11. Mal
Time is slower in Porth Luck. Another week goes by. Maybe two. I sail with Sol every day Oscar doesn’t, and occupy myself fixing broken things around the Joker when he does. But none of it shifts the weight that settles in for good once the rush of kissing Skylar finally fades.
I don’t appreciate the reality that it’s never going to happen again—that it can’t . I see that boundary around his relationship with Sol, with Jack. Familial, protective, fucking vital . What could happen if I fuck with it and fuck it up.
Skylar might leave.
Fuck. I don’t like that. I don’t like it at all , and even thinking about it puts me in a mood that has most people in this town moving out of my way.
Not Jack, though.
Or Folk Whitlock, who swings by to see me one afternoon when I’m repairing a patch of crumbled wall in the beer garden, repressing the urge to punch just about everyone.
“Keeping busy?”
I glance up to find he’s rolled to a stop on the other side of the wall and I’ve failed to notice the ear-splitting rumble of his menacing motorcycle.
I’m too shocked to answer him. And maybe Folk sees it, because he doesn’t push, he just waits.
“I’d say it passes the time,” I say eventually. “But it really fucking doesn’t.”
Folk leans forward on his handlebars, gloved hands flexing. “I used to think I was bored. Turns out I wasn’t used to the quiet.”
I can’t imagine riding with the Rebel Kings MC is any quieter than it is around here.
But I get his point. Drunk old men and pickpocketing little shits are a world away from snipers and suicide bombers, and maybe I am perversely missing living my life alongside the constant threat of a violent death.
“What do you know about the fishermen hierarchy out there?”
I gesture vaguely at the ocean.
Folk glances at the sea. “Not a lot. Why?”
“Sol’s having trouble.” I speak freely with Folk, knowing it goes without saying that I can trust him. He was a Marine long before he was ever a biker. “Lost a boat to it a while back, and he’ll lose the other if it gets rammed again.”
“I thought that vessel got caught up in the lifeguard base fire?”
“It did.”
I shoot Folk a dark look. One he interprets with a frown of understanding.
Then he sighs. “The politics down here are complicated.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, if I tell Cam that Sol’s having trouble, he’ll have a lot to say about it. But if Sol wanted help from the club, he’d have asked for it in the first place. He has before.”
“Has he asked since you’ve gone legit?”
“Some of us were always legit, but no,” Folk concedes. “Not that I know of. And he’s right not to. The club doesn’t fight wars anymore. Our kids need their dads.”
Can’t argue with that. I needed my dad too, once upon a time. Not that he’d given a shite.
I glance over Folk’s shoulder to the harem of bikers waiting on him. Different men this time, save the leader— Cam —who seems way more interested in the windows behind me than he does anything else.
Like last time .
It grates on me that he might be looking for Skylar.
Maybe they’re exes.
But…no. Sol already told me they aren’t. And I’m glad of it for no other reason than the president of the Rebel Kings MC is fit as fuck and impossible to ignore.
One of his mates catches me staring.
Dead-eyes me.
I don’t give much of a fuck, but Folk does. He nudges my arm with his fist. “Take a breath.”
“For what?”
“For every reason you have to stay present.”
Coming from him, it sounds so fucking reasonable. I heave a sigh of my own, my gaze drifting to the water again, searching the horizon for the boat that’s been stalking Sol’s smaller vessel from a distance every time I’ve gone to sea with him.
It’s conspicuously absent. Because Oscar is with Sol today, and he’s right about the goons on the black-hulled Mary Gloucester coming nowhere near him when Oscar’s around. Because Oscar lives in a house that belongs to the Rebel Kings.
I turn back to Folk. “Your club is everywhere in this town.”
“Used to be,” Folk counters, eyeing me with the steadiness I expect from a man like him, even if he’s feeding me bullshit.
“I told you the politics are complicated. And personal. Skylar doesn’t want the club anywhere near him, and Cam made a commitment to honour that even before we walked away from Porth Luck. ”
Skylar .
Even if I want to, I can’t escape him either, and I chew on the feeling that leaves me with, even as my brain locks into a different mode. One that has no business rotting in Porth Luck.
It’s a lot to process all at once, and it must show on my face.
Folk drops a hand to my shoulder, the way Jack has started to when he catches me in a daze.
“Listen, I was serious when I said the club can’t help Sol fight a war.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t have him on this.
” He starts his bike, covering his next words with the earth-shaking noise.
“If you want to move on something, get a plan together and come to me. We can help with logistics if nothing else.”
He rumbles away. I go back to patching the wall, ignoring the locals bitching behind me, bitching at my methods.
I’m no bricklayer. It takes me all day, but keeping my hands occupied helps me think—about more than just Skylar, and by the time I take my tools inside, Sol’s who I need to see.
I find him behind the bar, unscathed from a day at sea with Oscar. He thunks a bottle in front of me and moves to walk off.
“Not so fast.” I catch his arm and pull him close. “I need you to do something with the windows.”
On his boat.
Sol frowns. “Why?”
“So next time I sail with you, no fucker knows I’m there.”