24. Mal
Skylar: I’m sorry
I stare at the message, the first he’s ever sent me, and it does my head in that it sits right above the unanswered texts from Chris Morris, like a fork in the fucking road.
How’s it a fork in the road when he doesn’t want you here, dumbfuck?
For once, the voice in my head is my own, and I hate it as much as I hate how long it took Skylar to calm down enough to send me that message. That four days later, I still can’t get it together enough to reply.
It’s Monday night. I’ve spent all weekend at sea with Sol, limiting his solo fishing trips, and I haven’t set foot inside the Joker since Skylar walked out on me.
But Jack and Sol are starting to look at me like I’ve lost my mind, so I show up for dinner, slipping through the door Jack mended without asking what happened to it.
I sit next to my brother, seeking comfort in his closeness, and try not to fixate on the empty seat beside me.
Or the terror-fuelled fury in Skylar’s fractured stare, and the fluttering sensation that’s been trapped in my chest since he left.
It’s a tough gig. And Sev, back for the first time in a while, he gives zero fucks for subtlety. “Where’s Skylar at and who pissed on your chips?”
He speaks as Oscar comes to the table, tugging his shirt down after jabbing his insulin.
Oscar’s cinnamon gaze strays to Skylar’s empty seat. “Everything is okay?”
He’s asking me . Which gets Jack’s attention. And I have nothing but a shrug, because I don’t fucking know. “I haven’t seen him.”
Jack frowns, a glass water bottle half way to his mouth. “I saw him yesterday…I think…” He glances at Sol, abrupt anxiety marring his rugged features. “Was that yesterday?”
Sol leaves whatever he’s doing at the stove and comes to Jack, dropping his hands to his shoulders. “It was yesterday,” he confirms, holding Jack’s attention as if he’s suddenly afraid he’ll lose it. “Skylar came home and slept a couple hours, then he left again to pick up a bank shift.”
It’s my turn to frown. “A what?”
“Overtime.” Sol doesn’t take his eyes off my brother. “Guess he needs the money after you two rinsed that tax bill.”
I glare at Sol, bracing for Jack’s reaction. But it doesn’t come, and I realise my brother’s left the room. Not literally, but he’s staring at nothing with such intensity he doesn’t notice Sol is holding his face now. Or Oscar reaching across the table to take the water bottle from his hand.
Quiet falls on the room, and it’s fucking eerie. I feel it crawl under my skin and garrotte my heart as Sol calls Jack’s name.
Softly.
Gently.
Coaxing him back from wherever he’s gone, brushing his thumbs across my brother’s cheeks as Jack’s eyes stay wide and pinned on something unseen.
“ Jack ,” he tries again. “Come back, love. We miss you.”
His tone is light, almost teasing, but Sol’s face tells a different story, and for the unending seconds it takes my brother to respond, I feel like fucking weeping.
Like I already am. My hands fist. My heart hammers as if I’m two breaths from stepping on an IED.
I miss Skylar like I’m fucking dying, and only Oscar’s comforting hand over mine keeps me alive.
Jack finally blinks. He takes a sharp breath, and an awareness so profound floods his face it’s even more obvious how far gone he’s been.
He grabs Sol’s wrists and his eyes seem to shudder before he’s fully conscious again and he picks up the fragments of our abandoned conversation. “Where’s Skylar?”
“Work.” Sol’s hands still cradle Jack’s face. “You need him to come home?”
Jack gives a slow head shake, and his gaze slides to me. “Are you okay?”
No .
I’m really not. I thought I knew the beast of my brother’s injuries.
The scar under his hairline. The barely there limp when he’s tired and the deep frowns that fold his face in half.
But this…it’s something else. A reminder—a warning —that the brother who used to carry me on his back can vanish right in front of me.
And I’m as scared of losing him as I am of losing Skylar.
Vinnie’s phantom laughter keeps me company for the rest of the night. Pissing himself in both my ears long after Sev and Oscar leave, and Jack and Sol go back to work.
It’s hard not to follow them. To spend the rest of my fucking life peering into Jack’s Gallagher-green eyes to check he’s still there.
But I feel like punching someone, so I stay upstairs, opening beers and tipping them down the sink before a drop hits my tongue.
Pacing around, my nerves in my eardrums, and so fucking tired I’m wracked with head-spinning nausea.
Because I need something else to fuck with me right now. Something else to fucking chew on as I process how much it hurts to yearn for Skylar like this.
We don’t talk while we fuck.
We don’t talk after.
And I’ve realised I fucking miss the quiet moments and edgy conversations we shared before this.
I miss him ?—
Because you want both, knobhead. To fuck him and know him. Because you love him, and how about that, eh?
