Chapter 10 Sol
I’m having a heart attack. There’s no other explanation for the terror-fuelled gallop of my pulse as Jack falls into a sudden and heavy sleep, slack in my arms as if he’s been struck down by the gods.
Except, I’m not worried it’s something more serious.
I know the difference between TBI-induced narcolepsy and a neuro-storm.
No. I’m worried about how he’ll look at me when he wakes up. How he’ll feel about me. And if anything between us will ever be the same.
I have cum on me.
On the hand still wrapped around Jack’s big dick. On my belly. On his. I scan the darkened room for a discarded shirt, underwear—anything to clean us up so I don’t have to leave him yet. But this is Jack’s room. There’s no clutter or mess to save me.
You have to let him go.
He’s out cold, still trembling from a release I felt in every cell of my own body.
I ease a pillow under his head and shift away from him, reclaiming the leg I’ve curled around him.
He makes a soft moan of protest. Like he always does. But with sticky hands and a death rattle in my ribs, I need a minute.
I slip out of bed and stagger to the bathroom on clumsy feet, unbalanced by the throb in my cock. By the desperate need thrumming in my blood, hazing me with a wave of dizziness that should be enough to send me to my knees. Or into the shower to get some relief.
But I don’t hide in the shower and bring myself off. I wash my hands in the sink wondering how much it would hurt to slice my dick clean off and yeet it into hell and daring myself to do it. A task that doesn’t keep me from Jack for long.
I check his meds are stocked where I can get to them fast and ditch my phone on the landing. Then I creep back into his room and slide into his bed as if this is a normal night and I didn’t just watch him come by my hand.
As if he didn’t ask me to.
Jack’s bed is cosy with the heat of him, and he’s exactly where I left him.
Boneless on the pillow, covers pulled to his chest, shoulders bare to the night.
But he reaches for me as I stretch out beside him—a habit older than all of this—and finds my throat of all things, and splays his palm there.
No pressure. Only warmth. And for a precious moment, a reckless one, I let myself pretend.
Let my dreams run free, and imagine this is what we do.
Fall into his bed after wild, messy sex, too drunk on each other to think straight.
That his hand on my neck is a deliberate, tangible choice, because he wants me.
I imagine arching into that grip on my throat, while he rumbles the things he said tonight because he wants to, not because he’s scared.
I imagine waking up tangled together and not having to pretend what happened before we fell asleep might destroy us.
Stupid thoughts.
Dangerous.
Fantasies that’ll eat me alive if I let them.
But Jack’s so solid and warm beside me, his hand on my throat so sure, that I let myself have these stolen moments before reality kicks me in the gut.
Before I remember that tomorrow he might hate me.
I let myself believe he’s touching me because he chose to.
That maybe, somewhere in the fragments of his broken memory and all that he’s lost… he remembers this.
He remembers us.
I think I won’t sleep, but eventually, I do. And I sleep as hard as Jack does, blinking awake sometime later with dismantling dread in my lungs.
Jack’s still asleep. Still holding my throat. And gods, I like it. I love it. And it scares me enough I go back to sleep to evade it.
I’m alone in Jack’s bed when I wake up again and I can’t recall a time that’s ever happened before—not in this life. Because you’re only supposed to stay with him when he’s not well. I’m not supposed to put my hands on his dick then sleep through him waking up to what we did last night—
No.
Panic tears me apart, loud and urgent, rolling me from the bed and out of the room before I’ve found my footing.
I stumble into the hallway, Jack’s name on my lips.
But I hear him before I can let it fly, and my feet carry me to the living room on instinct more than a conscious decision.
To where Jack and Mal are bent over the chessboard, Jack’s broad shoulders obscuring his face, a shaft of hazy winter light limning Mal’s.
Eyes red.
Jaw too tight.
Hands trembling as he reaches for a pawn.
Damn. I catch myself in the doorway, shoving the anxiety clawing at me back where it came from.
And, familiar with Mal’s brand of combat-induced PTSD, I retreat as if I was never there at all.
I love Mally like he’s my own brother, but he’s not, and when he’s like this, he needs the real deal.
He needs Jack, more than he even needs Skylar, more than I need Jack, and maybe even more than I need a decent cup of coffee.
It’s a lot of need to consider.
I retrace my steps and retrieve my phone, wincing at the time.
I used to be a sod for oversleeping. Then Jack got hurt and I stopped sleeping much at all.
