7. Skylar #2
I retreat to my room and strip my shirt—it’s a hot night, even with the sea breeze cooling the air, and ignore the stone that’s still on my bedside table.
Then I head down two sets of stairs and take up residence in the cellar gym, a room Sol would happily burn if the punch bags and free weights didn’t help Jack so much when his frustration gets the better of him.
It’s dark and airless, the only oxygen flowing from the narrow window close to the ceiling. I flick the light on, a single naked bulb hanging at an awkward angle from an ancient pendant, and reach for the jump ropes.
Start slow.
Amp it up until I’m sweating, my blood pumping faster with every whip of the rope, and it’s a struggle to stop. But my full stomach keeps it civilised—it has to if I don’t want to lose it.
I move on to punishing my body in other ways, muscles screaming at me to stop , long before I eventually do.
Panting, I lie on the mat, at one with the ceiling and the endorphins I only feel when I’m fucking someone truly special, and that hasn’t happened since I broke Bhodi’s heart.
My ex.
Regret threatens the high I’ve ground out in the depths of this ancient building.
I close my eyes, picturing the only thing I’ve found recently to pull me away from my worst thoughts.
Mal .
Annoyance replaces physical satisfaction, but it’s better than suffocating guilt. I sit up, the recollection of his bare torso razor sharp in my mind. Golden skin, dark body hair, his long, lean frame screaming strength in every sinew more subtle than Jack’s brawnier build.
The look in his eye.
I’m willing to bet Mal Gallagher is as proficient at concealing his emotions as I am, but the heat in his gaze as it locked on mine?
Yeah.
There was no hiding that, and?—
You’re never going to fuck.
The rambling thought, and the brick wall it slams against, has irritation rippling through me again.
I know we’re not going to fuck. That ship sailed the second I realised who he was and the damage any kind of fallout from that could do to Jack.
So why has my imagination not got the memo?
I don’t fixate on people—on men —like this.
What’s the fucking point? No one is ever who they say they are, and it doesn’t matter, because I’m already gone.
It doesn’t matter now .
Because we’re not fucking.
Ever.
And it’s Mal who’s going to leave.
A rough exhale leaves my lungs and I rise to my feet, enjoying the slight tremor in my legs. My life is a never-ending game of using one unhealthy thought pattern to derail another.
Mind racing in ways it shouldn’t after two hours in the gym, I exit the cellar, negative habits tripping over each other to fell me first. I want to go back, to work my body harder. I want it to stop. But I know it never will, and for tonight at least, I’m done trying.
I need music.
I need sleep.
I need to find someone to fuck before Mal Gallagher takes up permanent residence in my head and the mark he’s left on me becomes indelibly etched on whatever long-dead part of me he’s managed to reach.
The heavy cellar door closes behind me. I’m at the foot of the steep stairs that lead to the floor above.
Jack hates damp things. He spent a long winter hyper-focused on the mouldy mess the previous owners left behind.
The whole pub is dry now, clean and ventilated, so I feel it the moment the air is sucked out of the narrow space and every scrap of intuition I possess alerts me I’m no longer alone.
And the tingling in my nerves tells me it’s him— Mal —a heartbeat before he appears halfway down the stairs, a bag slung over his shoulder, face shadowed by the light of the pub behind him.
He’s shirtless again.
So am I, but this time I’m the only one covered in sweat, a fact lost to me as I drink in what little of his torso I can see while he’s on the stairs.
The swathes of dry skin my wild imagination tells me will be as warm as if he were standing in sunlight instead of the dark.
The subtle cut of his abs as they descend into his low-slung cargo shorts.
Six feet lie between us, but it feels much smaller as he halts his descent and stares me down, towering over me in a way I’d fucking hate if I gave a shit.
I don’t. “If you’re trying to escape, I’ve got news for you about the direction you’re headed.”
Mal appraises me, giving nothing away. “If it takes me to the washing machine, I’m grand.”
He sounds more Northern Irish than he did a few days ago. I wonder if Jack does too. If they’re bringing it out in each other. I wonder if the back view of his torso is as criminally distracting as the front.
I move aside so he can pass me.
Mal takes a few more steps but pauses in the best or worst place, depending on which version of me is making the judgement.
I can smell him now, see his pulse thrumming in his neck.
Feel the heat of him on my skin, both real and the burn I’ve dreamed up in my head.
