Chapter 17 Jack
Mal is gone within minutes of Sol waking me up. But not without gripping my face and begging me to watch over Skylar for however long we lose him to the past.
He leaves his phone behind. And a mile-wide vacuum. It’s hard to fathom we ever lived here without him. I can’t fathom it, any more than I can wrap my brittle brain around the fact that he’ll be halfway to another continent before Skylar makes it home from work.
Mal holds my gaze with titanic focus. “I need you to tell him as much as you can without scaring the shit out of him. If you can’t do it, go to Folk or Marc. They’ll help you.”
Folk Whitlock.
Marc Ramsey.
Skylar knows Marc better—he’s a doctor at the hospital—but he’s been out of the Regiment longer than Folk has been a civilian. Retired from combat duty for more than a decade.
Folk can help more.
More than me?
I don’t fucking know.
I rub my eye, out of habit more than anything. It’s been behaving itself since…fuck, I don’t know that either. Maybe since I started sucking Sol’s dick. Does it matter?
“You okay, Jackie?” Sol comes to where I’m lurking by the window with Fiadh at my feet, glaring at the shadowy horizon like I can magic my brother back from the night.
He slides an arm around my waist.
It feels platonic and steadying, like it belongs in the past, and I push it away. “What time is it?”
“Four.”
“Skylar gets off at seven, right?”
“Yeah.”
Sol steps off.
I hate it. I tug him back and fall headlong into the fear swimming in his reddened eyes, his shellshocked gaze everything I’d feel if this kind of military horror wasn’t so engrained in me even a TBI couldn’t shift it.
He doesn’t understand.
“Mal’s not redeploying,” I say carefully, rehearsing for when Skylar comes home. “But these boys are his crew—he knows them better than anyone. He’s the best chance they have of being found.”
“Even if they’ve been captured?”
“Especially if they’ve been captured.”
Sol flinches and I regret the dark words. Know I need to find better ones for the love of my brother’s life.
For the love of mine.
My brain shunts. Or maybe it’s my heart. I blink and Sol leans closer. “All right?”
“Yeah.”
“You should sleep more. I’ll wake you up when Skylar gets home.”
I’m not the one who needs more sleep. Sol looks like he hasn’t shut his eyes in a month. But I sit on the couch anyway. For a few seconds—long enough for Fiadh to claim a cushion. Then I’m up again and back at the window. “Mal can’t lose anymore friends.”
Moth. Raven. Orion. Men who moved heaven and earth to get my brother home to me when he should’ve died in the desert with his best mate.
They’re missing.
Or captured.
Maybe dead.
Christ. I rub my face, aware of Sol behind me, aware of the silence he doesn’t deserve. “Is your car going to make it out of Cornwall?”
It’s cold in the flat. Sol tugs an old woollen jumper over his head and messes with the thermostat on the wall. “A week ago, maybe not. I fixed the crank sensor yesterday.”
“What about the tyres?”
“Mal put new ones on before he brought it home last week.”
I know that already. Mal told me to shut Sol up if he bitched about it. As if he doesn’t know Sol never complains about anything, not even a lifetime of wars on the other side of the world claiming too much of the people he cares about.
Sol juices up the heating and retreats to the kitchen. He wants me to rest, and he has good reason for it, but I can’t—not until Skylar knows why my brother left him in the night without saying goodbye. That Mal tried and tried to reach him before he had to go.
He’ll know that. He’ll see the missed calls and messages on his phone. And fuck, that means he’ll be driving home knowing something is wrong.
“Sol?”
I spin around and he’s already striding out of the kitchen, as though he heard the fault line opening under my ribs before I voiced it. Because he did. Because he’s tuned to me on a frequency I don’t fully understand. And maybe I’m tuned to him too.
He reaches me. “What is it?”
“Mal called Skylar. He’ll know something’s up when he gets back to his phone.”
Sol winces. “I know. But there’s nothing we can do about that.”
“We can go to the hospital and meet him there. So he doesn’t drive worried.”
“Jackie, we don’t have a car. Mal took mine.”
Fuck. My head starts to spin, even though I grip it with both hands, silently begging it to stop.
Sol pries my hands from my skull. “Oscar went to Peterborough, so his car isn’t here either. We could call Marc, though? Or Cam? Someone Skylar trusts.”
