Craig
It was amazing that Craig actually could have felt bad for some of his uncharitable thoughts. He knew how Skyler was, or, at least, he had thought that he did. He knew, at least, that Skyler was the sort of person who was uncomfortable in large gatherings, or where there was a lot of emotion.
So Craig gave him the benefit of the doubt. It had taken him awhile, Derrick and Logan had left to go back and get some work done, but Craig had slowly come around. It wasn’t okay that Skyler had run off like that, but then that was just how Skyler was. He’d known from the beginning that Skyler needed his time alone.
Skyler doubtless cared about Craig’s dad dying too much to handle it, rather than vice versa. The right thing for Craig to do was to go comfort the other man, and he headed down the stairs. If Skyler really were upset, Craig had noticed that he usually went outside, to the barn. Skyler got along well with the horses, despite how shaky his start had been with them. He took to it well.
But to get out the front door, Craig had to pass by the living room, and he heard the voices while he was nearing the bottom of the stairs.
“I’m here because I love you.”
It was a voice that, at first, Craig couldn’t place. The conversation swirled around him, a man and a woman trying to convince someone, who remained very silent, to give the man in question another chance.
By the time that he had figured it out, it was too late.
It was from Matthew. Although Craig had only met the other man once, he knew it somewhere deep down. Probably because of what had ended up happening between Skyler and Hannah. And there was the other voice. Hannah.
Oh shit.
Hannah was the one person that Craig knew for a fact Skyler cared about. He would listen to her. Why Hannah was promoting Matthew, her ex-fiancé, to her older brother, Craig didn’t know, but on some level, he also didn’t care. It was happening, and that thought unglued his feet from the floor and had him hurtling down the rest of the stairs.
“Oh, my God.”
Craig didn’t think that he spoke that loudly, but he must have because the three people sitting on the couch all turned to look at him. Normally, that might have made him uncomfortable, but at the moment, he didn’t care. Couldn’t have possibly cared less, actually.
Hannah flushed and looked down, her face guilty and defiant, but Craig didn’t care about her in the slightest. It wasn’t enough that she had written Skyler out of her life just for telling the truth, but was she actually actively trying to ruin Skyler’s life now?
It was the other two figures on the couch who held most of his attention, though. Skyler and Matthew, who was just as tall and smugly handsome, as dark and gorgeous as ever. Matthew, with his arms around Skyler, who practically disappeared when Matthew held him.
The experience was almost surreal. How often was it that a guy got to watch his boyfriend kissing someone else? Craig’s hands balled up into fists, and for a moment, he almost flung himself at Matthew, grabbed him by the shoulders, and beat the shit out of him.
That would be satisfying, but deep down, even through his anger, Craig knew that it wouldn’t actually help anything. Skyler was kissing someone else, and that fact alone meant that it was over. It was the final nail in the coffin of something that had been dead a long time ago if he were completely honest with himself.
Grimly proud of his own maturity, Craig turned and left the living room. He did head outside, not to find Skyler this time but to saddle his own horse and ride, ride, ride. Ride until he didn’t care about this anymore until the breaking of what he had been so sure was an unbreakable bond didn’t make him feel like he had a sharp blade buried deep in his stomach.
“Craig, wait.”
Well, that pretty much figured. For months he had been trying to wait Skyler out. Had been silently praying that somehow, just once, Skyler would reach out to him. And now it was happening, and Craig couldn’t even be happy about that. What a fucking cosmic joke.
Craig stopped and turned, just a little, twisting his body to look over his shoulder, and then he kept going. Skyler wouldn’t follow him, he was sure of it. But he heard footsteps behind him, fast, pattering ones, and felt a hand on his shoulder.
He’d been wrong. Skyler had followed. Was Skyler that set on getting what he wanted that he would dare to do this even after he’d been caught cheating? It seemed like it. His anger flared hotter inside of himself, a slow, but searing, burn. His temper was hard to rouse, but when it was, Craig had been told he was terrifying.
“It’s not what you think,” Skyler panted, his face flushed. He’d run to catch up to Craig, that much was obvious, but that didn’t soften Craig’s rage at all. He kept his face carefully impassive, but inside, he was a roiling mess of unpleasant emotions.
“Huh. Cause it looked an awful lot like you had someone’s tongue shoved in your mouth. Are you trying to deny what I saw?” Craig asked, and it was even nice to hear how calm and reasonable his voice came out. No one who looked at him, he was pretty sure, would be able to tell just how furious he was.
“No, I don’t, but …”
Craig shook his head and stepped away from Skyler, turning his back on him without the slightest hesitation. This whole time, he thought bitterly, this man that Craig had fallen in love with had been lying to him. Or that was how it felt, anyway. It seemed pretty clear that Skyler had never fallen back in love with him. Or that when Skyler said he was in love, it meant something different, something less all-encompassing, than what it meant when Craig said it.
In short, it was never going to work out. It should never have happened in the first place. Hadn’t Craig known that, deep down, when he realized that Skyler was never going to be willing to give as much to the relationship as Craig did? From the beginning, they were doomed.
“We’re done here. We’ve been done for a long time,” Craig said, and it was even easier to keep his voice calm and steady when he didn’t have to look down into Skyler’s lovely, strange green eyes. “It’s over, Skyler. I don’t know why you’re bothering to run after me, but you’re wasting your time. I know what I saw, and I know what I need. And, let’s just be honest here, you’re not it.”
There was a long silence, and Craig found himself holding his breath to hear whatever Skyler had to say. He would even listen, he decided, although his mind had been made up. Skyler had always had a way of getting around that, something that he probably didn’t even realize that he was doing.
“I guess that you’re right. Itisover,” Skyler agreed, and then, even faster than they had approached him, those steps retreated away. He was probably pretty contrary for it, but he couldn’t help but be disappointed that his worst fears had been realized.
