Chapter 10 Sol #2
That beauty swamps me as Oscar comes back and hits me with more intuitive concern. “You paid me too much last week.”
“Did I?”
“Taip, Sol. You did.”
Taip. Yes. About all the Lithuanian I know. But I can’t have this conversation with Oscar. Not again. I overpay him because I live in fear of the day I can’t pay him at all, and I’m already afraid of too many things today.
Lucky for me, though Oscar’s immovable when he wants to be, he’s not one for pointless arguments. At my silence, he shakes his head, and we stow our pop-up pitch for another day. Then he leaves me with his jumper before he goes home to get some sleep before we sail out tonight on another crab run.
I should do the same.
But I don’t love daylight naps. Not lonely ones, anyway.
I’ve seen Mal wake up wrong from enough of them to put me off for life.
And so I don’t go inside. I go to the Sirona instead and check we have enough fuel for the run.
Enough snacks onboard for Oscar. Enough beer to make being away from home less painful for me.
I don’t check the engine block. Not at first, anyway. I skim the belts, the coolant lines and pretend I don’t feel the pull towards the ever-expanding hairline crack with my stomach eating itself alive. But with Oscar onboard tonight, I can’t avoid it forever, and…
There it is.
Spidering wide enough that I won’t be able to hide it much longer.
I run my thumb over the sealant I slapped on a few days ago.
It’s holding—it’ll hold tonight, but it’s still borrowed time on a broken clock, and stress upon stress stacks on top of me.
I have so much to worry about that I wind up feeling not much at all, and I hate that.
My soul is singing the wrong song and it makes my heart ache, and makes me long for Jack enough to consider going inside and facing the music.
But I feel him before I make the decision to seek him out, everywhere from the tips of my cold toes to my tingling scalp. Feel him in the skip in my pulse and the zip in my blood, and in the frigid knot of doom unspooling in my gut.
Yet still I turn to face him.
Still let my gaze search every inch of land around me until I see him on the garden steps looking for me, like he always does if I’m gone too long.
I wonder if he knows how many times I’ve looked for him in dark swells and stormy skies.
How many times I’ve prayed to Mother Nature for any sign that my best friend is still alive.
I wonder if he knows how much his trust last night meant to me.
Jack finds me on the Sirona. He locks in as a tenacious ray of winter sun breaks through the heavy cloud. And gods, he’s so gorgeous with his earnest gaze and strict stance I’d sacrifice every limb for another few seconds to soak him up. A longer reprieve before the sky falls in.
Smile, Jackie. I love you.
For a split second, I think he might. Then the clatter of motorbike engines shatters the moment. Shatters everything as Porth Luck turns as one to face the violent sound that used to define this town as much as the seafarers, shanties, and cider.
Bikers.
The Rebel Kings are here.
And they’re here en mass. A horde descends, a dozen or more, and though I’m not an expert on Harleys, there’s one I’ll recognise till the day I die.
The lead rider rumbles to a stop and lifts his visor.
He glances around and I know the second I see his hard gaze and familiar features that he’s looking for me.
And let me tell you, despite losing my dude virginity to this man fifteen years ago, and even though he remains almost demonically attractive, nothing about Cam O’Brian gets my motor running.
Sometimes I wonder if he ever did.
Either way, I suppress a sigh and jump from the Sirona to meet him as he strides down the jetty like he owns it.
We meet halfway.
He pulls me in for a fraternal hug, and he’s the kind of man who leans in. But I know him well enough to gauge this isn’t a friendly visit—even if we are friends—and Cam O’Brian doesn’t mess about. “We had our copper nicked from down the road last night. The Porth Ewan site too.”
Building sites. The lifeguard base on the beach right here in Porth Luck, and the lifeboat station in the next town over.
The Rebel Kings are regenerating both at barely more than cost, and it’s such a Cam thing to do.
But there’s another side to him. There has to be, or he’d be as dead as his gangster father. And…I know where this is going.
“Was it my dad?”
Cam nods, grim and dark. “Bold as brass. How can someone so fucking stupid be such a sneaky cunt?”
I have no idea. The Kings run a tight ship around any site they’re connected to.
And they don’t take incursions on their turf lightly.
