27. Mal #2
“We love Skylar.” He tells me like I don’t know—like it’s been sitting on his chest too long, a confession or a warning, I can’t tell.
“He’s family to us, but we’re not the family he chose or the one he was meant to have, and that kind of hurt…
” Cam exhales and I see real pain in his dark eyes.
“It never heals when you keep it that close.”
I say nothing, and his words hang between us, scraping us both raw.
But I find comfort in how he’s watching me, despite the weight of his gaze.
We’re wolves guarding the same heart, and I’m okay with that, even if it is fucking obvious he’s trying to figure out if I’m going to fracture Skylar’s life or hold it together.
It’s a fair fucking question, and contemplating it for the hundredth time takes me out of myself again. I almost miss Cam’s quiet laugh as he drops his hands from my shoulders.
“You remind me of a friend of mine. In another life, I can see you tearing up the road on a hog.”
“Thanks, but leather ain’t my craic, so it is.”
Cam laughs again and moves past me to open the gate, the very last of the sunlight casting an amber glow across his face. I like him in this moment, and I think he likes me.
We say our goodbyes and I slip through the gates, taking the dog I found in the woods with me, unleashed and trotting at my side.
I take her back to Sol’s car and she hops in the passenger seat as if she’s been doing it her whole life.
She curls up as my phone vibrates in my pocket.
With Skylar on my mind, I find myself expecting his name on the screen, but it isn’t him.
It’s Folk, who I’ve somehow lost track of in the last twenty minutes.
Folk: You think you’re the damage, but what if you’re the fix?
I twist my head around Folk’s words all the way back to Porth Luck, and I don’t stop to contemplate when my brain started thinking of the Joker as home . What’s the point? For as long as I’m here, it just is, even though Skylar’s car is gone.
Skylar’s gone.
I kill the engine on Sol’s rattly hatchback. The air feels deadly quiet without the strained noise of the old car, but the peace doesn’t last long.
Jack rips the door open before I’ve ditched the seatbelt. Unclips it and all but yanks me to my feet. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Coming upright so fast usually sends me straight back down again, but the Rebel Kings have fed and watered me so well I don’t waver. I root my boots to the ground and let Jack manhandle me.
“Where’ve you been?” He asks again. “Did you go after someone?”
“Aye, dead on.” I can’t lie, but I speak with enough sarcasm that Jack’s bunched shoulders drop a couple of millimetres. “Didn’t catch them.”
“No?”
“ No .” I remember the dog. Weave out of Jack’s hold and round the car to fetch her. “Stole a hound, though.”
I open the passenger door. The dog hops down, sniffs the air, then trots to my brother and sits at his feet like he’s fucking Jesus.
It’s a moment where I expect him to blink. But he doesn’t. He crouches to greet the dog and she’s all up in his face. He laughs —she’s Jack’s dog now, and for the precious seconds they seal their bond, everything is perfect.
Then I remember Skylar’s not here and worry pinches my heart. I glance around all the same, as if he’s hiding in the sand-flecked sheds where Jack keeps spare chairs. But all I see is barren driftwood and the push and pull I’ve felt for months now comes roaring back.
I miss him.
I love him.
And I understand what Folk and Cam have tried to tell me. But it’s hard to escape the fear that I might’ve inflicted more damage on him just by existing.
“I’m not pissing about. Where the fuck have you been?”
Jack.
He’s up in my business again, though there’s a dog between us now, perched in his arms like a smug meerkat. “I’ve been worried.” He keeps trying. “Sol said you wouldn’t kill anyone, but I kept waking up in the night thinking you had.”
“I’ve killed lots of people.”
So has Jack. But this is different, and I know it. Just like I know he’s not gonna shift an inch until I give him some semblance of the truth.
“I didn’t slot anyone. Was never going to. I just needed some fucking space.”
“From what?”
“Myself. It fucked me up to see a hot one in Skylar’s bedroom. It’s been a while since I had to put hands to a fire bomb.”
Jack frowns—of course he does. But it’s not confusion. It’s empathy and concern, and he stares at me so deeply I want to squirm away from him.
I don’t.
