Losing Her Wings

Chapter 44

Ryan had spent the night with Skylar, happily, glad to be able to be close to her again without having to give her the ultimatum that would take the real decisions out of her hands. He needed her to make the choice by herself and so he was happy to stay with her until late afternoon, taking her out for breakfast and then along to a little local art display in the village square. It wasn’t fancy like the fundraiser, it was just some local artists who were looking to display their work and sell to an appreciative audience. It was nice for them just to wander through the gardens of the village square, holding hands and being a real couple for once, he even bought her the chance to sit with a tarot reader in an old gypsy caravan who told her that her life held great adventures. Skylar was a little disheartened by it all, particularly the reading that she had already met or was already with the love of her life, who she would be with forever and how they would start a family in ‘the near future’. She just couldn’t believe it even though she did have a strong belief in the supernatural and psychic worlds, but when she knew what she did about the world and her life…her fate and her time with Ryan, how could she believe that she would get to be with him forever and have children with him?

But the way she had passed it off made Ryan ask what the woman had said, smiling at their future together only to get curious about the note of disbelief that came to her voice when she explained the mention of Zeke. “She said that he would shape my future and that my past with him has made me a stronger person. Something about how my life has been improved by him.” Skylar sighed, angry at the reading about Zeke when it was complete tosh, especially how it was the entire reason that she couldn’t live out her supposed future with Ryan all because of her stupid past with her ex. But he managed to cheer her up for a while, at least enough for them to spend the rest of the day together until his first class around three. It was his only lecture that day, and only an hour long but he admitted to Skylar that he wanted to go to the library afterwards for about an hour, in order to research what was needed for his dissertation.

What he really planned to do, was do a little digging into Zeke’s and Skylar’s past. Something wasn’t gelling in his head and it needed to be sorted out so he could understand why she was so angry with her ex and why she couldn’t see a future for them together. But an hour later, half of him wished he hadn’t done it and the other half was glad he had. What he found out was difficult to understand until it all pulled together in his head and started to make some real sense. It hadn’t taken him long after putting in Skylar’s full name into the internet search engine before a couple of hundred hits came up, including a personal Facebook page that had the most surprising news. The picture on the profile page showed him that the Skylar he knew was the same as the one on the screen, when the news articles had no pictures to convince him that the two girls, the one he knew and the one in the article, were the same. Once he saw the ‘rest in peace’ notices and the comments on the page that expressed a sadness at her demise, he decided to go back to the news articles to figure out what the whole story was. He took a while to register the death even though he knew that the picture meant it was true. Skylar…his Skylar…had died almost a year ago.

The articles only confirmed the news. They stated that she had been killed by her boyfriend, Zeke. Which explained why she was so angry with him. Her death also perfectly explained her reluctance to start a relationship with him. The whole story wasn’t much different to the honest approach Skylar had taken that afternoon, admitting to how Zeke had died after the stress of what he’d done got too much for his brain and his tumour to handle. What she didn’t admit was that he had attacked her after he saw her talking to another guy outside a shop. When she got home to their apartment together, he had lashed out with a backhand across the face, followed by a fight between them. Skylar had fought back, the poor thing, creating such a mess of their apartment that when the police arrived, they thought the place had been burgled. But once he had caught her waist to stop her from running off, she had fallen over and Zeke had pinned her down and strangled her. The coroner was quoted in one of the articles as saying that she had been strangled unconscious multiple times before being given a reprieve, which Zeke’s doctor had insisted was because he had panicked at seeing what he’d done only for Skylar to ‘probably wake up and provoke him again’. But Ryan got so mad at reading his statement, that it was Skylar’s fault, that he closed the window and sat at the desk, upset and holding his head in his hands. He couldn’t bear to know what she had been put through, only to die anyway, despite all her fighting back and the dedication she had put into getting her ex the help he needed.