12. Skylar
Mal’s up to something.
I haven’t seen him for days, but I know it like I know Sol is acting shady as hell too.
“Where are you going with that?”
Sol jumps, almost dropping what he’s trying to sneak out of the cellar storeroom at my feet. “Fuck. Why are you out already? I thought you’d be in there ages.”
The gym. And it’s a fair assumption, given how I’ve been.
But the last week or so, the compulsion to punish my body for hours on end has been absent—as if spending my free time staring at the ceiling and thinking about Mal is any fucking healthier—and I’m done for the day in time to catch Sol in the act of whatever he’s up to.
I prop a shoulder on the doorframe, drinking water the way any reasonable person would after a thirty-minute workout. “The real question is why you have a sudden need for the one-way window film whoever lived here before was using to perv on the neighbours.”
“Maybe I’m finally chucking it out.”
“Maybe you’re the worst liar who ever lied.”
Sol cringes, shifting the shiny roll under his other arm. “Then don’t make me do it. Just let me go.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why can’t you tell me what it’s for? Don’t you trust me?”
“Of course I do.” Sol’s deep brown gaze swims with emotion. “That’s why I can’t tell you—because Jack trusts you too, and he won’t if he finds out you know stuff he doesn’t.”
We’ve been here before, but not with shit that’s left my friend battered and bruised, with shadows beneath his eyes so dark I see myself in them. This is different, and I know there are other reasons he won’t tell me. Reasons that shouldn’t matter. “You should talk to Cam.”
Sol’s shaking his head before I’ve finished speaking. “I’m not going to do that.”
“Because of me?”
He looks away, confirmation written all over his face, and I hate how it makes me feel.
Guilty.
Dirty.
Broken .
“Sol, I can handle a few bikers hanging around. It’s not like I never see them.”
“It’d be different if they came to make a point. They’d be everywhere for however long it took and I can’t live with that when it’s for something so stupid.”
“Why not? You still have feelings for Cam O’Brian?”
Sol snorts. “I never had feelings for Cam O’Brian. We banged when we were young and dumb. Why does everyone keep bringing it up?”
“Who else brought it up?”
Not Jack.
Sol folds his lips together, as if whoever’s name is on them will get him in a whole heap of trouble.
Mal, then.
Annoyance simmers through me, and not all of it tied to this dead-end conversation.
A growly sigh escapes me and I shake my head.
“Whatever. Just promise me you won’t get fucked-up again on my account, okay?
It doesn’t bother me to have the MC in town.
Wherever my head’s at isn’t their fault, and you matter more to me than any of that anyway. ”
So much truth. And yet I’m lying, and we both know it, even if Sol has no clue what fuels it. Even if he’ll never fucking know?—
Movement by the utility room door saves me from wherever that thought was heading. The open door. I turn, skin tingling as Mal appears, his poker face on point, as if he didn’t hear every word, when my heart already knows he did.
I wait for horror to slither down my spine. For the thrill of his mere presence to become a creeping sensation that sends me back to the gym or worse. But whatever Mal’s heard, his eyes are green and clear, and even in the yellow light of the cellar he’s more gorgeous than I remember.
And I remember everything. How he felt in my arms, his bigger frame anchoring me to my bed, his soft hair slipping through my fingers. His scruffy jaw scratching mine, his rough hands on my bare skin.
His cedar-wood scent that seems to permeate every room upstairs even though he’s rarely present to do more than shower and nap on the couch.
He draws closer, shooting Sol’s bounty a droll glance, his gaze skating over me as I lean harder in the doorway, as if this isn’t the first time we’ve locked eyes since I booted him from my room. Since he left without looking back and I’ve never felt regret like it.
I want him .
And just like that, the shitty disquiet I’m expecting is obliterated by how good it feels just to see Mal’s face.
To see that smirk lurking behind his Gallagher-green stare, his skin tanned deeper from the days he’s spent on Sol’s boat, and climbing all over the pub, fixing everything the rest of us haven’t got round to.
The roof.
The wall.
The dodgy electrics down here that trip the washing machine.
Mal reaches my side.
I have sweat on my skin.
He snakes his tongue over his bottom lip and my blood cranks to a higher point on the mercury, remembering how that lip felt between my teeth. Forgetting everything else.
Forgetting Sol , until he clears his throat, a glimmer of…something in his eyes, as though he’s not sure what he’s just seen.
Fucking hell. This is why I’ve worked so much over the past few weeks, picking up every shift going, spending my rest days by the river instead of at home.