I stand my ground. But how he looks at me…it fucking hurts. My brother might be missing a whole lot of context, but he sees the pain in my eyes for what it is.
“There’s a place we can go,” he says, slowly, giving me time to shut him up. “If you’re getting triggered. No shrinks and shit—unless you want that. Just blokes who’ve seen the same fucked-up things you have.”
“It’s not about what I’ve seen.” I tap my temple hard enough to rattle my eyeballs. “It’s up here . I can’t catch a thought without having a hundred more and it’s driving me fucking crazy.”
My voice is up by the time I’m done, and I feel bad for the dog in Jack’s arms. But she barely blinks, just keeps sniffing the air as though she knows she’s home, and I find as much comfort in that as she does.
Jack scratches her ears, taking a breath. Eyes on me, silently encouraging me to do the same. “Come inside,” he says when he’s satisfied with the oxygen in my lungs. “Faffin’ out here isn’t going to fix anything.”
Him or me, I’m not sure. But I stash Sol’s keys and follow Jack inside.
The pub’s busy, loud with the raucous beat of a shanty-punk band. They have an accordion, which puts Skylar on my mind again. I’ve seen how he rolls his eyes every time that shit starts up, but I guess he’s never really been off it.
Jack goes straight upstairs, taking the dog with him. I duck behind the bar to trail him there too, but Sol intercepts me. Unlike Jack, he doesn’t ask where I’ve been or who I’ve killed. Or even why there’s a dog in his house.
He just hugs me. “I’ve got the bar. Try and get your brother to rest, will ya? He’s been awake too long.”
I nod and keep moving, and by the time I make it upstairs, Jack has loaded a plate for me.
I don’t have the heart to tell him I don’t need any more food.
So I eat it standing at the kitchen counter while he puts water down for the dog and starts writing a list of who the fuck knows what. “What’s that?”
“Things she needs. Things you need.”
“Short list then.”
Jack scribbles something else. Then he fixes me with another long gaze that pins me in place. “Why don’t you tell me what to put on it then?”
“Jack, I don’t need anything.”
“You only say my name when you’re lying.”
He’s not wrong. But the things I need aren’t here right now, and there’s nothing he can do to fix that—to fix me —that he hasn’t already tried.
“I’ll come with you.” I speak without true thought. “To that place for fucked-up heads. Can’t make it worse, eh?”
Jack puts his pencil down. Carefully. Like he wants to throw it. That measured breath comes again, before he gets up and comes to where I still loiter by the sink.
He hugs me like Sol did. Except it’s different with my brother, because we’ve never done it that much, and for a horrifying moment, I think I might fucking cry.
For what, I don’t know. And I don’t try that hard to find out.
I just lean on Jack and think about sleeping, and calling Skylar back.
Of pinching Sol’s shit-heap car again and driving to the hospital to find him.
Because I need him. And because the longer we’re apart, the surer I am that he needs me too.
You got receipts for that? Or you just making shit up at this point?
Eh.
It’s a warm night. Humid, air alive with the buzz of the incoming storm.
Jack’s done parenting me. He takes the dog for a walk, and I watch from the kitchen window as she trots beside him on the beach and he doesn’t look back even once.
Then I watch from the doorway as he brings her home.
Feeds her. Bathes her. It’s last orders by the time he remembers to give a shit about running the pub.
It leaves me with the dog again. She hops on the couch and goes to sleep. I pace around. Go to Skylar’s room and stare at his ruined bed like it means something.
Like I’m missing something.
I don’t call him again.
Eventually, after texting Moth back for the first time in months, I pass out on the couch, and I wake in that dead zone where the dark has thinned, but there’s still no light, and the quiet is too dense to be truly silent.
The hour where wars shift, and dawn comes to a world that doesn’t fit the mould of the day before.
I sit up as security system alerts light up the control panel in the wall and a key crunches in the front door. The dog isn’t here anymore, and I know without checking that she’s gone to Jack.
Don’t blame her.
An errant thought as the front door opens and closes. My only thought as the old Vans Skylar wears to work make no sound on the hard wood floors, and it fizzles out as I feel him draw nearer. As I see him for the first time in what feels like years.
