19. Mal #2
I’m going hard for levity, but Skylar doesn’t smile. He eats as much as he’s going to and takes the plates to the dishwasher. The innards of the air fryer get chucked in too, and I decide I like the freaky little machine.
“I’m going for a shower.”
I’m still at the table, missing his perfect skin. “Why are you telling me that?”
“What?”
I lean back in my seat, take in his shuttered features, and miss him even more. “You don’t usually tell me your bathroom plans.”
“I’m being polite.”
“Why?”
Something that looks horribly like panic flares in those smoke and metal eyes. It’s gone in the split second it takes him to replace it with a piercing glare, but it wrenches my gut.
It’s not him you’re missing. It’s something else.
“Sky—”
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
He spins around, and exits the kitchen fast enough to give me whiplash.
And I should be used to it. We’re both fucked-up.
Every interaction we share reflects that, and my rational brain accepts it.
My irrational brain wants to beat down the bathroom door as I hear it close a few seconds later, the shower drowned out by the music playing in the living room, and it’s another struggle I’m still not used to.
The dishwasher hums, unobtrusive and alien.
It gets under my skin, and so I make myself stay , for no other reason than to stop me loitering in the hallway for a glimpse of Skylar. To stop me listening for him like the stalker he’s already accused me of being today.
I close my eyes to the sound of discordant waves and rowdy laughter from downstairs, but somehow my pulse is louder, and fuck , I just need it all to stop.
Logic deserts me. The table groans as I shove my way free of it, wooden legs scraping the floor, and I stride into the living room to kill the music.
I rip the speaker from the shelf, but whatever methodical search skills I possess…they’re gone too. The off switch eludes me, and anger far hotter than last night becomes a storm that’s so beyond a red mist a manic laugh rips from my chest with destructive intent.
This fucker. The speaker. It’s going out the window. The closed window. Bring me salty wind and shattered glass, I don’t give a shit, and my muscles bunch, ready to hurl the thing into another fucking realm, my breath, fast and wrong, but without the sickly rush of a broken heart.
No.
This is just rage , and I know what it is—where it’s come from. How to stop it, if I tap into the decades of training I’ve had on how to acclimate to life beyond constant war.
But those kinds of mechanisms feel out of reach.
Or maybe I’m not trying. Maybe I want to peel loose from my skin and smash up the sanctuary my brother and his friends have given me. Bleed their kindness and affection dry until there’s nothing left but the scratchy emptiness I save for my dad.
I flex my fingers. My hands are steady, but I feel like slamming my head against a brick wall. Or jumping from a plane without the fucking chute, and no training in the world could prepare me for how sudden that feeling is. Like God took a pick axe to my emotions and obliterated the good ones.
Dazed, I back up from the speaker, so fixated on my hand I don’t notice the music has stopped of its own accord.
A quiet beep rips my gaze to the coffee table.
It’s my phone. I put it there this morning when I was thinking about calling Moth back.
Thinking, not doing.
The phone beeps again, and it startles me into motion. I cross the small room and pick it up, frowning at the messages from a number I haven’t bothered to assign contact information to.
Unknown: Great to hear from you, man. Attaching job specs to the next message, be good to meet before we set up anything formal. Can you get to Madrid? I’m there with our primary client next week - Chris
Madrid.
That elusive rational brain knows the Spanish capital is a couple of hours away, but in this moment, it might as well be another fucking planet.
I open the next message and the convoluted PDF that comes with it, outlining the terms of employment. Most of it passes me by, especially the money stuff. I don’t need it—I don’t care, a position I know is a fucking privilege. Only a couple lines a few pages deep jump out at me.
Frequent international travel is a standard requirement of this role. While assigned to a client, you should not expect to spend significant time at your personal residence.
Chris has added a note.
Your CP experience shortens the onboarding. Could have you deployed within a couple of weeks if you pass eval.
Eval.
Evaluation.
CP.
Close protection.
“You really are leaving.”
The flat words are quiet, wrapped up in the rough northern brogue that haunts my best and worst daydreams. But that Skylar’s uttered them from less than a foot from me is deafening.
I didn’t hear him come up on me and read my fucking messages over my shoulder .
And for the first time since…fuck, I don’t even know, I didn’t sense him either. No shift in the air. No tingling skin. As if I’ve fallen off a cliff while he’s been in the shower, a slip that’s happening often enough now that it’s starting to feel fucking normal.
I find my voice. “I was always just passing through. You know that.”
Skylar’s face does something subtle and complex.
Something I don’t like at all .
And maybe if my own head was screwed on right, I’d know what it was.
What it is .
But all I see is a phantom hand dragging the last bolt from the door, and I move as if the profoundly difficult moments between us never happened. As if I have all the time in the fucking world when something so tacit is coming apart inside us both.
I lay my hand on his bare chest, his skin damp from the shower this time, not the lagoon, and he still feels cold.
Lost , a distant voice in my head whispers.
Like you . But we’re a mess of bruised souls and bad choices, and this live wire between us, this fucking ache that won’t quit, it’s the only tangible thing that still makes sense.
To me.
To him.
I push Skylar out of the living room and into the hallway.
He lets me, tension rolling off his coiled muscles, barbed and strong. He lets me back him all the way into his bedroom, and only then do I stop and let the thrumming air between us settle.
Outside, the clouds darken, as if they’re holding their breath. Skylar just stares, danger sparking in his flinty eyes, as if he can’t decide between living and dying.
And fuck if I don’t know how that feels.
Need him closer.
My body gets the memo, and my palms slide down his chest, curling around his ribcage, narrowing the minimal distance between us, letting him know I’m here whatever his choice.
That we can burn alive in this fucking moment, or keep dying this slow death until I’m gone from this place and he can get back to an easier way of living without me.
I bring my forehead to his and match his unblinking gaze.
Skylar takes a slow breath and clarity returns to his glittering stare. “Shut the fucking door.”