But whatever I did in Jack’s bed last night, it’s made me late and I barely have time for a shower before I have to leave Mal and Jack to their ghosts to run a breakfast pop-up with Oscar to clear our excess mackerel stock and put some cash back in the business.
And flipping heck, it’s cold this morning.
At sea, I don’t notice it so much. On land, the wind has me pulling my t-shirt over my face as I exit the Joker and jog to where Oscar—who’s never late to anything ever—is already set up and grilling fish on a barbecue made from oil drums we pulled from the ocean.
A queue builds in front of him, threading along the sea wall.
I’m not convinced it’s entirely for the fish sandwiches we make with mackerel fillets, pickled onions, and Oscar’s homemade horseradish sauce.
Or even the bacon-laced Sirona special Jack prefers.
Oscar’s so handsome it hurts to look at him, and I’d be in all kinds of trouble if I didn’t yearn for Jack with every breath I take.
“Sorry.” I weave around a couple of locals and take my place at the grill, leaving the peopling to him. “Overslept.”
Oscar side-eyes me with his cinnamon gaze. “Something happened with Jack?”
“Jack’s fine.”
I think. I hope. I pray to any god listening.
“Is not what I asked, my friend.” Oscar releases me from his snare to handle a transaction. Five quid a pop on these breakfast rolls. Tell me again why I spend so much time getting clobbered for peanuts when I could be doing this with some other mug’s catch?
Because you’re a sea-rotted fool.
Or something. I don’t mind cooking, though.
Even with the wind playing havoc with the flames.
It keeps me occupied for an hour or so before the rush dies down and I make breakfast for my people.
Oscar. Mal. Jack. Not Skylar, he was gone before I woke up.
And not myself. I forget until Oscar slaps another fillet on the grill.
“You are okay, Sol?”
“Yeah, just need my coffee, eh?”
I need more than coffee. Regardless, I don’t get the chance for anything before the rush picks up again, leaving the foil wrapped parcels for Jack and Mal to haunt me until we sell out and it’s time to shut up shop.
“Take these inside.” Oscar thrusts the parcels at me. “I will close down.”
“You already opened. Go home.” I claim the parcels. “I’ll text Mal to come and get these.”
“You do not have your phone.”
“How’d you know that?” I pat my pockets, and sure enough, they’re empty. Didn’t even bring keys, though none of that negates the fact that whatever mood Mal’s in, he’s unlikely to read any texts that aren’t from Skylar.
I fire a rare glare at Oscar. “What else have I forgotten?”
“Clothes.”
“I’m dressed.” It’s a sad fact that I have to glance down to be sure. But even if the threadbare tee I dragged on over my oldest jeans technically constitute clothes, can’t deny I’m cold to the bone now the barbecue has simmered down. No coat. No hat. Gods, where was my head this morning?
As if I don’t know.
As if Oscar doesn’t somehow know.
He shakes his head and peels off the thick sweatshirt he’s wearing.
Like him, it’s massive. But it’s warm with his body heat and it smells good, musky and masculine.
So I take it and pull it on, instantly comforted by the next best thing to a patented Kuznatov cuddle. “Thanks. I’ll drop it off later.”
“Sol, I am not going anywhere.”
Neither am I today, metaphorically or otherwise, and irrational annoyance flares in my veins, merging with the dread I woke up with. A scratchy, flayed feeling that won’t quit until I look Jack in the eye and know nothing between us has changed.
Except it has.
Of course it has.
And that’s the reality that keeps those cold flashes searing my lungs.
We’ve lost whole eras of our lives already.
Relearned each other like the rocks after an obliterating storm.
I don’t know if I have it in me for another seismic shift.
Another turn of the tide. I don’t know if I’ll survive losing him all over again.
But I can’t pretend last night didn’t happen.
Can’t pretend guiding him through something so vulnerable and intimate won’t ricochet even if it’s so subtle we can’t define it.
Whatever this is, it’s not going to fit the shape of us, old or new, and I don’t know where that leaves us.
Where that leaves me, beyond dismantling the pop-up while I send Oscar inside with Jack and Mal’s breakfast, still un-caffeinated and cold, despite Oscar’s best efforts to warm me up.
It’s how I know the chill in my bones has nothing to do with the mean gale blowing in from the water. How I know it’s fear-fuelled and coming from inside, and by every sea god my nan ever warned me about, it’s been a while since I felt this unhinged and frantic over fate.
What did you think was going to happen?