24. Mal #2
The kitchen bin is loaded with empty bottles, and being bladdered is probably the only reason he can fathom to explain why he’s found me in Skylar’s room, on Skylar’s bed , in dreamland with my fucking boots on.
I shrug and accept the concern in his gaze. Welcome it, so I can stop thinking about the absence that stole him away from me earlier, and that all I’ve done for him since is try and throat punch him.
A bitter fact that clears my vision as Jack leads me to the living room and directs me to the sofa.
He disappears. Comes back with water that’s so cold it hurts my brain. But I drink it anyway. And I keep drinking until Jack stops looking at me like I’m the unexploded mortar round he stepped in front of four years ago.
“You can go to bed.” I find my voice. “I’m fucking fine.”
“You don’t have to be.”
He’s said that to me before, and I wish I knew how to talk to him.
That we’d worked harder on ourselves before we were both so fucking broken.
But I can’t find the words to tell him I’ve accidentally fallen in love with his friend when I have no business loving anyone.
That I miss my dead friend so much his ghost is the only thing stopping me shoving fistfuls of wet sand down my throat.
And I’m so fucking sorry I wasn’t here when he needed me so much all those years ago.
He needs you now .
I take a shaky inhale.
Jack leans forward on the coffee table. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
“We’ve been over that.”
“No, I mean the absence seizure at dinner. Sol said it freaked you out.”
Sol, who never took his eyes off my brother for a single second. “It didn’t freak me out. Besides, it’s not…”
I bite down on the words, shaking my head.
Jack frowns. “What?”
“Doesn’t matter?—”
“It does. Just say it. This is never going to get easier if you don’t.”
A better man than me would lie. But I don’t have it in me. “I was going to say it’s not like you did it to yourself, but that’s not fucking true, is it?”
My voice is flat. Devoid of emotion, the way Skylar’s is sometimes when he needs out. But I make no move to get away from Jack. I don’t deserve to escape the impact and the hurt I brace for.
But my brother…he just nods. “Sol was angry with me too, and I used to think it would’ve been easier for everyone if I’d died. Him. Skylar. Sev. They turned their lives upside down to look after me, and for a long time, all they got back was fuck-ups and silence.”
“Doubt they see it that way.”
“Course they don’t. They love me.” Jack takes my hands, wrapping his inked knuckles around mine. “And…fuck, Mal. I love you , and what I’m trying to say is that I’m never going to make you stay here if it’s not what you want.”
“I do—” But still I can’t lie. I hate this place—I hate myself , and maybe that’s all this is. Like Jack, I should be dead, but instead I’m here, in Porth Luck, with no idea how to live with what’s left when there’s so much here that should make me want to try.
Jack.
Sol.
Skylar .
I shiver, suddenly fucking freezing, blond hair and grey eyes all I can see.
I don’t know what’s hurt Skylar so badly, but I feel it, coiled beneath his dead stare and the safety he craves in the dark, and I want to rip it out and kill it for him.
But I’m not sure I’m strong enough. Not when I can’t fix my own shit.
And that’s without confronting the reality that he doesn’t fucking want me.
He does .
I have no idea how Vinnie can be so fucking sure, and I’m so tired I can’t think my way out of it.
Me and Jack run out of things to say to each other. Sol’s been off my radar, but as Jack’s eyes grow heavy with alarming abruptness, he appears from the kitchen and convinces Jack to give me some space.
Knowing my brother needs his bed, I go along with it.
I’m staring at the wall when Sol comes back.
His gaze swims with empathy and love. “You need me to stay up with you?”
“No.”
“I don’t mind. Anything you need. You know that.”
I do know it.
But I also know Jack needs Sol more than I do. And Sol needs to sleep before he and Oscar take the Sirona out in a few hours’ time. “I’m fine, brother.”
Brother . Sol smiles. “All right, Mally. Wake me up if it gets too much, okay?”
We both know I won’t. But I nod and track Sol’s footsteps as he pads to his room and shuts the door.
It leaves me alone in the dark, but it doesn’t feel that way.
Skylar’s not here, but he’s on my mind and in my heart, whatever that’s worth.
We’re two open wounds smashed together and there’s no healing here.
But there could be—I feel that too, and I drift with those thoughts, pondering how something that should’ve been just this once has come to feel like taking fire in slow motion.
Like, I know it’s going to kill me, but I’m living for the fucking pain.
For the magic. For Skylar’s hands on my skin and his mouth on mine.
For his body taking me inside him like it’s muscle memory and we’ve fucked in a hundred past lives.
I get hard thinking about it, but the heat in my blood doesn’t last, because it’s so much more than how he makes my fucked-up body sing.
It’s how he doesn’t let me stay dead inside.
Or wear the mask that’s been welded to my face half my life.
It’s how he tears it off without even trying, how I’d be dead and buried if I’d never met him, and somewhere amongst the numbness I can’t seem to shift when I’m alone, I know I don’t want to die.
I know I don’t want to leave ?—
A crash tears through the silence.
Glass.
The toxic stink of petrol and a sudden burst of heat and flame as I’m ripped to awareness, every sense in my body, every nerve, lighting up like the fucking flare I shot at Couch Junior.
Smoke.
Fire.
Fuck.