19. Mal
I don’t mean to run into Skylar at the lagoon. Or to invade a space he clearly uses to unwind away from the carnage of the Joker. It just kinda happens, and even as I retreat from him without mauling his mouth, I have no regrets.
About any of it.
I’m wondering why you think you know me so well.
Until that moment, I didn’t. I’ve been too caught up in wanting him.
In sleeping in his bed. In fitting only a fraction of the pieces together from all the things no one talks about.
And even now, as I jog home with the setting sun, I’m colossally aware the instinct I had by the lagoon barely scratches the surface.
But I’m good at reading men. I’ve had to be to live this long, and Skylar?
We’re more alike than I realised. I saw the switch in him—the one I’ve been training out of myself since I was sixteen years old.
The one that burned to life as he thought harder about why I inflicted that injury on someone than perhaps he had before.
The one that promised untamed violence. And that’s the piece that doesn’t fit.
Because Skylar’s a healer.
I make it back to the Joker and stride through the locals’ bar, loitering only long enough to listen out for gossip about what happened on the water last night. But I hear nothing except bitching about Brexit and take my cue to fuck off upstairs.
The flat is cool and quiet. On the coffee table, I see why, my phone lit up with a message from Sol.
Sol: Taken Jack to my parents. Back later xx
Something that’s almost relief washes over me. I lost most of the day napping in Skylar’s bed, and I’ve run myself back to life since then. But I’m exhausted in ways that have nothing to do with physical fatigue, and I welcome the silence for as long as it takes my thoughts to return to Skylar.
He looked tired .
And I’m kidding myself about having no regrets.
Wish I hadn’t left him .
Wish my brother was home too. I’ve got used to him shuffling up beside me and peering at my face.
His hands on my shoulders, one stronger than the other, but warmer than they’ve ever been.
The quiet starts to get to me, and I realise I miss all the people I live with.
Family. Friends. Whatever Skylar is to me, an entity so scarily undefinable I don’t even fucking try.
I retreat to the bathroom and wash the lagoon from my skin. When I get out, I hear music and assume Jack and Sol have come home, and relief pours through me again. But it’s real this time, and Folk Whitlock’s mellow voice becomes a ghost in my head.
Empty space...if you don’t fill it with the right things, the wrong things find you.
I’m starting to believe him, and it has nothing to do with spiky boat trips and flare guns.
Or Skylar. Because there’s nothing wrong with the lift in my chest as I drift out of my room to find the noise wasn’t Sol and Jack coming home.
To the sight of him as shirtless as when I left him, tipping a broom around the living room to the soundtrack of a band that sounds more like Sol than him.
“This isn’t metal.”
Skylar spares me a glance. “It’s Sev’s housework playlist.”
Sev then. Close enough. “Is it fucking mandatory?”
We parted on such weird terms, I half expect him to blank me. But Skylar laughs, and it’s like seeing the sun for the first time after spending a week in a flooded mountain cave. “I’ve never heard anyone say fuck as much as you.”
“And you’ve never really heard me say it.”
Skylar snorts and tosses something at me. “You left them on the grass.”
Underwear. Mine . This is what I meant about him being dangerous. Add in the dazed circus my mind has settled into and I don’t stand a fucking chance.
Skylar goes back to his broom, reminding me it’s my turn to do this shit in a few days and I need to get on it before Jack does it for me. Reminding me how entrancing it is watching Skylar do mundane things like sweep floors and wipe dust from the TV.
It’s hard to look away, even with my underwear half in my face.
I free myself from the boxers and add them to the tiny pile in my room.
I need new clothes, but the prospect of hauling more than I have wherever I go next puts me off buying more.
That and I just don’t fucking want to. I like the old ones.
Frayed collars, bleached cotton. Threadbare as hell, but they’re mine.
Moulded to my body. I don’t know who I am without them.
Deep thoughts about ropey shirts and shorts, but here we are. Here I am, spacing out in my room when I have a front row seat to a hot blond being all domestic and shit.
I go back to the living room. Skylar’s done with the broom and he’s fucking around with a mop. I’m in the way, but I need him. And he seems to know it as he spares me a glance.
“All right?”
“Aye.”
He studies me a moment longer. Then inclines his head towards the kitchen. “Go make dinner.”
Feels like a dare more than an order, but I’m open to both. I move to the kitchen and open the fridge. So much fucking fish, but I’m not in the mood for mackerel, and I’m out of ideas for anything that isn’t the same masterpiece I made Jack last night.
