house.
“I thought she was going to make herself sick crying. Then she told us she was pregnant.”
Luka’s head snapped around. He looked at Dalton first then at his mother.
“She kept saying how could he leave me.” Dalton was choking on his words. The experience still painful to remember. He had only been a teenager at the time. “Then she suddenly stopped crying. You know Skylar,” Dalton said. “She’s one hell of a woman. She said to us, I guess it’s better I didn’t tell him. It would have stopped him from going which is what he wanted. What he needed…more than me.”
“You remember all that?” Luka asked.
“Luka, I remember every goddamn word the girl said. I remember her walking down the driveway with her spine stiff with determination and her face set in stone even though inside, her heart had shattered.
“I guarantee you that at night, she cried in her bed when there was no one around to hear her because that is Skylar’s way. She never said another word about you. Never asked a question about you. Nothing except that we not tell you about Ava. Hell, we didn’t hear from you until she was about to give birth to her and she didn’t want you running back for her and the baby. She felt like you would have ended up resenting her.”
“You seem to know a lot,” he said.
He shook his head. “I’ll be honest with you. Both Brett and I have offered to marry Skylar.” Luka could feel the rage burning in his gut. Of course, his brother Brett had asked her to marry him.
“She wouldn’t have us. Not that she didn’t care about us but she wouldn’t saddle us with a woman who had no heart to give. Those were her words.”
Luka dropped his head and gazed at the floor. He still held onto one thought. He couldn’t let it go. It was eating away at him. His heart. His little girl did need him and he should have been told she existed. Luka walked past his brother and out the front door. He needed to be alone. He needed to think before he exploded on somebody which would not be good.
**
Skylar could hear Luna laughing with Ava. She was almost ready to go out tonight. Lucky for her she was meeting Tag in town so if she was late she wouldn’t hold him up and piss him off.
He was the mayor of their fair town, Haley Cove. He started the town square meetings every week with a speech. Then kicked off the dances in the square’s hall. An old barn that had been renovated and was rented out for events like weddings and parties and their Friday night dances.
They had been dating for thirteen months. Tag talked about marriage on occasion but Skylar had no intention of ever marrying Tag Richardson and she reminded him of that. He just laughed at her.
For one thing, she didn’t love him. For another he wasn’t the greatest with Ava. He wasn’t mean to her, just indifferent. That was something she just couldn’t tolerate. The feelings were too familiar because of her own parent’s aloofness regarding her and her sisters.
Not that Tag was around Ava a whole lot. Skylar had worked hard on keeping the two pieces of her life separate. She intended to keep it that way.
He filled the lonely hours when Ava decided she wanted to stay with a friend or Luna. Tag satisfied her sexual needs and that was about it. She wasn’t on the same page as him and she had been telling him this for months. Maybe it was time to end it. She had been thinking about it for a while but if she did it now…it would look like she was doing it because of Luka coming home.
She sighed. Exasperated that he was now home. Tired because she didn’t want to go out but tonight was something she had to do to. She had to make concessions for Tag.
He wasn’t a bad guy. A little arrogant. Sometimes controlling. Nice looking but he didn’t have her heart. No one did and no one would ever have it again. Not even Luka Shaw. She had to remember that when he was around.
She had been thinking about breaking it off with Tag because they weren’t on the same page. She wanted to keep it causal while he was starting to talk about a future. Skylar knew that she couldn’t handle his arrogance on a regular basis even if he were better with Ava.
She only saw him regularly on Friday nights right now from Spring through Fall when they had the dances in the square. That wasn’t a relationship.
They were more like fuck buddies or friends with benefits. She co
uldn’t remember the last real date they had when they went to dinner and a movie. Six or eight months ago? Before the dances started for sure.
After seeing Luka this afternoon, she felt the familiar longing and locked that bad boy down tight. She wasn’t giving him anything but her back as she walked away from him this time.
She did have to break down and give in to Ava though. Her daughter wanted to see her father again. Get to know him. Skylar was afraid at first. Afraid of losing her daughter to Luka Shaw. A common fear she assumed but not really rational.
She had to finish getting ready or she was going to be even later than she already was. Her dress was barely pink with two inch straps that sloped gently off the shoulder. It had a flouncy skirt that Skylar loved.
She wasn’t showing off too much but her knees and a little cleavage. Her tan cowboy boy boots came up to mid-calf. Her hair was pulled to the side in a lose ponytail and she wore very little makeup. She didn’t need it. Skylar grabbed her tan jean jacket as she left her bedroom.
She ran down the steps knowing she was going to be at least ten minutes late which drove Tag crazy. He always told her, if you weren’t so damn sexy your punctuality would be a problem for me. He was trying to be smooth. She always laughed like she was amused then turned away to roll her eyes at him.
Ava had needed some time with her after seeing Luka. She couldn’t just up and leave her child. She had questions that were delicate and needed answering.
Skylar really needed to figure out why she had been with him so long. Sex, no matter how good, was not a reason. At times it seemed to be her only reason.
Skylar walked into the living room and stopped short. What the hell was he doing here? Luka was standing in the middle of the living room talking with his mother and Ava. Her daughter’s hand was loose in his. Their connection natural as if they had known each other for a lifetime.
He turned and the expression on his face turned her insides to jelly. She looked down at the floor to avoid the heat in his eyes. Ava released Luka and ran to Skyler. She wrapped her arms around Skylar’s waist and hugged her. “Momma, you look beautiful.”
