3. Mal #3
The company too. I eat eggs and fried fish, and soak up the camaraderie I’ve missed since I woke up in Landstuhl.
Sol and Sev do most of the talking. Oscar referees.
Jack dips in and out, and I feel his gaze on me more than once.
But I don’t look his way. He’s closest to the door, and I know if my focus strays in that direction, I won’t get it back.
Sev finishes first and dumps his plate in the sink. He comes back and flops into his seat beside me, rubbing his head. “I’m so hungover.”
“You want your bed back?”
“Hmm?”
I slide him a glance. “Your bed. Your room. That’s why you’re on the sofa, right? To make room for me?”
Sev shakes his head. “ Nooo , not a chance. You taking that room means I have a bona fide excuse to be anywhere but here.”
Knew it .
But the fire in Sev’s tone gets Sol’s attention. He tosses a piece of bread on his plate, appetite eclipsed by whatever this is. “Don’t be like that, it’s shitty.”
“It’s true ,” Sev combats. “I have a job in London—a fucking life. I can’t keep running back here because you don’t know how to do anything that’s doesn’t involve a fishing net.”
Sol glares, but lets the barb land. And it pisses Sev off more. He shoves his chair back and blows out of the room, stomping downstairs. A moment later, a door slams and Sol’s only reaction is a tired sigh that earns him a side hug from Oscar.
“Do not be sad. He is grumpy because the boy with all the hair went back to America.”
Sol leans against Oscar with platonic ease that makes my heart ache for Vinnie. “Sure he’ll find a way for that to be my fault too.”
“No, he will be back soon enough to say sorry.” Oscar releases Sol with a fist bump to his shoulder, returning to his breakfast.
I make myself look at Jack. He stopped eating a while ago and now he watches Sol brood with a deepening frown on his face. A painful frown, until he senses my focus on him and schools his features. “Sev does all the social media and admin for the pub. Sol’s not here enough and I can’t use a phone.”
“Why not?”
Jack raises an arm etched with rough military ink and points at his face. “Screens fuck me up.”
He speaks with finality. As if there’s nothing more to say. Questions dance on my lips, but Sol snaps to and breaks the awkward silence before I can.
“Do you think this place has changed a lot since you were last here?”
“This place?”
“The town,” Sol clarifies. “It felt like another planet when I came back.”
“How long were you gone?”
“A year or two.” Sol’s gaze flickers.
Jack rises and leaves the room. It’s less dramatic than Sev’s exit, but I see it hit Sol far harder.
He flinches, hurt clouding his face—real pain.
But I can’t grasp the subtext. Full of food and lulled by Oscar’s easy presence beside me, I’m slow, lack of sleep catching up with me in ways it never did when I had a weapon in my hands or a chute strapped to my back.
Before every pulse in my chest became something to fear.
I don’t understand , and vicious frustration heats my blood, a sudden agitation as unfamiliar to me as the grief on Sol’s lovely face.
Fix it .
It fucking kills me that I don’t know how.
And that I don’t know what to do with Sol’s emotion.
He’s always been like this, open and pure.
It’s the Bosanko way—it was Vinnie’s way too.
But I’m a Gallagher, we’re born emotionally constipated, and a lifetime of being anywhere but here hasn’t cured me.
Sol hauls himself to his feet and goes to find Jack and mend whatever I broke.
It leaves me with Oscar, who’s studying his phone screen again, checking his post breakfast numbers.
Happy with what he sees, he pockets the phone and I wonder if my abrasive personality is about to clear a room in record time, but he stays, leaning back in his seat to give me the same side-hug he gave Sol. No advice, no solutions. Just comfort.
I like him already. When his embrace tapers off, I stand and move to the kitchen window, scanning the harbour, and the pickpockets and scammers already setting up on the sea wall. “Early for the rascals, isn’t it?”
Oscar follows my gaze, tall enough to see what I’m talking about without having to stand. “They are here all day now.”
“Bikers getting lazy?”
Oscar shrugs. “What bikers?”
“Rebel Kings back in the day. They owned every brick in this town and you couldn’t buy a bag of weed without some righteous eejit on a Harley chasing you off.”
Jack reappears as I say it, rubbing the same eye I couldn’t find peace with yesterday. I’m over it now, but I don’t like how he’s mauling it. Like he wants it out of his skull. It disturbs me and I knock his hand, stopping him.
He blinks and I wonder if he’ll thump me. If I’ll let him. But he just nods and I’m more bewildered than ever.
By him.
By myself.
By the way this place nurtures the worst version of me.
“Where did the bikers go?”
Jack frowns and repeats Oscar’s words. “What bikers?”
I point at the horizon. “The ones who used to run the streets. It’s already wild out there and it’s barely eight in the morning.”
“It’s eight already?”
“So they tell me.”
Jack moves closer and his shoulder brushes mine. He studies the outside world again, but not the bustle around the harbour. Instead he frowns inland and I swear to god, I try to soften the bluntness I’ve brought home and can’t seem to control, but my tone is still harsh.
“What’s bothering you?”
“Skylar should be home by now.”
“From where?”
Jack takes a breath to speak, but a car appears in the distance that instantly sucks the tension from him.
Skylar .
Now it’s me with bound shoulders and a tight jaw.
I force myself to relax. We didn’t part on bad terms, right? Fuck, we didn’t part on any terms. He walked away before the funny side of what almost went down between us could land, if such a thing fucking exists.
But nothing happened.
Nothing. Happened.
So why do I feel like I’m about to come face-to-face with a ghost I was point-two seconds from dragging somewhere dark and ruining?
