22. Sol #2
Jack hums, catching his bearings. Then he’s acutely aware again—of me, of what we’ve just done, and that he’s still half hard inside me.
He pulls out with the same care he pressed inside me with. “Are you okay?”
I nod. “Yeah. You?”
Jack laughs that laugh again. Then he’s in motion. Up and out of the bed with only the slightest waver to his balance.
He disappears.
Comes back with clean-up supplies.
When he’s done fussing, I take my turn in the bathroom, fix the hallway door that has somehow come loose from its latch, and drift back expecting to find Jack if not half asleep, at least in bed.
He’s not in bed.
I collide with him in the hallway, my sex-drunk body walking into his hard chest like it’s magnetised. “Wha—”
Jack steadies me, hand snapping to my shoulders. Then he speaks words that shift the whole night. “Where’s your grandad’s concertina?”
I blink. Reality lands hard and the age-old urge to deflect rises in me as natural as breathing.
But I can’t do it.
Not with everything we’ve done, everything we are, still clinging to my skin. “I don’t have it anymore.”
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why the fuck not?”
“Because I pawned it.”
Jack’s brows cinch in a harsh frown. Like he’s trying to force words into a shape he understands. “Why?”
“I needed the money.”
“You needed money?”
I turn my gaze to the ceiling as if I’ll find a readymade answer carved into the cracked paint. “Jackie, it doesn’t matter.”
“Why doesn’t it matter? Because it’s yours?”
“What?”
“It matters,” he growls. “When did you pawn it?”
“I don’t know.”
Jack steps closer, sweat still shimmering on his broad chest, lips bright and raw from kissing. “When?”
“I don’t know. Last week, maybe?”
His frown deepens as he applies that to whatever’s going on in his head. As he fights confusion and gaps he doesn’t deserve, a puzzle that never ends.
His gaze drops to the mark he’s left on my throat.
Flashes back to my face.
“It was after,” he says slowly. “Wasn’t it? After your parents lost the house.”
My stomach rolls.
Jack narrows his eyes, knowing he’s found something solid in all the things I’m not saying. “You’re still giving Dav money?”
“I didn’t give my dad the money.”
“Who did you give it to then?”
“I don’t know.”
Jack stares, frustration ripping his features apart, and I hate it. It’s late—it’s Christmas Day—and we just shared something magical. Something that made him feel good. And now we’re squaring off in the hallway over something that’s always been here and will still be here tomorrow.
I raise my hands in surrender. “I pawned it to pay a loan shark. Dav put the Sirona up as collateral and I couldn’t let them take more of her than she’s already lost.”
“Sol.”
“I know. I know.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
I open my mouth. Shut it again. There are a hundred answers to that question and none of them deserve space tonight.
But my non-response leaves room for Jack’s brain to snag on a thread. He shakes his head, like he’s trying to clear water from his ears, and I see the moment he realises he can’t. That he has to check out of this conversation and save it for another day. “Tell me later?”
I nod and it’s enough—for now.
Jack grabs my hand and tows me back into his room. Into his bed. He’s almost asleep when he speaks into the darkness again. “You have to stop.”
“I know.”
“No, really, Sol. I love you…I can’t watch this happen…”
He’s gone then. His breathing slows and he falls asleep with his hand at the base of my throat, while I lie still as a rock, counting his breaths and the waves of the tide, my bones loose, but my chest tight.
And not because I’m worried about my dad, or pondering the fate of an ancient instrument that’s been in the Bosanko family for generations.
No. That’s not important.
Jack is all that matters to me tonight and this thing I’ve kept from him all these years sits like a stone beneath my tongue.
I turn my head to look at him. His face is soft with sleep, like it was when I was so damn scared he’d never wake up. But he’s going to wake up from this and Christmas or no, with the stretch and burn of him still raw inside me, I’m out of rope, for anything and everything except the truth.
Tell him.
I’m going to. As soon as he wakes up.
Which isn’t all that long. An hour. Maybe two. And it’s nearly dawn, which lets me know just how long we spent fucking last night.