I need my people—I need my family. But it’s hard to deny, even to myself, that I’ve stayed away to avoid Sol’s kind and hopeful heart latching on to what lurks between me and Mal.
I back up from Mal and dip into the gym, snatching my hoodie from the floor and tugging it on before I return to the doorway and squeeze past Sol.
He lets me past and I’m halfway up the stairs when he calls my name.
Sighing, I turn back, ignoring the neon laser of Mal’s amusement and focusing on Sol’s sudden nerves. “What?”
“I’m making dinner in a bit. Sit with us?”
Sit with us.
Never eat with us.
But he’s caught me on a good day, and it’s the best feeling in the world to accept his invitation with a dry nod. “Shout me when it’s ready.”
Two hours later, I jerk awake from a post-shower doze to a knock at my door. “Yeah?”
No one answers. Yawning, I stagger upright and open it. To Mal. Sans his own shirt this time, and I’m too sleep-addled to temper my reaction. “Fuck’s sake. What do you want ?”
Mal smirks and musses my hair the way Jack does. “Dinner. Try smiling, yeah? It suits you.”
He did not.
He did.
Mal ambles away, long legs encased in the cargo shorts he seems to live in, bare feet on the hard wood that floors any room that isn’t a bedroom or bathroom.
It shouldn’t be fucking sexy. But even his retreating back does something to me. Something that has me trailing after him, still rubbing my eyes, all the way to the kitchen where I discover a full house.
Jack.
Sol.
Sev.
Oscar and Aras, his little boy, who’s already apparently familiar enough with Mal to monkey up his legs and climb on his back. “T?ti says you can fly.”
Mal chuckles, and it jars me—it’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh without an edge. “That was nice of your dad. But I’ve lost my wings.”
“We were talking about parachutes,” Oscar supplies from where he stands at the stove with Sol, both of them fussing over fish. “I tried to draw one to show him, it did not go well.”
“You couldn’t show him on your phone?”
Oscar shrugs. “I do not like to teach him with screens. Books, maybe. Or paper photographs.”
Mal’s gaze slides to where Jack sits at the table, counting stock with a pen and paper. Like he expects his brother to sense the weight of his stare.
Sol intervenes, nudging Jack, pointing over his shoulder.
Jack blinks. “Hmm?”
A beat passes that anyone not as obsessed with Mal as I seem to be probably wouldn’t notice. Then Mal says the last thing I expect. “Do you still have those old para photos from the desert?”
“Which desert?”
“The one they sent us to after basic.”
Jack taps his fingers on the table, thinking, glancing at Sol like he so often does when he’s not sure he knows the answer to something.
Sol smiles like they’re the only souls in the room. “Check under your bed.”
Jack rises to obey. I move to let him past and find a shirt in the basket abandoned near the table.
It’s not mine.
I don’t care.
Until I realise it’s Mal’s, but it’s too late. I drag it over my head and ignore the potent jolt of that fucking smirk.
I seek sanctuary opposite Sev at the table. He’s hungover as hell, bloodshot eyes and pale skin, his dark hair messier than mine. “Good night?”
He rubs his lips. “Apparently.”
“How do you find such a banging time in this fucking place?”
“Depends who you bang, doesn’t it?”
I don’t want to know who Sev’s banging. He and Sol have the same troubles in life, but where Sol has imposed lovesick celibacy on himself, Sev has swung the other way, bed-hopping to ease the pain. I’ve lost track of who or what or where, and I don’t want it back.
Mal’s shirt smells of him, obviously. When it should smell of the detergent Jack buys in bulk from the cash-and-carry. When it should feel heavy on my skin, but honestly I’m just fucking warm.
And hungry.
My gaze strays to the stove. Oscar’s the healthiest human who ever lived. Whatever he’s cooking should make me nervous. But wrapped in Mal’s shirt, the low murmur of him talking to Aras filling the quiet, I’m chill enough to fall asleep at this table.
Jack comes back with a leather-bound album I’ve never seen before. He sits at the table and gestures for Mal to bring Aras closer. “I don’t remember when I last looked at these.”
There are enough free seats at the table that Mal could sit anywhere.
He chooses the one next to me and secures Aras on his knee. “I’ve never seen them.”
“How’d you know I had them then?”
“You’ve been threatening to show them to everyone we’ve ever met my whole fucking life.” Mal winces as the curse escapes him, but Aras doesn’t notice. He’s too busy darting his wide-eyed stare between the Gallagher brothers, as fascinated by them as I am.