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I stride across the tarmac, the roar of the jet engines a backdrop to the turmoil swirling inside me. The sleek silhouette of Austin's private plane looms ahead. I can do this. I can get there without acknowledging him, without giving in.
"Skylar, wait," he says, his voice carrying over the noise. I don't slow down. This is a journey I need to take alone, a final goodbye to a man who never truly saw me.
"Please." There's an edge of desperation in Theo's plea, but it doesn’t sway me. It can't. Not when every step toward that plane takes me closer to a past I'd rather forget.
"Damn it, Theo," I snap without turning, "you're not coming with me."
But he's persistent, has always been, ever since we were kids and sneaking around corners of my father's estate. Maybe that’s why it hurt so much that he never fought for me. He just let them tear us apart.
He catches up, falls into step beside me, his gait easy even as my own is rigid with tension.
"Skylar," he says again, his hand brushing against mine, and I jerk away, my skin tingling from the brief contact.
"Stop," I hiss, hating the way my defenses crumble with just a touch. "You shouldn't have followed me."
"Can't let you go alone," he replies, green eyes piercing through the defenses I've tried to maintain. "Not when you're hurting like this."
"Like you know anything about how I feel," I retort, glaring at him now.
"Maybe not," he says, quiet but firm. "But I’m not leaving."
I turn away, stepping onto the plane without another word. The cabin is silent save for the hum of the engines.
"Miss Deveraux, Mr. Shepherd," the flight attendant greets us, revealing nothing of her thoughts on the tension that must surely be palpable between us.
"Thank you," I murmur, making my way to the leather seats, sinking into one as far away from Theo as possible.
He joins me anyway, taking the seat opposite, his gaze never leaving my face. "You know I'm here for you, Skylar. Whenever you're ready."
"Ready?" I scoff, meeting his intense stare. "I'll never be ready to walk back into that world. Your world."
"Then let me help carry the burden. Just a little."
I let out a bitter laugh. "You can’t. Not this."
"Your father—" he starts, but I cut him off with a sharp gesture.
"Was no father to me. And you know it."
He doesn’t argue. He knows better. The silence between us is thick with everything we’ve been—everything we used to be. I close my eyes, willing the memories away, but they don’t budge. They never do.
"Skylark," Theo whispers, his voice steady despite the roar of the jet picking up speed. "I know I’ve let you down before. But not this time. I’m here, whether you want me to be or not."
The funeral is a spectacle.
Not in the way funerals should be—quiet, somber, respectful—but in the way that only the absurdly wealthy can make grief feel like a performance. The cathedral itself is beautiful, if unexpected. My father was hardly a religious man and I know my stepmother has never set foot in a church—if she had, she would surely have burst into blasphemous flames.
But they’ve taken the natural beauty of this building and turned it into something else entirely. The air is thick with perfume and hushed gossip, the kind of whispered condolences that sound more like stock phrases than genuine sentiments. White roses spill over every surface, their cloying scent clashing with the gleaming gold accents and the polished marble beneath my heels.
It’s excessive. It’s theatrical. It’s exactly the kind of show my stepmother would orchestrate.
I step through the towering double doors, my heels clicking against marble so polished it could be a mirror. Conversations hush, whispers slither through the air, and a chill settles over the room that has nothing to do with the temperature.
Despite the fact that it's my father on display at the front of the cavernous room, my arrival was clearly unexpected.
At the front of the room, a woman stands draped in couture black, diamonds glittering at her throat, grief painted on like the rest of her makeup. Trista. My darling stepmother.
She clearly wasn’t expecting me. I see it in the way her posture stiffens when I step inside, the slight widening of her perfectly lined eyes before she smooths it all away beneath a practiced mask of grief.