“Does he trust Cam? I can never tell.”
“He loves Cam.” Sol eases my arms down, thumbs brushing my pulse points. “There’s no hate there. Just history. Not sure he’ll appreciate a biker escort home, though.”
Sol’s right. About all of it, but I’m distracted by the arch of his neck as he glances beyond me to the horizon.
The current between us thrums with the same warmth and safety it always has, but now a blood-pumping heat weaves through it and it steadies me.
Wanting him feels like another way of anchoring myself to the world, and for a moment, we hold our breath together, too close, too aware before Sol exhales and brings us back to reality.
“Who do you want me to call?”
Marc. It has to be. But before I can ask Sol for his phone, headlights sweep the horizon, and Skylar’s car rolls into the yard.
He came home early.
I don’t know whether to be relieved I don’t have to spend hours turning this mess over in my head, or panicked that I’m not ready and Mal made a mistake when he asked this of me.
Skylar parks his car and exits at speed, jogging up the steps and into the Joker. The front door opens moments later and he blows into the living room.
Me and Sol, we’re so close it must be obvious we were thinking about kissing. About more. But Skylar’s in no frame of mind to give a shit.
“What happened? Where’s Mal?”
Sol and I break apart. Sol fades into the background, leaving me to face Skylar alone.
“Sit down.”
Skylar plants his feet. “No.”
I can’t make him. And I don’t want to. I take a few steps towards him and stop when I’m a few feet away. “Orion and the others…they’re missing. Mal got the call tonight and he’s gone to help find them.”
“Gone?” Disbelief flickers in Skylar’s grey eyes. “Gone where?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly. “I can only tell you he won’t be anywhere we can reach him for a while.”
Skylar processes that at warp speed. Compared to me at least. “So what? He’s a fucking soldier again?”
“No. Christ, no. He’s a civvy now, he’s not operational.”
“What is he then?”
“Advisory. They need his knowledge, not his boots. He knows the ground, knows the men—”
“Jack, he has PTSD.”
“I know—”
“And a fucking heart defect that nearly got him killed before.”
“I know that too.” I’ve forgotten so many things, but the day Regiment soldiers came to tell me my brother was unconscious in a German military hospital will haunt me forever. “And so do they.”
“So why the fuck would they pull him back?”
“Because he said yes.”
Emotion starts to seep through Skylar’s bewildered anger. He finds the couch and sits down, dragging a hand through his messy hair. “Said yes to what, exactly?”
I repeat myself. Elaborate as much as I have the brain power for. “It’s not a deployment. He won’t be near weapons. He’ll be in a room with maps and screens trying to figure out what his old crew would do in any scenario he can think of.”
“What if he thinks too hard and it breaks him?”
Zero hesitation hinders my answer. “Then you’ll put him back together when he comes home. Just like Sol does every fucking day for me.”
Skylar’s a tough crowd. But he’s self-aware enough to sense what Mal’s asked of me without me having to say it.
He eats the breakfast Sol cooks and stays with us long enough that we know he keeps it down.
Then he goes to bed and leaves his door open.
And I need to open the Joker. Sol needs to sail to who the fuck knows where to earn a living for himself and his father both.
But we don’t leave.
We don’t even go downstairs. Instead, we lie on my bed and talk through the morning, shoulder to shoulder, until we roll onto our sides and our legs entwine.
I could easily fall asleep. An early wake-up combined with the stress of Mal’s sudden absence has left me dizzy.
But this quiet time with Sol…it blows my mind I’m only just realising how precious it is.
Or maybe I’m only just remembering. Either way, I don’t let myself ponder it too hard.
I watch Sol’s brows dance as he talks, track every emotion passing over his beautiful face, and it’s better than a nap.
Better than therapy. Better than a dream.
“Do you know where he’s going?”
I tune back into the conversation.
Mal. Sol’s asking where my brother is going, and I answer with a slow shake of my head, a denial that’ll be a lie if I say it out loud. “He’ll route through Cyprus to get there. Hitch a ride on whatever aircraft is going that way.”
“How long will he stay out there? Until it’s done?”
“That’s not an easy question to answer.”
“Sorry, Jackie.” Sol rubs my shoulder. “I’m just trying to understand. So we can be there for Skylar better.”