He stops in the living room doorway, and we stare at each other in the murky light as his smoke and metal gaze takes me in.
“You came back.”
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “You thought I wouldn’t?”
“I hoped you wouldn’t.”
“Why?”
Skylar’s lips shift, and I brace for that brittle laugh. The one that rakes me to the bone.
It doesn’t come.
He walks away and it’s in me to let him. To believe the voice in my head— my voice —telling me it’s for the best. That he’s better off without me.
That everyone is.
But Folk Whitlock. Cam O’Brian. They’re louder. Vinnie is louder. They drown out the bullshit and Skylar’s retreating back is the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
I surge from the sofa and chase him down. Catch him at his bedroom door and get a hand to the old wood before him. “Sky?—”
“ No. ” He spins and shoves me with both hands. Strong hands. “Leave me the fuck alone.”
I don’t move. Let him waste the force.
Jaw set, his lips twist again, but it’s a snarl this time, and the belying, vacant haze in his eyes is so like the night I met him I almost miss his bunched fist flying at my face.
Almost.
I don’t feel much like a soldier these days, but muscle memory kicks in. I block the hit. Let him land the next one on my ribs and absorb the pain of a punch that’s too efficient for me to believe he’s not capable of beating the shit out of someone.
His fury taints the air. I taste it as I shoot out a hand to grab his wrist, fingers wrapping around his cold skin too fast for him to stop me and he has to growl his fury instead.
“Get the fuck off me.”
“No.”
He fights me harder. I grab his other wrist, tug him close, and the sound that rips from his throat breaks my heart all over again.
“Let go.”
“No.”
“Why the fuck not?” Skylar pushes his chest at me, trying to move me with everything he has. “You want to bang me on the floor again?”
“No, because I fucking love you.”
Shock bleeds into his grey eyes, and for a hot second, it’s like the bruised shadows aren’t there. But the tension coiled in his body stays, and his nose flares with a rough exhale as he shakes his head, blond hair grazing my cheek. “Piss off.”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t get to fucking do this! You don’t get to barge into my life and make me feel like I need you when I don’t fucking need anyone . ”
“Why can’t you need someone?”
“Why can’t you ?” Skylar wrenches his arms and this time I release him. Release myself as he shoves me again and I let him put a few feet of space between us. “Why the fuck are you standing in my way when you’re as bad as I am?”
“Told you. I love you.” Feels good to say it out loud. Freeing. Feels like shit to know he doesn’t believe me. That he doesn’t think I’m capable of it. Or that he’s fucking worthy. “Sky?—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not?”
That laugh finally comes—a splintered thing torn from his gut.
Skylar drags both hands to his head, fingers clenched in his hair like he wants to rip it out.
Like he’s going to if I can’t find the destruct switch buried deep inside him and flip it the other way.
“Because my cunt of a mother calls me Sky, and fucking me a couple of times doesn’t mean you get to know that. ”
The most revealing words he’s ever said to me should hit like the lid of a coffin slamming shut. Loud. Final. But they arrive swallowed in a new strain of silence and that’s when I feel a fresh storm simmering behind me.
We’re not alone anymore.
Fuck .
I turn and Jack’s just beyond the hallway arch that separates the bedrooms. With the dog at his feet, he’s in his underwear, a white-knuckled fist pressed to the wall and a welt rising below his rogue eye, like he’s been grinding it hard, trying to make sense of something he wishes he hadn’t heard.
Sol’s behind him.
Calmer.
Maybe.
His gaze flicks between me and Skylar, a rare frown cinching his brow. But there’s empathy there too—he doesn’t need context to understand. Or if he does, he’ll wait.
And he’ll fucking have to. With a dry mouth and heart that’s strangely peaceful, I turn back to Skylar.
He’s still there. Course he is, I’m blocking him, he has nowhere to go. But something’s changed. The fire in him has gone, like he’s been doused in frigid water in the split second I’ve been gone.
Overload.
And I’m expecting it. The sway and stagger. The capitulation from a body and mind that can’t take another fucking thing.
But it’s not me who falls.
It’s not Jack.
It’s Skylar, and as I surge too late to catch him I know I lost him before I met him.
And I’m losing him now.