Jack groans and forces his eyes open. Waits a beat before he looks at me and his lips rise.
Then he sees my face. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to tell you something.”
“Did you sleep?”
“What? No. Jack. Please. I need to tell you something.”
The repetition catches Jack before he slips into care mode. He sits up on one elbow, studying me with eye movement a touch too rapid.
Let him wake up first.
But I can’t. Life keeps steamrolling me and a profound sense that I’m running out of time is so strong I almost choke on the next words I speak. “We hooked up before you got hurt.”
Jack goes still.
So so still.
Computing the words as the worst of his frowns descends his face. “What…what does that mean?”
“What I said.” I bring my knees to my chest, as if my legs can save me from this biblical mess. “We hooked up the night before your last deployment. We were drunk as shit, but it happened, and it meant something, and I should’ve told you about it a long time ago.”
“Why didn’t you?”
I keep my gaze on my folded arms, Jack’s flat tone a razor to my ravaged heart. “Because you didn’t remember us being anything but mates, and I didn’t want to—”
“Didn’t want to what?”
Force it. Corner him with a truth his brain couldn’t see. Make a claim on him when he needed so much more from me.
I shake my head. “You woke up looking at me like I was the only fixed point in your world. And you needed that stability more than anything else.”
Jack says nothing. Silence fills the void between us and I know he won’t break it.
So I keep talking even as my voice cracks and breaks.
“I kept hoping you’d remember on your own.
That you’d wake up one morning and it would just…
I don’t know, click. And when it didn’t, there was always something bigger than me sitting you down and saying, ‘oh, by the way, either you’re into me all of a sudden or Guinness makes you gay. ’”
My laugh comes out wrong.
Tainted. Shredded.
Dead from the inside out.
I force myself to face Jack’s harsh gaze. “It was just one time, but I should’ve told you, and I’m so sorry I didn’t.”
He stares at me as though I’ve changed the shape of the moon. His silence becomes thick enough to drown in, and—
The door kicks open. Hits the wall. Sev tosses my phone onto the bed and glowers at me so violently Jack leans forward on instinct, shielding me with his body. “Don’t fucking throw shit at him.”
“I’m not,” Sev snaps. “I’m giving it to him. So he can talk to our fucking mother and tell her why the Rebel Kings just scooped up Dad and chucked him in the back of a van. Merry Christmas.”
He spins around and storms off. A second later, the front door opens and slams, leaving me with an open line to my mum.
No.
I hang up and scramble from the bed—Jack’s bed—and start after my brother before my heart yanks me back to where Jack is already up and reaching for a t-shirt.
For me.
He pulls it over my head and steers me to the door. “Go. I’m behind you.”
Visceral pain rips my heart in two. It almost buckles me, but somehow I thread my arms into the shirt and chase Sev downstairs and out of the Joker.
He hasn’t gone far. He’s smoking in the back garden, glaring at the sky. “Sorry,” he says as I approach. “I’m just so fucking sick of this.”
“What happened?”
“What I said. Dad snuck out to a card game last night and they caught him on the way back. Probably killed him, eh? Not sure I give a fuck.”
“You don’t mean that.”
Sev grunts and I feel it in every fibre of me that isn’t already charred and broken.
I need to call Lisa back.
But it’s not her I dial as I jab the phone in my hand.
I call Cam O’Brian while Sev smokes.
He doesn’t answer.
So I call River. I call Folk Whitlock. But no one picks up until I reach Saint Malone.
More silence taunts me. I growl as if I’ve morphed into Jack. “Where’s my dad? You fucking promised you wouldn’t hurt him.”
At that, Sev’s head jerks up. I turn from him only to face Jack as he emerges from the Joker, carrying my boots, a thick jumper, and the same flat expression I left him with.
I told him.
And now my whole being screams at me to reach for him. But rustling on the line turns into a heavy sigh, and then a throaty, feminine voice a world away from any Rebel King man I’ve ever known. “Sol?”
Damn. I know that voice and it’s almost as dangerous as her brother’s. “Orla?”
“The very same. What do you need to know?”
