18. Skylar #3
Mal .
I’m not even surprised. But I’m still wildly unprepared for the splash across the lagoon and his stupid grin as he pops up in front of me.
That fucking grin. It should be illegal. Outlawed. Seared from his handsome face and yeeted at the moon.
Instead it’s right here, twinkling in his eyes, and I want to punch him as hard as I have to fight not to grin back. “Stalking me?”
Mal’s grin morphs to a smirk. “Wasn’t until you got naked.”
“I was behind a tree.”
“Aye, I might have to cut it down. Revenge, like.”
“Have you been with Jack today?”
“For a bit this afternoon. Why?”
“You sound more Killinchy when you’re together.”
Mal spins in the water, turning his face to the sun. Bothered, perhaps. I still have a lot to learn about his tells. And no patience left after a night of no sleep and an overlong shift.
I prod him with my foot, forcing him to look at me. “You don’t like that?”
He shrugs. “All I ever wanted was to be like Jack. Never knew I could do it without trying. It’s fucking weird.”
“Maybe you’re more alike than you think.”
“Do you think so?”
A simple question, but the answer is complicated.
Mal’s warmer than his blunt nature and harsh vernacular make him seem.
But where I’ve always struggled to imagine Jack with a gun and shoot-to-kill order, I don’t have that problem with Mal.
It why it’s so easy to link him with the scorched wound from this afternoon and build a picture that makes sense even with so many missing pieces.
Still… “I think you’re nicer than you want to be. ”
Mal snorts and dunks himself under the water, resurfacing with more splash than necessary as his scarred hands shove his hair from his face.
It’s quite the sight.
Disarming.
But he’ll have to do better than that if he wants to distract me from where this conversation is going. “Did you shoot someone with a flare gun last night?”
Mal lowers his hands, faint amusement lighting his eyes. “That’s a wild fucking question there, Sky.”
“Don’t call me that. Just answer the question. Was it you?”
He shrugs. “Depends how deep you want to go.”
Yup. Still sounds like sex. But I can play that game too. “Deep as you like, I can take it.”
“Now you say that.” Mal drifts closer. “But do you really mean it?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you want to mean it. But you won’t know how you really feel until it happens.”
There’s no if in what he’s saying. Only a promise of when . But as good as the rush in my blood feels against the cool water of the lagoon, the stench of that blackened wound won’t leave my head. If that’s what Mal did to whoever’s harassing Sol, what in the ever-loving fuck did they do to him?
Possibilities dance through my mind, and that wound…the one still out there in the world, untreated and raw, suddenly doesn’t seem so bad. “Tell me what happened last night. And don’t fucking lie to me.”
Mal doesn’t blink. His features don’t shift. But what comes next, isn’t a lie. It’s him, in my face, caging me with his corded forearms as he backs me against the rocks. “Why do you want to know?”
“It was a bad injury. You ever seen what magnesium does to the skin?”
“I’ve seen lots of things.”
“Then you should know better.”
“Like you?” Mal tips his head sideways, goading me with his words, the arch of his neck, and the cedar-wood scent that follows me around these days. “Nah…it’s something else, isn’t it? Something you don’t want anyone else to see.”
“Just you, eh?” I push him away, like I can shove us both clear of the truth he’s reaching for. The quiet, and yet still breathing part of me that knows how I’ll feel when he tells me what he did last night. To who and why . “A flare gun can kill.”
“So?”
“ So… be more fucking careful.”
“I was as careful as they deserved.”
“Who?”
“I’m not telling you that.”
“Why not?”
Mal spins in the water again. “Because you’re fucking dangerous. You think I can’t see it in you?”
“You don’t know me.”
“I don’t need to.”
This time, there’s no challenge in his tone, playful or otherwise, and he swims away from me to the other side of the lagoon.
I don’t chase him. I just watch as he levers his strong body out of the water and die a little as I realise he’s as naked as the day he was born.
The rear view is lethal. Long legs, tanned skin. A tattoo of a haloed parachute on the firm swell of muscle that’s covered by his discarded shorts way too soon.
Damn. So he does have ink, and thinking about it almost reroutes my thoughts from the flayed sensation in my chest. The one that makes me want to rip my heart out and stamp on it with boots I burned years ago.
I wonder if he might leave. Grit my teeth to how the prospect makes me feel and heave myself out of the water, fury still simmering in my veins, but not for Mal. No, it’s older than that.
Too old. Kill it .
But some things never die, do they?
I sit on the rocks, watching Mal as he buttons his shorts and steps into the running shoes I’m as unsurprised to see as I am to know he had something—maybe everything—to do with the hole blasted in that man’s arm.
And he doesn’t leave. He tosses his favourite tee over his shoulder and comes to where I still sit at the edge of the lagoon, my feet in the water.
He crouches and gives me a long appraisal, one that irritates and grounds me at the same time.
I shouldn’t like that he sees me. I shouldn’t find comfort in anything about him, save the heat of the kisses he’s ripped from my mouth too many times now for me to count.
But I do like it. So I let him look. And I get my reward in the hypnotic slide of his hand as he grasps my jaw.
“I don’t want to lie to you. Not today, not ever. But every moment I’ve ever spent with you tells me what you’d do if you knew what fuelled me last night.”
“So it was you?”
“Of course it fucking was. And nothing about it was an accident. In case you’re sitting there thinking my aim is shite.”
“I’m not thinking that.” The water is so still it’s almost a photograph. I feel like I am too, so I kick my feet, rippling the surface. “I’m wondering why you think you know me so well.”
And I can keep wondering, apparently. Mal doesn’t give it up. Instead, he lets his thumb pass over my cheekbone before he rises and the evening sun drowns him in gold.
Before he leaves me with the realisation that he’s left his underwear behind.