18. Skylar
I watch Mal for hours while he sleeps, counting his pulse, tracking every breath. Pretending the faint scent of firearms clinging to his hair and skin isn’t there.
He’s a quiet sleeper. It’s not hard to imagine a reality where he’s too quiet , and it keeps me up when I need rest before a shift that starts at the crack of dawn.
I wake him an hour before I need to leave. By now, I’m sure the beer he drank last night has filtered through his blood enough for him to take the medication stashed in a drawer beside the rock he chucked at my window all those weeks ago.
Like a good soldier, he snaps to, gaze darting around my room, taking it all in. But I stop him as he starts to rise, my hand on his chest, where it’s been all night. “Not yet.”
Mal lies back again, swallowing the pill I slip between his lips. He frowns as I hold a water glass to his mouth, but tough fucking shit.
He drinks until I take the glass away, fatigue already creeping back into his tired green eyes. “You’re leaving.”
His voice is rough with sleep, and lacks the inflection of a question.
I nod anyway. “Work. Early shift.”
“Are you all right?”
“Me?”
Mal shifts a little, wincing. “Some idiot barged into your bed last night.”
“It’s fine.”
“Did I piss you off?”
“No.”
Mal looks as if he might say more, but a shiver rattles him, and I remember what he said about the meds making him cold.
“Get in the bed.”
He stares as though I’ve suggested he streak across the town square. Which makes me think of him naked, which I absolutely don’t have time for.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I say, blocking it out. “So you might as well be warm.”
I leave him for the ten minutes it takes to roll through the shower and take control of my hair. It needs cutting, but I haven’t cared enough to get round to doing it. Need to eat. So does Mal, which means I’m the worst person on earth for him to wake up to.
Still, when I’m done in the shower and halfway dressed, I try.
Breakfast is one of my better meals. No one thinks twice about a bowl of yoghurt or oats, but Mal needs more than that.
I cut bananas and raid Sol’s stash for the nuts he buys for Jack.
Brain food. Won’t do me no harm either, eh?
Whatever. I’m glad of it, his gentle voice in my head. Sol’s been my friend a long time.
I raid my stash of electrolytes and take both bowls back to my room.
Mal’s stuck one leg under my duvet. The rest of him is still rebelliously on top of the covers, but I take the small win and hand over breakfast.
He eyes it. “Am I allowed to sit up?”
“If you drink this and behave.”
Mal catches the electrolytes I toss him. “That could mean fucking anything.”
It really could. But I actually need him to sit up slowly , because that’s what he needs, and nothing else really matters.
Mal gets the memo and levers himself upright, tipping the electrolytes down his throat. In the low light of the early morning, he’s still as deathly pale as last night, but I can see he’s doing better by the challenging grin he sends me. “Look at that. I’m alive.”
“Shut the fuck up and eat.”
His gaze strays to my bowl. “Don’t like bananas?”
I shrug. It’s not a lie if you don’t lie.
Mal, though, tired as he is, he’s that dangerous mix of observant and perceptive, and he knows .
He moves over, patting the bed. “Sit with me?”
No.
I need to fuel my body from the safety of the doorway. So he won’t notice if it chokes me. Or if I leave half of it to wash down the sink.
But whatever part of me remains irrevocably attracted to Mal betrays me, and I sit on the edge of the bed by his outstretched legs, the warmth of his thigh seeping into my back.
Mal starts eating.
Somehow, I do too, and I don’t even care that he’s watching me. Or that he sits up a little more, bringing us closer together.
“You want some of mine?”
I swallow the yoghurt in my mouth. “Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Try and fix me.” If it was that easy, I’d have done it myself.
“I’m not trying to fix you, Sky. I fucking hate bananas.”
Sky . He’s going to kill me with that.
I turn my head to look at him face on. To watch him eat around the offending fruit in his bowl. “You really don’t like them?”
He scrunches his mouth up. “Fuck no. It’s the only food my dad ever bought that didn’t come in a tin, and I used to hide them behind the radiators. Ask Jack if you don’t believe me.”
I do believe him. Mal’s too efficient to concoct such elaborate bullshit. “Don’t eat them then. But you should probably find another source of potassium. You need electrolytes in your diet.”
“So they tell me.” Mal takes a scoop of his breakfast, just yoghurt and banana on the spoon. “But you do too, right?”
Of course I do.
Everyone does. But my heart doesn’t beat like Mal’s.
Not yet .
I take the spoon from him and make a split-second choice.
Him or me .
