22. Skylar
Just this once.
A mantra that comes to mean absolutely nothing. That first night, I sit with Jack and choke down the toast he makes me, while he tries to stop himself going back to work.
Back to Sol .
He fails, drawn to his best friend like the tide to the moon, and that night I’m glad of it, despite the pain their uncharted heartscape causes them both.
I go to bed.
I sleep.
I go back to work.
Two nights later, Mal comes to my room.
We don’t talk. We fuck, and I feel like I’m losing as much as I’m gaining.
Because nothing so messy can ever be a cure, and the shaking inside me—it comes back.
I can’t keep my food down. I mainline protein shakes.
Fill my body with water. Stay out of the gym, because it just might kill me.
I eat the meals Sol puts in front of me.
I fucking smile . But I crave Mal’s touch with a different hunger.
A sharp and constant yearning I can’t escape.
His mouth.
His dick.
His penetrating stare as he holds me against the wall and takes everything I have left, then tells me how much he wants to smoke.
We like walls.
Doors.
The shower.
His body fits mine as if he was made for me, and the biggest mistake I’ve made for a long time is too fucking good to give up.
Friday evening, my shift gets cut short when a dementia patient whacks me with his walking stick. A junior doc patches me up, but he’s not built for A&E, and I drive home with blood oozing from my temple.
It’s not my best look. I park my car and get out hoping no one I give a fuck about catches sight of me before I clean this shit up.
Doesn’t happen.
Jack spots me and vaults the wall Mal rebuilt with his bare hands a few weeks ago. He’s at my side before I’ve shut my car door. “What happened?”
I tell him.
He winces. “That place is as bad as any warzone I remember.”
I doubt that, but I get his point. A&E is a unique beast, no day ever the same. It’s why it called to me in nursing school, muscle memory from a place far worse. “It’s not as bad as it looks.”
My face, not A&E.
Jack’s unconvinced and uses his body to block me as we slip through the back door to the abandoned kitchen.
He finds first aid supplies and I let him clean up the gash on my hairline, encouraging the confidence he has that he can. It’s not misplaced. Like Mal, Jack’s SAS. Once upon a time he had the field medicine skills of a top-level paramedic and I don’t think he’s lost them.
“Who taped this?”
“Dr. Squeamish.”
Jack’s concentrating too hard to grin, but I catch the humour in his gaze as he peels the botch job from my temple and drops it onto the counter next to where I’m sitting. “Marc wasn’t in?”
“Not today. This wouldn’t have happened if he was.”
Truth. Marc handles rowdy elderly patients as well as he does brutal trauma cases. But this isn’t the first battle scar I’ve brought home from work and it won’t be the last.
Jack cleans the wound and my mind starts to wander as music drifts in from the bars. Shanty singing and the dancing beat of a drum Sol calls a crowdy-crawn.
“Lively tonight?”
Jack hums. “Aye. They had a good day on the Sirona . Sold out in the harbour.”
“No market tomorrow then?”
“Sol said he might go back out if the wind shifts and he’s not too leathered.”
“Alone?”
The frown line Jack carries these days deepens a touch. “You think he shouldn’t?”
“I don’t know anything about fishing.”
Jack takes a breath to question what exactly I do know. And it’s been a long time coming for me to tell him a whole lot of nothing except that his brother fixed a year-long problem in less than a month.
“What—”
He’s cut off by a tornado.
Unruly hair.
Tanned limbs.
A glare just like the ones he’s sometimes capable of, but a hundred times worse.
Mal steps in front of Jack and wraps his hand around my jaw like he owns it. “Who did this to you?”
“No one.” I knock his wrist, not shocked it’s like hitting an iron bar. “It was an accident.”
“Where?”
“At work.”
Scepticism invades Mal’s already intense gaze. “If this happened in a hospital, why do you look like you’ve escaped the fucking apocalypse?”
“Because most doctors are shit nurses.”
Someone— Sol —chuckles from somewhere beyond Mal, but I can’t see him. The mood Mal’s brought to this has widened his athletic frame, blocking everyone but him from my field of vision, and I’m still bleeding, the mess Jack’s cleaned up reviving in a warm ooze down my face.
I reach for a fresh wad of gauze, but Mal’s already there, shifting to open up the room as he beats me to the first aid kit.
He picks up where Jack left off, working with skilled precision to clean me up all over again and tape the wound shut.
His competence shouldn’t turn me on.
It doesn’t.
It doesn’t.
And I don’t mind the discomfort of the gash in my head. The blood. Or the stinging pressure of the tape. But he’s standing between my legs, his cedar-wood scent all over me, and I’m not prepared for how dizzying it is to endure this shit around other people.