Cheers, Vin.
I’ve run out of beers to pour away.
I pick up my phone again and reattach myself to Skylar’s message, typing and deleting the same replies as yesterday and the day before.
I’m not built for text conversations. Or any conversation that matters, and Skylar matters.
He’s mattered to my brother and Sol for a long time, and I’m the reason he’s not fucking here.
It’s a sickening realisation. One that stops me deleting the message thread with Chris Morris even though I can’t stand to look at it. One that has me leaving Skylar’s message unanswered again and abandoning my phone in the kitchen.
I take a shower—a cold one. I’m not in the fucking mood to spend an hour with my head between my knees.
After, I drink a dose of the electrolytes someone’s restocked in Skylar’s cupboard of nightmares and think about trying to sleep, but I never can when he’s not here, not at night, and I find myself pacing again, my phone burning a hole in my pocket.
Christ, I find myself at his fucking door, fully dressed, ready to run this shit out of my head, staring at his empty bed, and it’s all I can do to cement my feet to the floor?—
Nope. I can’t do it.
I slip inside and lie down on his bed. Shut my eyes, just to see, if it’s him, or the bed that’s like a tranquilliser dart to me when we’re not fucking on the carpet.
I will my brain to shut the fuck up, but if anything, it gets louder, and I feel that rage in me again.
The irrational fury that makes me want to take a dirt nap?—
A dusty nap.
Vinnie wakes me, regret simmering behind the war paint and stupid grin on his face. “Time to go. You good?”
I’m awake, so I’ll do.
Vinnie helps me up. Shoves water and chocolate on me, then moves on to dad someone else.
He moves too fast.
Everything does.
I smell blood in the gritty air before we roll out.
Danger.
Death.
Gunfire surrounds us.
Bomb blasts batter me.
Then the heat.
The silence.
I’m alone.
Looking for Vinnie. For Moth. Raven. Orion.
But they’re all gone and I turn to find Skylar standing in the smoke behind me. Barefoot in the burning sand, scrub trousers his only clothes, eyes like glass, blood oozing from his inked skin.
He’s so pale.
So quiet.
But he’s breathing, I see it, chest rising slow, arms up, reaching…
For me?
I surge forward.
I run .
Skylar steps back.
No—he’s dragged back, by something I can’t see, and dread floods my veins.
“Skylar.” I run harder to grab him. “Sky!”
But my flailing hands find nothing but smoke, and Skylar flickers, his lips moving fast and urgent.
A warning.
To stay or to go, but I’m not close enough to know which, and as he fades, shifts, and disappears, I know I never will be ? —
“Fuck, Mal. You can’t sleep in here.”
Footsteps advance on me, big hands wrapping around my arms with such force that I react before I know what I’m doing.
I fight , snapping upright, driving forward without checking for friendlies, kill mode activated before I’ve snatched a breath.
“Mal, it’s me.”
Jack .
But it’s too late. We crash. Weight slams into me as Jack blocks the hit and counters, caging my momentum as I twist to strike his centre mass, and we tumble to the fucking floor.
Jack’s strong. And despite the glitch in his brain earlier, his wits are sharper than mine right now. He gets his arms around me, like he used to when we grappled as teenagers. He gets me down and keeps me there, solid as concrete.
Jack.
My brother.
Long seconds pass.
Then he eases back and I blink up at him.
I want to be sick.
“Fuck.” I shove myself back against Skylar’s drawers. Something falls. An envelope. “ Fuck , did I hit you? Tell me I didn’t fucking hit you.”
“You didn’t.” Jack crouches in front of me. “And if you had, it would’ve been my fault.”
“Fuck off.”
“No. Take a breath.”
I try, and it’s the stupidest thing in the world that I can’t. I’ve spent half my life training to keep myself calm. To face the worst things men can do to each other with a nod and a steady inhale. How the fuck did this happen to me?
My vision’s hazy. I focus on my brother’s face. His dark brows and green eyes. The silver-flecked beard. His unshakable calm, as if nothing out of the ordinary has just occurred. As if he doesn’t have a shadow on his brain that affects every second of his fucking life.
I choke on a rough sound. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“ Mal .” Jack edges closer. “Don’t. It was my fault—I know better than to come at a sleeping soldier like that.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“You were dreaming?—”
“I was here . And I shouldn’t fucking be.”
I say it to the air, not him. But Jack holds up his hands, surrendering to the irrational truth I can’t seem to contain. Then he offers me one to help me from the floor and I’m too dazed to do anything but take it and come upright, swaying at the vicious shift in my blood pressure.
Jack steadies me. “Are you drunk?”