It’s the most twisted thing to know the innocence I gave Cam all those years ago is the only thing between my dad and the hiding he deserves.
Almost as twisted as wishing he’d just die.
My dad, not Cam.
You don’t want that.
Jack’s voice rescues me. And I wish he was here, at my side, a buffer between me and the kindness I know Cam is about to offer me. Kindness cloaked in a warning of all the things I know he’ll never do to my dad because of his affection for me.
“Is something going on with your old man?”
I retune to the present. To the hulking figure shrouded in smoke and leather and the shrewd gaze of a leader. Cam makes an impatient sound. As ever, I’m playing fast and loose with someone else’s time.
“I’m sorry,” I say, with what’s left of my whole heart. “I knew Dav was off the rails again, but I didn’t realise he was desperate enough to do something this tapped.”
“Is it tapped, though?” Cam tilts his head in a way that’s unfamiliar to me, reminding me how many years have passed since I really knew him. “He knows I’m not going to hurt you, which means he knows I won’t hurt him.”
“Maybe you should hurt him.” The words tumble out of me, unchecked and I’m so horrified I choke on them.
Cam rotates a little, angling his shoulders so no one can see his features soften as he almost echoes Jack. “You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t I?”
“Fuck, no.”
He’s right. I don’t. But I’m so sick of things I can’t control ruining my life that I can’t contain my frustration. I want to scream at the moon and break things. I want my dad to bleed so I don’t have to. I want Jack to remember—
“Listen.” Cam moves closer to me. “Whatever you say, I’m not sending anyone I don’t trust after your dad.
I told him last time he crossed my table that I’d kill him myself if he fucked up again, and I’m not going to do that either.
But it can’t look that way to anyone else, or I’ll have a hundred versions of your old man trying to fuck with us, and I haven’t got room for that. Not anymore.”
I dissect what he’s saying. Match it with the Rebel King history of gang wars and violence and the battle they’ve fought to leave it all behind.
It can’t get out that Dav Bosanko robbed them and got away with it.
I know that. I know it. But gods, I wish it wasn’t something I gave a toss about. “What are you going to do?”
Cam lights a cigarette, and this I do recognise; the way he blows smoke to the sky like Jack used to. It’s where their similarities end, and yet…Yeah. Maybe it’s not so hard to see why I went there.
“I’m going to give your old man some time,” Cam says. “To make this right. Couple of days. Then we need to have another conversation.”
“About what?”
“About what you want me to do.”
I laugh, can’t help it. “Since when has that mattered?”
“Jesus fuck, it’s always fucking mattered.
” Cam’s Irish brogue deepens, like Jack and Mal’s Killinchy lilt when they get riled up.
“But we have to figure out how much good your kind heart is doing you, brother. How many times are you going to do this with your old man before it gets you killed? Cos let me tell you, if he’s fucking up enough to be robbing off us, he’s gonna have stumps with arseholes far bigger than me. ”
I know that too, history too consistent and tragic to ignore.
It’s why the old cottage my grandparents lived in had three gas leaks one summer.
Why my dad’s boat got scuttled so many times he quit going to sea at all.
And why Cam O’Brian’s friendship is the only reason I’ve lived long enough to make such a mess of things with Jack.
“How much does Dav need to make it right with you?”
Cam gives me a hard look. “I’m not telling you that.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not taking a penny from your hand. And you’re not playing messenger either. We’ll find Dav and tell him how things are. But think about what I said, yeah? About what you really want. I’m never going to lay a hand on your old man, but there are other ways to solve problems like this.”
A shudder passes through me. Cam’s not a bad man, but he is dangerous. Always has been. I don’t want to think too hard about what he means. I can’t think too hard about it. Or I might cave and agree to something that makes me someone else.
Maybe you should hurt him.
Horror wrenches my soul. Did I say that? What’s happening to me?
There isn’t much left to say. Cam tips me a nod and for a second, I think he might embrace me again. But something behind me stays him, and his lips twitch as if he’s fighting a smile.
He says his goodbyes and strides back to his bike. Roars away, taking his cohort of street soldiers with him, and only then do I see what might’ve stopped him hugging me again.
Jack.
