My cell pinged with a message from Guy, the man I’d been dating for the last month since the school year had started. He was the chemistry teacher in the school, and he’d used a cheesy pick-up line that had made me laugh, so when he’d asked me out, I figured I had nothing to lose.
Guy: Missed you this weekend.
I grinned down at the message and typed one out.
Skylar: Missed you too. Meet you for lunch in the teachers’ lounge?
Guy: It’s a date.
“Hey, Skylar? I’m ready to go and fully clothed,” Carter called from outside my bedroom. I jumped on the spot and locked my cell on impulse.
“I’m coming!” I shouted, checking in the mirror one last time. My face had minimal makeup and my shoulder-length black hair was straight, but it wasn’t what I was looking at. It was the tattoos on my back and shoulders I made sure were covered up. People had an opinion of me from who my mother was and the way I acted, but they’d never know my love of ink. I’d noticed some ink on Carter’s chest too—no, stop it, don’t think about it.
I shook my head, trying to eject the image of Carter out of my brain, and pulled a smile on my face as I opened my bedroom door. Carter wasn’t there, but I could hear him murmuring to someone in the living room, and when I walked in, I saw him talking on his cell.
“Yeah, Mom, I’m fine.” He turned and stared at me, his gaze tracking over my pale pink blouse and down to my knee-length skirt I was wearing. His eyes flared, and I hated how much it drew me in. “Skylar is fine too,” he said, his voice deeper this time. I was sure there was another meaning behind his words, but I ignored it as I grabbed my bag full of assignments and my laptop off the sofa.
“Tell your mom we’re leaving for school,” I told Carter, to which he repeated me, and I headed to the front door. I’d just gotten it open when his footsteps came closer and his hand wrapped around my wrist.
“I can get that for you,” he said, his voice low.
“I got it,” I told him. And I did have it. I was used to lugging this bag to and from school every day. “Lock the door behind you, I got you a key made yesterday, it’s on the shoe rack.” I stepped away from him, feeling his hand trail off my wrist, and walked to my car. My trunk opened automatically when I waved my foot near the exhaust, and I placed my bag inside it.
“Well, shit, that’s fuckin' modern.”
“Language,” I automatically said. It wasn’t that I wasn’t used to hearing it, because I was. I was around a bunch of teenagers all day, but that didn’t mean it was part of my vocabulary. There were much better words than fuck, unless you stubbed your toe, which in that case, was more than acceptable.
“Damn.” Carter leaned against the side of my car, his arms crossed over his chest. “You one of them people, Aunt Skylar?” I flared my nostrils at the way he said my name. My skin felt icky with the tone he’d used and the fact I’d seen him naked not long ago. Dammit, I was thinking about it again.
“One of what people?” I asked, opening my door and sliding inside the car.
He didn’t answer me as he got in too, not until I’d pulled out of the driveway and was on the ride to school. “The goody-two-shoes kind.” I shrugged, not committing to any answer. If I said no, he wouldn’t believe me, and if I said yes, I’d be setting myself up for failure because that wasn’t who I was.
“Just because I don’t use fuck and shit for every second word I say, doesn’t mean I’m opposed to cursing. But it has a time and a place, Carter.” My hands gripped the steering wheel tighter as I took a corner, my heart hammering as I did. There was a reason I had such a small car, because I hated driving. Someone beeped from behind me, and I gritted my teeth. I was going the speed limit, and just because I wasn’t going to be late, didn’t mean I had to go over it.
I kept my gaze fixated to the road and flinched as the car overtook me and beeped his horn again.
“You okay there, Skylar?” Carter asked, but I couldn’t look at him. I was meant to be the adult here. I was meant to be the one keeping him safe, when I couldn’t even do the ten-minute drive to school without breaking a nervous sweat.
“I’m fine,” I gritted out, finally pulling into the school parking lot. I drove toward the back and to the section just for teachers, and blew out a breath when I turned the engine off. Maybe I was just extra nervous because things had been so...weird the last couple of days. I was a woman who liked her routine, I had been since I was a kid, and now, even at the age of twenty-eight, I still liked to schedule my days out down to the last minute.
“Can’t believe I’ve gotta go to school,” Carter huffed out, and I finally looked over at him.
“When was the last time you went?”
He shrugged and opened his door. “Maybe when I was in tenth grade. I dunno, Sky. School don’t mean shit to me.”
I followed him out of the car and toward my trunk, but he was already retrieving my bag and closing the trunk by the time I got there. I clicked my fob and the lights flashed as the car locked.
“School can take you places,” I told him, walking side by side with him toward the main entrance. The glass doors were shiny, but would no doubt be marked with a thousand handprints by the end of the day.
“Yeah?” Carter laughed as I pulled open the doors. “Not where I live. Where I live, all that matters is street smarts.”
I stared at him as he walked past me, and frowned. I hated the fact that not everyone got the same opportunities. We lived in the same world, and yet, we were all separated by circumstances. I could have just as easily lived in the rough area Jenifer and Carter lived in, but I was lucky. I was lucky because the mother I had came from money, which meant I had never wanted for anything.
Well...anything but attention from her.
I’d always wondered if I would have preferred to have no money but a loving mother like Jenifer had. I guess I’d never know.