7. Skylar
Mal doesn’t sleep.
I hear it from Jack. Then from Sol.
Then I see it for myself when my rest days have me running out of ways to swerve him.
It’s Monday. Jack doesn’t work in the pub past morning and Sol always tries to be home to cook dinner.
I’ve been known to dodge that too, but I haven’t seen them much since Mal came home, and the truth is, Jack and Sol are the family I chose, and I miss them.
I find Sol in the kitchen, poking at a pan of meat sauce. Straight up, the way he’s hunched over it catches my attention. “What happened to your ribs?”
Sol glances over his shoulder. “What makes you think anything happened to them?”
“Everything about your posture. And your shit attempt at deflection.”
He narrows his eyes, but his glare doesn’t last. Never does. “I slipped.”
“On the boat?”
“Yeah.”
He’s lying, but Jack comes upstairs before I can call him on it, and he looks chill enough that even the coldest parts of me can’t bear to fuck that up.
Sol adjusts his posture as Jack slips into the kitchen. Alone , which bothers me more than it should. I don’t care where Mal is. Why would I? As long as he doesn’t trash the bathroom we share—he doesn’t, I barely know he uses it—his whereabouts mean nothing to me.
I back off Sol and take a seat at the table—the same spot on the bench as the morning I first saw Mal here.
No Oscar tonight. I wonder if he’s out on the boat or home with his kid, but I like watching Sol and Jack grin at each other more than I need to know, so I drag the local paper towards me and immediately regret it.
The burned carcass of the lifeguard base stains the front pages, alongside a photo of the girl who drowned on the beach.
Her face is unfamiliar to me. I only saw her grey and lifeless, and I’m an old hand at pushing death out of my mind.
But I could do without the reminder that a functioning lifeguard base could’ve saved her and I slide the paper away from me, cauterising the frayed knots in my gut.
I haven’t eaten dinner with Jack and Sol in weeks, and I owe them this for all the times they haven’t pointed it out.
Jack comes to the table. I can tell by his demeanour he hasn’t noticed Sol shuffling around. He stoops to give me a one-armed hug and muss my hair the way only he can and I’m glad I didn’t ruin his mood. “You all right, Skylar?”
“Can’t complain.”
“You never do.” He lowers into the seat beside me. “Unless the Kings come to town. Sorry I didn’t warn you about that—I didn’t know. And I didn’t think Cam would come regardless.”
Cam O’Brian. The founding chapter president of the Rebel Kings Motorcycle Club.
A wave of acid threatens the barricade I’ve constructed around the devil in my belly. I reach for the water I brought with me from my room. Swallow it down before I clear my throat enough to answer. “Don’t worry about it. If your brother wants to run with them, it’s nothing to me.”
Jack frowns. “That’s not what that was?—”
A new presence in the doorway cuts him off.
Mal .
I haven’t seen him since that night on the roof and whatever Jack was about to say, I half expect him to be covered in biker ink and wearing a Rebel Kings patch. And of course he isn’t. He looks exactly the same as the last four times I’ve ever met him.
Long legs. Unshaven jaw. Eyes like the herbs Sol grows on the windowsill. Hard eyes as he sweeps the room and sniffs out Sol’s physical discomfort too fast for anyone to stop him. “What happened to you?”
“Bad hair day.” Sol smothers the wince in his gait and lugs his big pot from the stove, depositing it on the table with enough force and volume to distract Jack, and it works—for a heartbeat.
But Mal’s immovable. He stares, and Jack notices, halfway out of his seat, reaching for Sol with an instinct I wish he trusted.
“You’re hurt?”
“ No .” Sol fires that shallow glare at Mal before he turns to Jack and his expression gives way to the grin that makes his best friend forget anyone else is in the room. “I’m hungover as fuck and I slipped on the deck.”
It’s good bullshit. Top tier to anyone who doesn’t know Sol’s been tearing around boat decks since he was a toddler and has the graceful balance of a mythical sea god.
None of those people breathe air in this room, but the angel of interruption seems to favour Sol today too. The intercom from the pub downstairs blares to life and the crude noise shunts Jack enough to overwhelm his fragile brain.
He doesn’t know which direction to look.
I intervene, rising to answer the intercom, enduring the narrow space Mal leaves for me to squeeze past him, sparing him even less eye contact than he spares me.
Fuck you.
Wow.
Okay. I don’t think too hard about where that came from, or if my subconscious really meant it. I brush past him, blocking out his body heat and the scent of cedar-wood, and answer the intercom in the hall.