For Skylar. Of course. Sol never does anything for himself. Maybe that’s why I love taking him apart with my mouth so much. Because it’s the only time I ever see him let himself have something without putting the whole world first.
The whole world except me.
Can I hold your head?
A low sound escapes me.
Sol’s eyes flare with concern. “All right?”
“Yeah, I’m just thinking about shit I shouldn’t be thinking about.”
“Like what?”
“Like, how obsessed I am with blowjobs when I can’t remember being that bothered about them before.”
“Maybe you weren’t,” Sol says, before pursing his lips together, as if his words are careless and he regrets them.
I lean in, my mouth so close to his I’d kiss him if I trusted myself to stop. “You think I didn’t like blowjobs?”
Sol takes a breath and exhales slowly through his nose.
I rub his bottom lip with my thumb. “Tell me.”
“What makes you think I know?”
“If anyone does, it’s you.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t need to crack my skull to trust you. You’re my best friend.”
Sol’s gaze is unreadable, and trying is a bridge too far when I really do need a fucking nap.
Have I upset him?
I search my scrambled thoughts, trying to recall what nonsense I’ve said in the last ten minutes, and all I land on is the economical truth I’ve given him, when maybe he needs more from me.
I told him I’m obsessed with blowjobs.
I haven’t told him that obsession is all about him.
“We never talked about any blowjobs you were getting from whoever,” Sol says eventually. “You never seemed to enjoy random hookups, but you didn’t have the time or headspace for much else and I think that bothered you.”
It tallies with what I know of my brother’s love life over the past decade.
What little I remember about the men I served with who didn’t marry young and have a bunch of kids they never saw.
But as hard as I try to make it make sense, as ever, a lifetime feels missing from the process.
Did I like going down on women as much as I love blowing Sol?
Did we talk about that instead of blowjobs?
The half-formed thought catches, and I put the cracked wheels in motion to ask him, but he speaks first, saying my name with a heaviness that alarms me. Like he’s carrying something sharp and he’s scared to drop it.
“Jack—”
Movement breaks the moment. Beyond my open bedroom door, Skylar crosses the flat with purpose, his footsteps carrying the weight of grim focus.
He reaches the hallway.
Keys.
Shoes.
I hear the creak of the bench as he sits to lace them and my heart feels cracked down the middle.
Torn between the promise I made Mal, and the man who deserves so much more than the swift exit I need to make to catch Skylar before he leaves.
The man already rising from the bed to help me up.
Because he knows I’m tired enough that I might stumble and lurch if I move too fast on my own.
Sol finds my feet before I do.
He steadies me and nods. Go.
And I do. But I leave another piece of my heart behind, and every step I take away from Sol crunches and grinds with the weight of words unsaid. Words I can’t see clearly, but maybe he can.
Maybe he wants to stop.
A thought I’m sure I’ve had before, but it hits harder as I reach Skylar and get my hand to the front door before he can.
Fuck. My head hurts. Not a physical pain, but a phantom, psychological wrench that I need to boot from my skull before it sends me to my knees.
Somehow I manage it. And lucky Skylar, that means he has my whole focus. “Where are you going?”
He gives me a flat look. “Don’t do this.” Smother him. Infantilise his emotions when he needs some fucking space to work through them. “I don’t need it.”
“You shouldn’t be alone.”
“Says who?”
“Mal.” I take my hand off the door, letting him know I’m not going to physically fight him on this. “I promised I’d be there for you and I can’t do that if you run out on us.”
Metaphorically.
Literally.
Skylar’s in the clothes he wears when he goes with my brother on the marathon tabs Mal needs to keep his mental health in check.
It’s healthy for Mal. For Skylar, it can descend into something else and I’m not scared to go there with him.
Can’t be when I’ve seen the consequence of him spiralling with my own fucking eyes.
I see it again now. See him drop so fast even Mal couldn’t catch him. The sound of him hitting the floor still lives in my bones. But how do I tell him without making him feel like I do when I come round from a seizure and see the tear tracks on Sol’s face?
Skylar doesn’t love me like I love Sol, but we’re the family he chose. And that’s why I make a deal with the devil. “Come eat with us. Then I’ll run with you wherever you want to go.”