“Where’s my dad?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did they hurt him?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’ll check again for you.” Orla O’Brian says something to whoever she’s with. Then she’s back. “It was an intervention, not an ambush. Dav’s on his way to rehab.”
“Rehab?”
“For his gambling addiction, sweetheart. Because the alternative reality is he’s been bleeding you dry all these years on purpose.”
“Where’s the—”
“No.” Orla cuts me off. Literally. Metaphorically.
I’m not sure. “That’s not how this works.
He’s gone, Sol. And he’s going to stay gone until he’s well enough to stop sending loan sharks to your boat deck.
I know it’s fucking hard, but that’s all I can tell you for now, and it’s for the best. Put him out of your mind.
Rebuild your boat—rebuild your life, and then it’s up to you if you let him back in. ”
She hangs up, leaving sage advice I didn’t ask for ringing in my head, and a hollow space where my dad’s bullshit has been all these years.
I don’t know who I am without it. But that’s not what has me chucking my phone in the sand, blanking my brother, and rounding on Jack for answers. “Was this you? Did you tell the Kings about the loan shark and that damn concertina?”
Jack doesn’t blink. “What? No.”
“Then how the hell did they know?” I’m shouting. Under the grey sky of what should’ve been the most precious Christmas morning any of us have had in years, I’m shouting at my best friend in the rain. “I only told you.”
Jack frowns, hurt clouding his gaze. Then empathy which makes me sick to my stomach, and gods, no. I don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve him. How can he look at me like that after everything I’ve told him this morning?
I back up, reaching for the easiest and stupidest explanation for the riddle I can’t unpick.
He told someone. He tried to fix it.
And I know it’s wrong, even as it forms. Even as the knowledge I’ve carried of the Rebel Kings since I was a dumb teenager reminds me they don’t need Jack or anyone else to tell them anything about anything ever.
But I’m so tired. My veins buzz with irrational energy and I need off dry land before I lose the will to breathe.
The air from the sea is sharp and wet.
I force it into my tight throat and spin away from Sev as he reaches for me. From Jack as he strides down the steps. The dock blurs, like I need to see the world softer than it is, the Sirona is right there, and I board her on autopilot.
Untie her.
Cast off.
The rope burns my palms as it skids through them and it’s a pain I welcome. A pain I need, and I feel like I understand Skylar better with every day I spend on this earth.
I step into the wheelhouse and turn the engine over, distantly bracing for the clattering roar that’s followed me around the past few days. But either my girl’s mechanics have healed overnight, or I’m too strung out to hear it.
Either way, it doesn’t hit, and I shove the throttle, motoring out of the cove, leaving my heart behind. Out past the harbour wall and the moored vessels rocking on the waves. Out into air that tastes like iron as the horizon turns the colour of a necrotic wound.
I hit open water, Porth Luck so small behind me the Joker would be nothing but a smudge if I turned to look. But that would mean admitting I’ve chosen the sea over the people who love me and I’m not brave enough for that.
So I press on until I can drag a breath into my lungs, the Sirona purring steadily under my feet. Until my vision clears, the salt dries on my cheeks, and I realise I’m not alone.
The quiet shift comes from the cabin. The slide of a boot on damp wood. A sigh that isn’t mine.
I turn slowly.
Oscar sits on the bench, hood up on his favourite red jacket, hands tucked into his pockets, eyes the colour of cinnamon hooked on me with unnerving focus. “We are past every crab site I know, my friend.”
“I didn’t know you were there.”
“You should have. I could have been anyone, and I am not small.”
He isn’t. But I feel it as he waits me out and that riddle…it finally unspools. “It was you, wasn’t it? You told the Kings about the loan shark on the docks.”
Oscar rubs his lips together. Then he stands, ducking to exit the cabin without bashing his head. He steps into the rain and tips his hood back, absorbing the elements before facing me again. “I did tell them. And I would do it again.”
“Why?”
“Because I am tired of watching you bleed and call it love. But we will talk about that later. For now, go and fit this battery I found at home while I take us back to where we need to be.”