Up close, I see the gold flecks in his brown hair and the darker scruff covering his jaw.
I see the assessment in his gaze and contemplating what he’s searching for pisses me off. “What do you want?”
His brow ticks up, a muscle in his jaw twitching. “Lots of things. But I’ll settle for some information.”
“About what?”
“My brother.”
“You want to know something about Jack, ask him yourself.”
Mal glances behind him. Up the stairs, where a door bangs and a blast of music flares from the tourist side of the pub.
He looks back with an expression that’s trying too hard to be pleasant, and it’s unnecessary effort. I don’t need anyone to be nice to me. I’ve spent my whole fucking life making sure of it.
Mal, though. I don’t know what he needs, from me or anyone else, and maybe it won’t kill me to find out.
I jerk my head at the door beyond the cellar gym. “Machine’s in there, I’ll show you.”
Without waiting for an answer, I rotate and make for the utility room. And I know the second he takes a step to follow me. I sense him at my back like a derailing train, which is fucking stupid.
He just wants to talk.
Less than that. He wants answers, not a deep conversation, and if I can give him that without betraying Jack’s confidence, I will.
Why?
I don’t know. And there’s no time to figure it out. I slip into the utility room with seconds to spare before Mal’s right fucking there. Here. In another small space, but now there’s a closed door between us and the rest of the world.
Can’t say why that matters.
It doesn’t matter .
But I notice it anyway.
The light in here is no better than the gym. I flick it on. Mal glances at the bare bulb, then back at me— down at me. He’s taller by an inch or so, and he makes full use of it as he eases past to where the washing machine and the dryer take up most of the room.
He drops his bag on the floor—the only thing he brought with him when he came here. He has less stuff than even Jack, and I can’t help my curiosity about what the bag contains beyond the handful of clothes he shoves into the machine.
I hand him the detergent.
Mal nods his thanks and sets the machine to run. “I haven’t washed my clothes in this country in five fucking years.”
“When did you last come here?”
He shoots me an unreadable glance. “Three years ago—after Jack got hurt. I came to the hospital in Birmingham.”
“You came to Birmingham?”
Mal nods. “For all the fucking good it did him.”
“What happened?”
“You want to know something about Jack, ask him yourself.”
A ghost of a grin warms Mal’s face.
I like it more than the distant haze it replaces, but I don’t smile back. “I was working in Birmingham when they brought Jack back. I didn’t know he was there until three weeks later when Sol found out.”
“You worked at Queen Elizabeth?”
“No, Heartlands. But I was with Jack a lot once I got them to let me in. Maybe you walked past me on the way out.”
“I was long gone by then.” Mal moves closer to put the detergent back on the shelf. “But there’s no way that happened anyway.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because wherever my head was at, there’s no way I walked past you any-fucking-where and forgot about it.”
That grin is nowhere to be seen as he spits those words. But it’s not the lack of humour that makes them so believable. It’s that I know I’ve never been anywhere near him before we crossed paths in that seedy bar up the coast.
I’d remember.
More than that, I’d be different. Like I have been since I first felt the flicker of his stare on my skin. “Jack never told me you’d been to see him. Sol said you were deployed and no one could find you.”
“I was embedded.” Mal shifts again, rotating so I can’t see his face. “But a mate of mine got word to me and moved mountains to get me out.”
“Then what happened?”
I ask again, because I know what Jack was like the first few months after he got hurt. That he wasn’t Jack for a hell of a long time.
Mal takes a breath before he turns back to me. “I fucked up. He was awake. Talking whole sentences. I didn’t realise how bad the injury was until he was trying to hit me with a monitor screen.”
“He was awake?”
“I thought so at the time.” Mal catches the surprise in my voice. “Next word I got was that he’d been put in an induced coma. It was a month before I heard anything else.”
“From Sol?”
Mal nods. “He was so angry I wasn’t there. Then he wasn’t, because he said he understood, and somehow that was fucking worse.”
The washing machine beeps, an error code flashing on the screen.
Mal frowns. “What’s this prick shouting about?”
“Whatever it wants.” I push off the wall to help him out, and once again find myself so close to him I could lick his skin.
Mal seems to realise it too. He backs up, and parks himself on the chest freezer to watch me prod the washing machine until it stops beeping. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” I should leave now. Sound advice I choose to ignore. “Jack’s never mentioned whatever happened between you in Birmingham. If it’s any consolation, he probably doesn’t remember.”