A door opens and closes downstairs before I get the chance to remind myself I was more fixated on kissing him than anything else that day.
That night , when his simmering presence beside me in the dingy pub had been the only thing keeping me from downing a bottle of Bushmills and hurling myself off a cliff.
Footsteps sound on the stairs and my pulse kicks up, but it isn’t the scrape and thud of a misfire. It’s a legitimate flare of expectation, and it’s all I can do to remain by the window and let whatever’s about to happen come find me instead of chasing it down.
But…it’s an anti-climax that leaves me dizzy.
Skylar doesn’t come to the kitchen. He heads straight down the hall to his room and shuts the door behind him.
I don’t know what my face is doing, but Oscar pauses halfway out of his seat and sits down again, giving weight to the impression I’ve been harbouring that he’s stayed in the kitchen this long for my sake. Or maybe Jack’s. Sol’s. Who the fuck knows?
Regardless, he doesn’t leave. He draws an abandoned newspaper towards him as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world and speaks without looking up. “Skylar works shifts at the hospital. He’s a nurse. He’ll sleep now, but you will probably see him before he goes back.”
I absorb the information like it’s meth. Pack it away for later.
“They aren’t here anymore.”
Blinking, I turn to Jack. “Who?”
He points at the window. “The bikers. Dog Crows disbanded and the Rebel Kings went legit. They drive lorries now.”
“Lorries?”
“Aye, and they even have a swimmer at their table.”
To me and Jack, the term swimmer means more than the obvious. SBS—Special Boat Service, the sister regiment to the SAS unit we both served in. “Who is it?”
“Whitlock.” Jack raises his hand to his eye again, but catches himself before it makes contact. “You know him?”
“Nope. Do you?”
A pause stretches out. A series of complex emotions cycle through Jack’s features and he shakes his head. “I don’t remember.”
He should. We’re trained to recall every scrap of information that comes our way, and my brother was the kid who never lost so much as a damn sock. But we aren’t kids anymore, we’re not soldiers either, and everything’s fucking different.
The realisation slams into me years too late, and I don’t know what to do with it. Another awkward silence expands until Jack breaks it. “I thought he might be a good contact for you.”
“In case I want to be a biker?”
“No, in case you want to be a lorry driver, or talk to someone about shit no one else will understand and I’m not up to the fucking job.”
Sharpness coats Jack’s words. He sounds like someone I know even less than the brother I abandoned to a life-changing injury, and guilt settles in my gut, adding to the weight dragging me like a stone tied to my ankles.
Not how it went, mate.
Vinnie’s too kind.
Always was.
I’m not, and on the ground, at war , it’s a skill that saves time.
Here…fuck. It’s a different battle, but I know it’s going to land me in trouble if I can’t get my head together enough to soften it.
“I don’t need to talk to anyone,” I say, mindful of the space between me and Jack that already has no fucking oxygen.
“But I’ll tell you if I do. How’s that?”
Not good enough. Whatever’s happened to my brother, he’s still canny and wise. His gaze intensifies, and this side of him I do recognise, and it hurts, because I’ve missed him.
But the air shifts before he can speak. A change in pressure and quiet footsteps on the landing.
Skylar.
Jack moves past me to embrace him as if he’s been gone as long as I have, and his big body obscures my view enough that my breath moves freely, and I begin to believe it’s going to be okay.
Then my brother steps back, and fuck.
Fuuuuck .
I thought I remembered how beautiful Skylar is.
Clearly I don’t, because I’m not ready for the sight of him in the doorway, hair damp from the shower, water still clinging to his inked skin.
I’m not ready for his smoke and metal stare or the tee that clings to all the places I shouldn’t look, and I’ll never be fucking ready for the heat climbing my spine as our eyes meet, flaring in my chest like he’s struck me at point-blank range.
He already killed me the first time.
And all this…it blooms in the delayed seconds it takes Oscar to notice Skylar.
For him to glance up from the newspaper.
But it feels much longer and my imagination finds the space to wonder how it would feel to trace the line of Skylar’s forearm with the tip of my finger, a delicate touch that’s never occurred to me before with anyone, even the rare hook-ups I’ve seen more than once.
I swallow hard.
Jack speaks, but I don’t hear him. I don’t need to—I know Skylar’s name.
And aye, it is fucking nice to meet him again , even if I have to kickstart my brain to step forward and shake his hand—his cool hand, a chill lurking beneath his skin, which makes no sense unless he’s just doused himself in cold water like I did an hour ago, standing naked in the bathroom we now share.
And it sure doesn’t match the spark I feel as we make contact. The jolt where we touch, as sharp and bright as the first time, like a new flame meeting oxygen and sparking with energy that can’t be tamed.
Does he feel it? I try not to look too hard, to look at him much at all, a feat that should be easy since I once spent eighteen hours curled like a pretzel in a stress position, ordered to lock in with a single speck on the ceiling, but I don’t feel like a soldier gunning for Regiment selection right now.
I feel like a man—a weak man. My pulse hammers in my throat with restless energy, and Skylar’s thundery gaze darkens, like he knows, like he feels it, and he tugs his hand back as if it burns .
Reeling, I grieve the loss of his palm the instant it’s gone, and I think of all the hands I’ve ever touched.
Ever smashed with my boot or a rifle butt.
Ever held in mine as a brother-in-arms slipped from this earth.
But away from the carnage of the life I’ve left behind, it all blurs, and I’m left with one thought, one certainty in an existence I’m not sure of yet.
That none of those fucking hands ever felt like Skylar’s.