Shirtless, beautiful, and restrained until Mal lets him go and he steams forward a few steps. Then stops and skewers me with a gaze that has nothing to do with what happened last night and everything to do with the same nonsense that’s followed me around my whole life.
He shakes his head.
Then he turns and goes back inside, leaving me to deal with Mal’s flat stare, which isn’t much better than Jack’s quiet dismay, and real fear I’m losing the version of myself my people actually like joins the disgust I already feel.
Maybe you should hurt him.
The callous words echo coldly in my head.
I turn away from them and Mal, and trudge back to the Sirona. Start her up and set sail.
I’m at sea with nothing but ocean around me before I know what I’m doing. Alone in the choppy swells.
Disoriented, I kill the engine and the boat rocks, settling into the grey drink, bracing for what I’m about to do.
Clever girl. I don’t care what anyone says, boats are like horses.
They feel you. They are you. They protect you when they can, and I’m sick to my stomach as I tear into the Sirona.
Hatches up. Rope stores kicked over. Lockers clattered open.
Breathing too fast and shallow and making an ungodly mess I’ll have to clear up before Oscar sets foot on her later.
I don’t even know what I’m looking for. Just something—anything—to plug the hole in my heart I punched open with Cam.
Maybe you should hurt him.
Spanners clang, metal on metal. Hooks and screws raining down on me. Parts come loose, but it’s not enough. They’re not enough, and maybe I’m not either.
For my mum.
For Sev.
For Jack.
I pause for breath, running a hand through my windblown hair. My fingers snag in the tangled mess and it feels symbolic, as if it’s me snarled up in the knots and the only way through it is to shave it off. To raze my life to the ground—
Damn, my armour is paper-thin. I need a book and an armchair by a fireplace, Jack’s head in my lap as I—
Stop.
“Come on, come on,” I murmur. “Give me something.”
My gaze darts around again, taking in the carnage I’ve left myself to fix. All the things that are worth enough, but I can’t strip without compromising the safety of the boat.
All the things that aren’t.
The battery locker catches my eye. Tucked beneath a bench, out of sight, out of mind.
I squat in front of it, hands trembling like it’s a box of grenades.
And it’s no joke. The spare lithium battery I can get a pretty penny for is back-up for every system on the boat—motors, navigation, radios.
Systems that fail as often as they don’t.
Removing it is madness, especially in winter when the cold eats away at the primary battery, but I’m too dumb to see another way.
I’m so tired.
I flip the locker latch. Wrestle the terminal bolts, cringing as they scream in protest, a sure sign from the heart of the Sirona I’m amputating something meant to stay put. “Sorry, girl. I’ll make it right, I swear.”
An empty promise. Even the seagulls know it. My body knows it as cold sweat drips down my neck and rattled goosebumps prickle my skin.
The battery comes loose.
I pry it free and sit it at my feet like a brick of shame while I cover the toothless gap left behind. It won’t fool Oscar forever, but as long as I do the power audits for however long it takes me to raise the cash to buy another battery—
The Sirona pitches hard, caught by a rough swell. It hides the tremor in my legs as I lift the battery and haul it above deck, but I’m distracted enough that I whack my shoulder on a bulkhead, a sharp impact that sends eye-stinging heat flooding down my arm.
I grind my teeth. Damn, that hurts. Throbs, actually, with stupidity and regret, but here we are.
I stow the battery where it won’t polish off my day by rolling overboard and take the wheel as the horizon darkens with more bad weather, clouds a mottled bruise in the sky, wind rising, the chop as unforgiving as I wish I could be.
Rolling with it, I point the Sirona north, away from Porth Luck. Away from Oscar’s sharp eyes, and away from Jack. From Mal. From Skylar when he comes home from work at dinner time.
Tell them, the rational part of my brain urges.
Let them help, or at least have your back while you fix this yourself.
But I’ve let my friends help me before, and it doesn’t come free—not for them.
They end up bleeding. From Jack paying my dad’s debts to Mal chasing a petrol bomb across Skylar’s bedroom floor, and I’m not letting them burn because of me ever again.
Setting my jaw, I shove the throttle forward. The Sirona surges into the gloom, towards a harbour where no one knows Oscar, where I can sell the battery before he knows I’m gone.
I yearn to be home.
But I don’t look back.