“Don’t leave Mal alone with them beans.” Vinnie jumps on my back, knocking the stick I’m about to poke our dinner with out of my hand. “This bellend would eat rocks if we left him unsupervised.”
A cool hand grazes my spine. “Not hungry?”
It’s hard to be anything as Skylar fills the tight space beside me at the fridge and peers inside.
His hair is still damp from the lagoon, but his mood is different, like he’s left it all there, and my subconscious latches onto it, the way it always does around him.
As if when he’s this close, his state of mind dictates every breath I take.
Answer the question.
Am I hungry?
No. But I could eat. I should. And so should he.
There’s bacon.
I reach for it.
Skylar redirects me to the chicken, and I let it happen.
“What else do you want?”
I expect him to claim the potatoes. But he points to the vegetable drawer.
“Pick some shit from there.”
He leaves me with a drawer that’s wall to wall green. I grab broccoli and some leafy thing and take it to the counter where Skylar’s already prodding at some contraption I figured was a rice cooker.
Apparently not. “What is it then?”
“Air fryer.”
“Looks like a fucking dalek.”
Skylar rolls his eyes. He presses more buttons and dumps chicken and veg in drawers, and I try not to watch him as he handles food items like they’re live explosives. Endure the weird little machine and its obnoxious beeping while Skylar cleans the windowsills.
“Those on your list? Or are you keeping busy before the broccoli comes to get you?”
“Shut the fuck up.”
There’s no bite in the words, only a request that I heed as he plates up dinner and we go to the table and take the same seats we always have.
Only then does he falter, and it’s subtle. If I hadn’t been so locked into him since the day we met, I might’ve missed the low-key tension threading through him. The tic in his jaw and his jittery leg under the table.
The leg thing I’ve seen before, so I do what I did then, and drop a hand on his thigh, mindful that he doesn’t seem to notice. But the tremor there…it doesn’t fade, and he makes a low sound that’s drenched in wretched frustration.
“You don’t have to babysit me.”
“I’m not.” I take my hand back and move closer to him, draping my arm loosely around him instead, using the wall to keep the contact a fraction of what my needy self wants to be. “And even if I am, it’ll only redress the balance from the freakshow I brought to your bed last night.”
“Because this is a freakshow too?”
“No, because I’m the fucking idiot who always says the wrong thing.”
“Wouldn’t be if you ever shut the fuck up.”
He’s said that twice now. He must mean it.
I take his advice and start eating, keeping my gaze to myself while the rigidity in Skylar’s set jaw battles the terror in the rest of his body as he tries to outrun whatever makes him this way. A race he eventually wins as he leans into the arm I have around him and picks up his fork.
But still I stay quiet, knowing how well-meant kindness can rip a struggling man wide open.
I eat my dinner, and when I’m done, I sink into how good it feels to have his body against mine.
I let my fingertips brush his bare arm, rough callouses to his soft skin, and try not to contemplate how it feels every time I see him like this when I have no room in my fucked-up heart to love anyone else.
“Do you feel better today?”
I trace more ink on Skylar’s lean bicep. “Aye. Fucking beer. It’s never been that bad before.”
“Never?”
“Not since I came here.”
“What happened before that?”
Food turns to ash in my stomach. Is that how he feels before he’s even eaten it? “Lots of things happened, and now I’m here. And I’m fucking sorry about last night. I know better than to drink like that. I read the leaflets.”
“That all you’re sorry for?”
“If you’re talking about some dickhead’s carpet burn, then aye, dead on. I’m not sorry for that at all.”
Skylar chews slowly. Then he swallows with a faint smirk, and I like it enough not to change the subject. “I need to tell you something,” he says.
“Go on.”
“The patient didn’t stay for treatment, and he gave a fake name. But I’ll know him if I see him again, so everything you’re doing to keep this from me, it’s not going to last.”
I’d figured as much. And that he might notice the Mary Gloucester’s hiatus from Porth Luck’s harbour. “Maybe you’ll have calmed down by then, eh?”
Skylar holds my gaze. A beat passes before he speaks again. “You’re not worried they’ll report what you did?”
“Round these parts?” I shake my head. “Porth Luck folk don’t grass. A lot has changed down here, but not that.”
“What if they come back?”
“Then maybe I’ll let you shoot them instead.”