Chapter 14 Sol #2
Arousal I can usually contain flares to life, the memory of his lips on my skin, his breath hot in my ear as he gripped my cock—
Stop.
I try, but I’m as weak now as I was this morning, and I lean into his touch, closing my eyes as his thumb shifts where he pins my wrist, ghosting over the pressure point, stirring a hoolie in my blood.
A storm that’s all gentle rain and soft waves, building and building and building, until there’s nothing gentle about it.
My eyes fly open.
Jack lets go of my wrist to slide that wicked hand along my jaw, and I’m so powerless to his oblivious possession of me.
I want it so much.
I want him.
I love him.
Jack threads his free arm around my waist, drawing us together. I think he might kiss me—I need him to kiss me. Until there’s nowhere for this decades-old anger inside me to run. Until it has to die and leave me whole again.
But Jack doesn’t kiss me. He leans in so close our noses brush. Then he speaks, and it’s almost the same. “What’s wrong?”
I shake my head, setting my jaw, keeping everything old and ugly inside. And I’m not subtle about it. The movement should dislodge his hand from my face. But even though he doesn’t tighten his grip, as his brow furrows deep, his hand remains, intense concentration lining his face.
He needs a straight answer.
But I can’t give him one and I loathe myself for it.
“Sol.” He tries again as I stare past him to the window and the moody wash of morning light hitting the pewter tankards too nice for the bar downstairs. “I need to know you’re okay. At least tell me that.”
“I’m okay, Jackie.” It sounds wooden, even to me. But Jack’s frustration is easier to take than unpicking decades of mess tied up in a man I wish I could hate. “I just…I have to sort some stuff out today. I’ll be better after, I promise.”
“I don’t need you to be better.”
“Well…” I force myself to look at him. To let him pin me with his gaze. “I’m gonna try anyway. No harm in that, eh?”
I reach for a smile.
It’s not there.
And Jack doesn’t smile either. He just stares and stares and stares until a horn honks from outside, and he exhales, riding out the impact of the sudden noise, staying present while I hawk-eye him for signs he might not. “I’m not fucking done with this.”
I swallow. Throat tight. Constricting. As if he’s my executioner, not my best friend in the world. “I know.”
Another beat passes. Maybe two. Hurt and bewilderment haze Jack’s eyes, but more commotion from outside breaks the spell and he drops his hand from my face to my shoulder, squeezing before he steps off. Before he’s gone, and the sudden space he leaves behind swallows me up.
I miss him.
And it’s more than losing his physical presence. More than the shadows on his brain. It’s the canyon I’ve put between us when fate has already taken so much. The trust I can’t give stretching with every minute I’m away from him, expanding to something so wide and cold I can’t bridge it.
Tell him.
About my dad.
About that night all those years ago that means all the firsts we’ve had these past few days aren’t firsts for me—for us both—at all.
I know I should.
I know I will.
Real intimacy needs truth.
But every path feels rigged right now, and even if Jack’s ready for it, I don’t know if I am.
He loves you.
And I love him. But I can’t stand beside Jack without everything else collapsing at my feet.
Without my life dragging him down, and I don’t know how to fix it.
I don’t know how to keep moving without purging some of this hurt from my body.
A thought that becomes literal so fast it catches me off guard.
I run for the bathroom and stumble to the sink, retching as my body joins the universe in telling me what a mess I’m making of every day and night I’ve spent on this earth.
Dramatic.
Sure.
But I never get sick and losing the instant noodles I ate on the boat turns me inside out.
I come upright slowly, rubbing my hollow stomach as I lean heavily on the sink, throat scraped raw.
That Skylar has done this to himself since he was barely older than I was the first time Jack’s mere presence set me alight—it guts me.
The Ankow feels too close for comfort, and I fight the urge to chase after Jack and fold myself into the strongest arms I’ve ever known.
No.
You can’t have that.
Not yet.
The sickness ebbs. I clean up and drag myself back to my bedroom. Throw on more clothes. Pocket my phone. Leave without saying goodbye, but my heart…it stays where it’s always been—with Jack. Whether I’m whole enough to earn him or not.
I take my junky old car and go looking for my dad. Betting shops. Pubs, Illegal fight clubs. The only place I don’t bother searching is the greyhound track because however low Dav’s sunk this time, I know he’ll off himself before he funds a dog race.
