12. Skylar #2
I watch Jack carefully, leaning back in my seat to conceal my attention.
Forgetting family history is a trigger for him.
But maybe having Mal living and breathing beside him is as healing as Sol and I hoped it would be.
The glitch in his brain doesn’t hit and he just laughs, a sound that makes Sol emotional enough he ducks behind Oscar and stays there.
Jack opens the album.
Drawn in, Mal edges closer, face alive with mirthful curiosity as he tickles Aras and makes him giggle, and it looks good on him. I like Mal’s edge. If I’m honest, I get off on it. But this softer side of him, it hurts in the best way and I don’t know what to do with that.
So I do nothing with it. I just watch as Oscar and Sol bring food to the table. Fish—always fucking fish. Potatoes. Vegetables. The Lithuanian dumplings and fritters I’d probably like if I could ever put them in my mouth.
If I could stand the collective quiet that descends on the table as men fall on their food.
But it doesn’t matter what kind of day, week, month I’m having, this moment…
it never misses. Tension binds my muscles and bile burns my throat, the sound of knives on plates a rusty screw to my brain.
Horror grips me, cold and familiar. I need out of this room. I need?—
A rough hand grips my thigh.
Mal’s hand.
Under the table.
His warm hand, strong fingers digging into the tight muscle.
Unblinking, I turn my head. He meets my gaze for a split second, but it’s all I need to reanimate. And it shouldn’t be. I don’t want it to be. He’s on my mind enough.
But I can’t fight it. I don’t even try. I leave his hand on my leg and load my plate with fish and potatoes. I eat with the soothing burn of his touch seared into my soul right next to his kiss, and I can’t bring myself to regret any of it.
Just this once.
Like the kiss…right?
Never happening again. And neither will this, so I let it play out and try not to think about who I’ll be when Mal reclaims his hand.
I clear my plate.
I eat more when Sol edges the potatoes my way, blocking out his obvious surprise. I eat until it’s my turn to see the album Aras drops in my lap, and it’s everything I need to ignore the fullness in my belly.
The album is of photographs taken on military film cameras. Grainy and blurred, the images seem older than they are, a snapshot of another world. Faces I don’t recognise until I find Jack, leaner than I’ve ever known him, even after his injury, grinning and happy.
I turn the page and find him smiling again, but it really is another world this time. He’s in the sky, gear strapped to him, no parachute yet, but it comes in the next photo, and the next, and the next.
Then I realise it’s not him. Somehow I’ve missed his face morphing into Mal’s, and it has me skipping back until I find where they switched and discover every page left in the album is all Mal.
Parachuting.
Skydiving.
Passed out drunk with twat scrawled on his forehead.
“What does that say?” Aras peers over my shoulder.
“Wally.” I flip the page. “Like Uncle Sev when he drinks the dark beer.”
Sev chucks a fritter at me. Like he does anyone who makes fun of his propensity for losing his clothes every time he has one pint too many of the local porter.
He’s never chucked one at me, though, and I see the regret in his eyes as it leaves his hand. The panic as it flies across the table, a split second from hitting my face.
The shock as it’s snatched from the air by the hand Mal rips from my leg.
It happens so fast no one else notices, save Oscar. He beckons Aras to him and takes him to the sink to clean his dinner from his face. The dinner he’s eaten on Mal’s lap when I know this kid is shy as hell with strangers.
Mal lowers his closed fist, opening it to reveal the fritter he somehow hasn’t crushed. “These are good. You want it?”
There’s enough noise in the room that no one hears Mal’s question. But the words reverberate in my head like he’s bellowed them in my ear, and my stomach twists, already rebelling.
No.
No .
I fight it.
Mal watches, not giving an inch, and I want to throat-punch him as much as I miss his hand on my leg, the casual touch I mourn like a severed limb.
I give him a flat look. “You take your meds today, Mal?”
It’s hard to tell if he misses a beat, but I know he’s too sharp for the challenge in my dead tone to pass him by.
Too clever.
His gaze narrows a touch and he tilts his head just enough to up the ante. “Twice.”
Twice ? Forced apathy and concern war for dominance.
But I already know he’s not going to tell me shit if I don’t eat the fritter he’s still brandishing like a fucking prize.
And I shouldn’t care. I should be gone from this table already, hiding away in the sanctuary of my room, playing chicken with the bathroom.
Sleeping , before I go back to work for another early overtime shift.
Trouble is, I do care, and I tell myself it’s because I have to.
That I owe it to Sol for making him believe he can’t tell me whatever’s putting him in danger.
To Jack for reasons my fucked-up brain hasn’t thought of yet.
But the truth is, I care because I’m losing the will to force myself not to, and the guard I patch over every time he gets too close…
it gives way like the snap of a weak bone.
I have to know he’s okay.
I have the fritter out of his hand and in my mouth before the devil in me has a chance to question it.
It’s still warm and probably tastes good, but it’s cardboard to me—cardboard and grease, and only a decade of practice keeps it where it needs to be long enough to swallow it down.
This heavy thing that sits in my throat like a wet rag while Mal watches, the rest of the room still oblivious to a battle of wills I’m not going to lose.
He offers me a napkin.
I ignore it, my face neutral to anyone who might glance our way. Attention I won’t notice for as long as Mal looks at me the way he is right now.
For as long as he keeps me waiting for his side of our silent bargain.
I wipe my mouth and drink the water someone’s placed in front of me.
If I break eye contact with Mal, I’ll know who.
But I’m not going to do that, and I can tell by the wry fold of his lips he knows it.
A half grin soothing the barbed wire I’ve swallowed enough to keep me in my seat, and I wonder if he knows he has more power over me in this moment than I have over myself.
Most people wouldn’t have a clue. I’m a solid wall of fuck off and no one’s ever come close to breaking through.
Mal, though. He’s different. The way he leans on that invisible wall as if we have all the time in the world.
The way he stares me down like he’s already seen it all, and that’s the part that bends my brain.
I’ve spent my whole adult life behind that wall.
And now I’m starting to wonder if I built it with hollow bricks.
I’m starting to wonder a lot of things.
Mainly, how someone so addictive can be so annoying. Mal’s taking his time on purpose, testing me. But he’s shit out of luck if he thinks I’m going to bolt from the table in front of a room full of people. In front of a fucking child. I’m stronger than that—I’ve had to be.
Or I’d be dead.
Dark thoughts, but amusement tugs at me, and I feel like kicking him.
Like kissing him, with the kind of violence that would knock him off his chair and tumble us both to the floor.
It’s hard to remember he’s not some bloke in a bar.
That he’d have me pinned before I even came close to getting another taste of his lush mouth.
Still. The fantasy lingers, and I realise maybe I want that fight as much as his kiss. That maybe with Mal they’re one and the same.
“ You ,” he finally says, jolting me back to the present, his answer to my unspoken question barely a murmur as he rises from his seat. “When you went out and when you came home. You fuck with my heart, Sky. And I don’t mind it—I don’t mind it at all.”