I choose him and hold the spoon up to his mouth, a challenge of my own in the words I don’t say. A bargain. I will if you will . And the muted horror in Mal’s sage-green eyes tells me all I need to know about his honesty.
He steels himself and lets me slide the spoon between his lips, an instant gag I know all too well wrenching his throat.
“Fucking hell,” he grinds out before sealing his mouth with his palm.
I laugh, and it feels good. It feels easy to take my turn, and that’s how life goes for the short minutes it takes to clear his bowl and mine.
Easy and fucking hilarious.
Mal remains unimpressed, but something else simmers behind the annoyance in his gaze, something that has me looking anywhere but at his face.
“I need to go.”
He drains the water bottle I brought from the kitchen. “How long’s your shift?”
“Till four.”
“Then what?”
“What do you mean?”
Mal wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “I want to know if you’re coming home.”
“Why?”
He doesn’t answer. Just shifts on my bed, like he might get up.
My hand is on his chest in a flash, pushing him back down.
He lets me. I know that.
Maybe because he wants to do what happens next.
Flat on his back, his fingers clamped around my wrist, he drags me down, pulling my body flush to his.
His leg curls around my hips and I realise he’s as comfortable like this as he is on top of me. That he has vers vibes for days?—
Stop .
I don’t give a shit how Mal likes to fuck.
We’re not fucking.
But it’s a tough fact to swallow as he fits us together and rubs his jaw on mine, his free hand skating up my spine like he owns it. His mouth right fucking there as a rumbly whisper feathers my cheek.
“Thank you.”
It’s not necessary. His thanks or the obscene perfection of how our bodies slot together.
I should thank him . For the nutrients hitting my blood stream without the suffocating noose of wrong chasing them down.
For the wry sense of home I’ve come to feel every time he touches me like this and the jolt of desire that eviscerates any lingering need to lose my loaded breakfast.
We’re both wearing sweatpants. There’s no hiding the effect this proximity has on us. I feel him hard against me and madness has me flexing my hips, muffling his answering groan with my mouth. With a kiss that’s a million miles from the sweetness we shared in the sunshine at the lagoon.
It’s rough.
Biting.
It’s brief as common sense doesn’t take too long to return to me with the reason he’s in my bed in the first place hanging over us like a huntsman with a bow.
Panting, I wrench my mouth free. “You’re fucking dangerous.”
Mal just grins. “You want me in your bed, this is what happens.”
“I’m leaving you in my bed, so good luck with that.” I pull away and out of his arms, even as every instinct I have screams at me to stay . “Get some more sleep before you try and get up.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be.”
Mal’s gaze flickers and he says no more as he watches me get my shit together to leave. He’s still only half in my bed. It shouldn’t matter. There’s every chance he’ll be on the beach running before I’m halfway to work.
But I want him in my bed.
I need it.
Or I’ll never leave.
I cross the room, returning to his side, and nudge his leg with my knee. “In.”
He smirks. Resisting. Like he wants me to say it again. Like he wants me to lay hands on him and make him. And honestly, I’m not against it in the fantastical world my imagination lives in these days.
Mal’s stronger than me. Skilled. Trained. His body honed for battle. But I’d go down swinging, and I know I’d enjoy losing if it gave me more precious time this close to him.
Time I don’t have this morning.
I need him in my bed and I need to go , two things that shouldn’t co-exist in the same lifetime.
Mal blinks first. He relents, catching me off guard, and slips his leg under the sheets, the covers bunched at his waist as fatigue seems to sweep him again. “Fuck. Your bed is like a tranquilliser dart.”
I don’t want to know how he knows what a tranquilliser dart feels like. That means admitting I want to know everything about him, and I don’t. I can’t . I reach over him, claim my phone from the windowsill, and stuff it in my pocket.
Mal inhales, a faint smirk lighting his tired features.
I roll my eyes. “Don’t sniff me, you fucking heathen.”
“You smell good.”
“Shut the fuck up.” It’s hard enough to leave him as it is. If he starts being cute, I’m fucked. “And stay hydrated today, okay? No more beer.”
Mal nods, hands twitching, as if he wants to reach for me again, and I make it easy for him. I step back, out of reach, almost groaning at the strain of not kissing him one last time. Just this once has turned into a fucked-up game of just one more , and it needs to fucking stop .
We need to stop.
Him.
Me.
Definitely me.
My back hits the door. I adjust, gripping the handle and opening it enough to slip through. I’m almost gone when he calls my name.
When he calls me Sky again.
I turn back. “What?”
Mal has shifted onto his side, his eyes already hooded and soft. “You’re so fucking hot.”