My search takes me all over northern Cornwall. It’s afternoon when the pawn shop in Jersey calls to say they’ve sold the latest stripped parts from the Sirona. Legal funds, but I feel like a crook as I roll through the bank and draw it all out.
I need it gone before I find Dav, but I don’t feel like talking to Cam again. So I call a different number instead and drive halfway to Devon to wait in a lay-by for River O’Brian.
Who doesn’t show.
Half an hour later, Saint Malone does instead.
He rolls up on a motorbike as old as the Sirona and flips his visor, clocking the crisp white envelope in my hand before I think to hide it.
Not that there’s much point trying to hide anything from Saint.
He’s always looked at me like he can see my DNA through my skin.
At least when he’s not being salty that I fucked Cam before he did.
Saint kills his engine. Sudden quiet descends on the dark country lane, deserted even by rural Cornwall’s standards, but I gave up being intimidated by Cam’s lethal wingman years ago.
I stand my ground, leaning against my car.
He stays on his bike and inclines his head at the envelope.
“For the copper my dad stole,” I say.
Saint just stares and uncharacteristic irritation lashes through me.
“That’s right, I’m going to pay it off so you can stop chasing him, okay? I know he deserves it, but my mum doesn’t.”
More silence.
Then Saint rolls off his bike and comes to stand a few feet away from me in the murky gloom, steam rising from the Harley behind him. He’s not as tall as Cam or Jack. As brawny or built. We’re about the same size, but he seems bigger as eyes a darker shade of green than Jack’s appraise me.
“Why did you thump him?” I try again. “Cam promised he wouldn’t.”
“Cam didn’t.”
“But you did?”
Saint doesn’t deny it. But it’s not an admission either. He doesn’t speak much. I’ve never known why. Just that his quiet nature is probably why he and Mal are friends.
“Here.” I thrust the cash-stuffed envelope at him. “It might not be enough, but I can get more.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why?”
More silence, but I can see Saint working up to say something, and so I wait.
“You keep paying, he doesn’t stop,” he says eventually.
“He’s not going to stop if I don’t. You’ll just kill him.”
“Will I?”
“Someone will,” I amend, and the visceral fear branding my heart is all the reassurance I need that the harsh words I had for Dav a few days ago were exactly that: words. “Tell me it was you who gave him that black eye, not someone worse. Saint, please. I need to know.”
I don’t mean to beg, but I’m not good at hiding my emotions, and all my current bandwidth is saved for Jack.
And Saint…it was years after he first appeared at Cam’s side before he’d even look at me.
But as drizzly sleet starts to fleck from the sky, I get the distinct impression he feels sorry for me.
Which I hate, but it’s not the worst thing I have to face today, so I’ll take it.
Saint claims the envelope from my outstretched hand. He flicks through the notes before stuffing it in his jacket pocket. “No more.”
“No more from me, or you’re not going to hit my dad again?”
“You choose.”
I laugh—can’t help it—and there’s zero humour in the rough bark falling out of me. “You have a map to that magical land of free will?”
Saint shrugs and it’s the most I’m going to get out of him. He’s the kind of man who walks away mid-conversation, but I beat him to it. I open my car door and slide behind the wheel, shutting him out with a rough slam.
After a beat, he goes back to his motorcycle and rides off with the money I need to fix the cracked engine block on the only real means I have to make a living.
You have the Joker.
Another laugh escapes me, but without Saint staring me down, it’s more fond than bitter.
I love that old pub, and not because it gives Jack a reason to get up in the morning when I’m not enough.
It’s the way those walls have always known me long before Dav unravelled our lives.
How the floorboards remember my grandad’s booming laugh and my dad’s easy grin with coins and cards in the back snug—a confidence I once mistook for luck.
Even the open space in front of the bar carries the soft recollection of Sev’s wobbly first steps, and those stitches in time, they bind me.
They are me.
And they make me a sentimental idiot. A notion underlined by the dry, mocking click of my car as I finally rouse myself to drive home.
Gods, really?
I tip my head back in the threadbare seat and close my eyes.
Blocking it all out for a moment, as I contemplate taking a nap before I find the will to get out of the car and crack the bonnet.
But the trouble with blocking out the present is that it leaves room for the past, and I find myself instantly bombarded with memories both years old and mere hours.
Jack made me come.