It’s the bar. The locals’ favourite ale has run dry and they don’t know how to fix it.
The temptation to zip downstairs and swap the barrels myself hums in my veins. But Sol will think I’m dodging his spaghetti and I don’t need that conversation with him tonight or any night.
I take the message back to the table and reclaim my seat.
Sol stops Jack rising and slips away to deal with downstairs.
Mal remains in the doorway, forcing Sol to move around him, not giving up an inch of that all-seeing stare.
But once Sol’s gone, he lets out a breath and scans the room again, deciding whether he wants to come in, a struggle he can’t hide, even from Jack.
I look away.
I don’t care .
Then the bench shifts with additional weight, relief floods me, and I realise I’m a big fat liar, just like Sol.
Mal settles into his seat, propping his back against the wall behind us. It means he can see all of me, but I can’t see him without shifting my position.
I hate that I want to. That on some level, I need to, a reality that settles as Sol comes back and starts dishing out dinner.
Fuck it.
I mirror Mal’s pose, propping a lean on the wall. There isn’t much room. My elbow brushes his and I feel it everywhere.
Does he?
It’s hard to tell, and I’m realising the face he’s shown me when we’re alone is nothing like the one he’s showing now.
I hate that too. Maybe because I understand it—because I feel it in the bland smile I give Sol as he hands me a plate of food that signals the start of a battle of wills that never quits whatever kind of day I’m having.
A bell rings in my head, like the start of a boxing match. Sol’s given me less than everyone else, and spread it out so it’s harder to tell, less sauce, more pasta.
White food .
Mal leans forward, picking up a fork. Tension floods me, but I realise he’s watching Sol lower himself into his seat, absorbing his clenched jaw and tight gaze, his own eyes flaring with challenge. “Long hangover, eh?”
“I’m getting old,” Sol retorts. “Too old to drink with Oscar, anyway.”
Jack looks up. “Oscar was here last night?”
Sol shrugs, vague.
Jack frowns. “I didn’t see him.”
“You were busy.”
“He didn’t sing?”
“No one did. It was an early one.”
“And you’re still hanging?”
Sol waves a hand in another absent gesture and digs into his food, leaving Jack to his confusion, which adds more weight to the bullshit theory as silence falls over the table.
Mal starts eating. Eventually, Jack does too, and I run out of time to play chicken with my plate.
I eat the pasta, warming up to the rest of it, playing a strong game, even with Mal’s presence branding my fucking soul.
Or maybe because of it. My plate is half gone before I realise it, my focus drawn from the sensation of food settling in my stomach by the searing buzz of where Mal’s thigh has inched closer to mine.
How does he do that? I take a more loaded bite.
Testing him. Or at least how I’ve chosen to perceive his effect on me.
The way my stomach tightens, mirrored by my grip on my fork, muscle memory from every battle I’ve fought at this table, and the slightest shift from him fades the ache to a dull roar.
Dull enough that I clear my plate, and Sol fails to hide his surprise.
Jack blinks too, but he’s called away by more hassle from the intercom, and eventually he and Sol go downstairs.
It leaves me alone with Mal, a state of affairs I’m not sure what to do with.
I take dishes to the sink.
He comes up behind me with more and his reflection in the kitchen window entrances me. His nearness. The hard lines of his body that would feel so fucking good against mine.
I run the water, shaking my head at myself. I’ve met hotter men than Mal Gallagher.
Sol’s hot.
Oscar.
Jack.
Fuck, even Sev’s some kind of beautiful, and none of them have ever got under my skin like this.
You’ve never wanted to fuck Jack.
Truth.
Sol, though. There was a time way back when I could’ve, before I realised the best friend he mentioned every ten minutes was his entire fucking world.
Did I ever feel like this around him? Did my heart ever scrape my ribs when he came close?
Did my blood heat so much it was hard to remember what the fuck I was supposed to be doing?
Water overflows the basin.
I shut off the tap, tipping the excess away.
Mal returns to the table, but he’s back what feels like seconds later. “Leave them. I’ll do it.”
“It’s all right.”
“Suit yourself.”
He’s gone from the kitchen so fast he has me reeling and he’s not even here anymore. I shake my head again and clean up the kitchen, drinking protein to make up for whatever I’m bound to leave in the cellar gym before I can sleep.
It’s the trade-off. The more I eat, the more I burn. But it’s better than the twisted thrill of an empty stomach and I accepted the terms a long time ago.