Losing Her Wings

Chapter 42

Ryan didn’t need to be told who had invited Niles to the fundraiser at the last minute, it just stank of Pepper’s interference. It seemed that she was just as against him having a relationship with Skylar as Devin was, despite her protests that she just wanted to see her new best friend happy, no matter who she found that happiness with. It was a load of trash as far as he was concerned and he had it pretty much figured out by the time he got back to campus. All Pepper and Devin wanted was for the world to turn to the beat of their drum, as long as they got their own way then life was just hunky dory. But in order for them to get everything in life they wanted it to be, they had make everyone else’s life’s suck so they could be the heroes and save them from their loving, exciting lives. Just because theirs were loveless, boring and overrated didn’t mean that everyone else’s was the same. Before his big brother had started interfering with his life, he had Skylar but as soon as he got in the middle, he couldn’t even give her the gift he had helped him buy her without feeling like he was trying to push her into a relationship she wasn’t ready for.

He had been through so much with her, because of her that he couldn’t help but there was nothing he could do, he loved her he couldn’t just turn his back on her because she was confusing and frustrating. Ryan figured that the only was to make things better was have a little ‘chat’ with Niles about weaselling in on his girlfriend and make sure he backed off. Then he needed need a plan, something more secure than the one he had formulated before, thinking that by being around her all the time she wouldn’t be able to deny what was between them. Now, he was thinking about that old adage ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’. If he could make that work for him then there was no excuse she could use to get out of it, she would have to admit to what was going on between them. He was getting fed up of her changing her mind as to whether she could be with him or not…so she had a good reason to think they couldn’t be together, he didn’t think her worries that one of them would get hurt were nothing but an overreaction…he was just getting frustrated at having to keep reminding her that he knew she would have to leave at some point but that he would deal with it when the time came. All he wanted was to be with her until then.

But Skylar could think again if she thought that he was just going to give up on her and let her walk off without him. He wasn’t ever going to let her go…Ryan had already promised himself that he’d love her the rest of his life, he wasn’t about to let her go anywhere without a fight, even if it meant he went with her. The secrets were getting to be too much but he didn’t want to go sneaking behind her back to investigate them and find out the truth. It was an invasion of her privacy but if she didn’t tell him the truth then there wasn’t much else he could do other than find it out for himself, he needed to know what she was dealing with, what her work with and what her big secret was that told her that she was going to hurt him. He couldn’t be with her without knowing those things. He couldn’t be in a relationship with secrets hanging over their heads and getting between them as they were already proving to be. If they couldn’t be honest with each other then there was no trust and a relationship without trust would mean that it wasn’t any better than his past relationships with women. Even his relationship with Devin and Pepper was being affected by Skylar’s secrets, mostly because they couldn’t keep their nose out of other people’s business. They had to interfere. They couldn’t just live their own lives without butting into other people’s and it was the cause of all his problems.

Ryan knew that if he could only get a firm grip on Skylar, long enough to talk to her as sternly as possible, then maybe he could convince her to follow her feelings and her heart and let them be together. But she could forget about all the time he was giving her. There would be no more laying down and just taking her crap, he was fighting back just like he had when he first met her. He had given her tough love to keep her at arms length, now he was going to do the same to keep her in his arms. She wasn’t going to escape him now, he had her in his sights he just had to figure out a solid plan of keeping her there and making sure she knew just what the consequences were if she rejected him again. He could only take so much and one more snide remark, one more denial of what they felt for each other and he might just strangle the life out of her. At some point she was going to have to accept that he wasn’t going anywhere and he was never going to leave her alone, not if she ran or hid from him, not if she screamed at him that she didn’t love him anymore. Nothing would make him give up on her. He would hound her until the day she died or until she admitted that she loved him and wanted to be with him. Whatever came first.