Around Jack.
Oscar.
Sol, who’s watching us—watching Mal —with more scrutiny than I can withstand when I’m this frayed.
“When did this happen?”
I tear my gaze from where Sol has poured himself onto the other disused counter. Meet Mal’s head on and I’m unprepared for that too. “What?”
“When?” he repeats.
I do the maths between catching the metal stick with my head, the junior doctor’s piss poor attempt to treat me, and the messy journey home. “An hour ago. Stop fucking staring at me.”
Now he’s done patching me up, I find the will to shove my way out of his orbit. At least I try and find myself relearning how uncompromising Mal is when his jaw sets like granite.
“Move.”
Mal ignores me and says something too quick and fast for me to grasp.
Jack steps out, leaving us with Oscar’s impenetrable poker face and Sol’s open book of what the fuck is going on?
He has questions, I can tell. And he’s drunk enough to ask them. But for the second time tonight, I’m saved by an uninvited intervention.
Movement at the back door has Mal whipping around, putting himself between the rest of us and whoever’s stupid enough to take him on.
Or more than capable of it, as it turns out.
Folk Whitlock.
And he’s not alone. Another Rebel King lurks behind him, and on point to how my evening is going, it’s the face I’m least in the mood for.
Saint Malone: Cam O’Brian’s shadow and quiet as hell, but so preternaturally perceptive he can probably tell I let Mal bang me against the shower wall two nights ago by sniffing the fucking air.
It’d be easy to hate him if I didn’t love him.
Lucky for me, he’s also kinda shy. He stays outside, and Folk inclines his head, inviting Mal to step out with him.
Mal nods.
Fuck that .
I laugh, bitterness spilling out of me, and he stops.
“What?”
I ignore him and slide from the counter, intent on walking the fuck out of here. But Mal’s too quick for me.
Oscar leaves.
Mal kicks the interior door shut behind him, trapping me and Sol in the kitchen unless we want to push past Folk and Saint. “Fine. We’ll talk in here.”
He says it like a dare. One he’s so fucking sure I’ll back away from. But maybe that stick hit me harder than I thought, because I don’t leave. I lean against the counter, kicking a battered Van to the shiny metal surface behind me. “This about the dickhead he shot with a flare gun?”
I spit that at Folk.
He shrugs. Easy, and so fucking nice I want to stab him. “Probably. Sure you want to stay?”
“I’d be gone if I wasn’t.”
Folk accepts that—of course he does. This shit is a way of life for him, one he chose. He wasn’t cursed by it from birth.
Like Cam.
His siblings.
Like me .
I’m not sure how much Folk knows about my history with the club. Saint Malone, though, he knows it all— almost —and his shadowy presence at the back door is as familiar to me as Jack and Sol. It settles me in ways it shouldn’t as Folk takes his cue and turns back to Mal.
“You did a good number on those Couch boys. They panicked and burned their boat the night you hit back at them.”
Mal props a shoulder on the closed kitchen door, admitting nothing. “So?”
“So, you might have a different problem on your hands now. We’ve heard their old man has been stumbling around strip clubs, offering up a shit ton of cash to anyone who wants to torch this place with you in it.”
Dark humour turns Mal’s steady gaze sinister. “Me, eh?”
“If you like.” Folk is less amused. “Arson attacks aren’t as accurate as any kind of gun. And it only takes one idiot to kill everyone you care about.”
“Where’s the strip club?”
“I can do you better than that,” Folk says. “We found their house in the Cotswolds if that’s how you want to play it. But maybe you should think on it first.”
Mal grunts, processing.
Folk glances at me, and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake forcing this conversation into the open.
If Folk would feel freer to give Mal better advice if me and Sol weren’t here.
“Either way,” he says eventually. “Call me before you move on anything. The offer still stands—we’re not a boots on the ground operation anymore, but we can help with logistics. ”
“Or with any mad flaws a one-man plan is going to have.”
Saint says that from the door, stepping into the light again, glancing between me and Mal, then regarding Mal with a tilted stare Sol and I know is a warning.
I’m willing to bet Mal sees it.
But he’s dangerous too. He regards Saint right back and a stalemate stretches out. One Folk breaks with a droll grin. “We’re heading out. Be safe.”
He exits the kitchen, taking Saint with him. I wait for the roar of whatever horde of bikes they brought with them, but it doesn’t come. They leave as silently as they arrived, and Sol expels a noisy breath.
“I’m so sorry.”
Mal whips him a glare. “What for?”
“What do you think? This is my fault. It’s me they’re after.”
“You regret picking up their trash?”
“No, but I didn’t have to dump it at their feet.”