28. Skylar
I come to like I’m being wrenched through freezing water. My head pounds, nerves out of sync. I move before I’m conscious and hit a brick wall.
A warm brick wall.
Someone’s holding me.
Mal .
I know it before my eyes stutter open. Before his clean air and cedar-wood scent takes over and the foreign emotion I’ve fought so hard to escape settles in for good.
I love him.
Fuck . I blink against the thumping ache in my skull. Dizzy. Nauseous. Blood gritty like wet sand. “No. No—fuck.”
Mal says something, hands catching mine. Tells me I’m safe. That I passed out, but he has me.
No shit.
I don’t need him to tell me that. It’s been a while, but I’ve felt like this before. So many fucking times. Having him with me is weird, though. How many times have I woken up alone on the bathroom floor?
“Skylar.”
No.
“ Sky .”
My eyes open again, all the way this time, and I realise I’m not on the bathroom floor, in the Joker or anywhere else I’ve ever lived.
I’m on a bed—Mal’s bed—and he’s hovering over me, his arm looped under my shoulders as if he’s carried me here, hand cradling my head, and I should hate it.
I should rear back and smack my skull to his face to get him away from me.
But the energy to do it—the will, it isn’t there.
That arm around me and the weight of his gaze, I need it.
I’m so fucking tired…
Mal shakes me. “You need glucose and fluids. Unless there’s something else going on here.”
There’s a question in his words and I try to think through it. But I’m not fast enough and he leans down a little more.
“I think you passed out because you’re exhausted and your blood sugar is on the fucking floor. But I’m not in your head, so I need you to tell me if it’s something else, okay?”
His hair is long, curling around his ears. It’s cute. His eyes, though, they’re more serious than I’ve ever seen them, pinning me to the bed, and the only truth I’m capable of right now spills out of me.
“I didn’t mean to.”
Mal’s hard stare flickers. Gentles, even as he tosses some harsh words over his shoulder to someone else. “I know, Sky. I know. I’m so fucking sorry.”
For what?
I can’t remember. And I think I pass out again. Or sleep. I’m not sure. The next thing I’m aware of is Mal pouring something sweet and orange down my throat and pressing his hand over my mouth.
“I’m not forcing you, I swear. If you want me to stop, I’ll fucking stop.”
I don’t want you to stop .
I hold his wrist, keeping his hand in place as fluid trickles down my oesophagus. Rebellion roils in my gut, but it’s as weak as I feel right now. It passes and I take the bottle from Mal’s free hand.
He reads me and eases back, letting me drink by myself. “Not too much,” he cautions.
I know. I fucking know .
And I’m still in his bed, blinds shut as a storm rages outside.
It’s the first time I’ve seen his room without the window wide open.
Since him . But I’m so dizzy I can’t articulate it, and it makes me think of when he was in my bed, because he couldn’t be anywhere else.
And how I missed him when he wasn’t there anymore.
When he was gone .
Awareness floods back to me. I try to sit up and my head hums with pressure, drawing a groan from my chest.
Mal helps me, his arm under my shoulders again. “If you want a shower, I’m coming with you.”
It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever heard, but I can’t connect my brain to my mouth enough to say so.
I find Mal’s hand instead and squeeze his rough fingers. He grins a little and it’s almost too beautiful to see. As if this moment is too flawed for a smile like his. As if I’m too ugly.
He looks away first.
I miss him. Then I remember the last words I spoke to him…before, and I know I have no right to feel anything but shame.
Don’t come near me anymore.
“Hey.” Mal’s free hand slides along my jaw, coaxing me to look back. “How are you doing down there? Head still hurt?”
“Yeah.”
He blinks. “There you are.”
“Where did you think I was?”
“Some place you don’t speak for hours on end.”
His hand feels good on my face. I lean into it and close my eyes, drifting, until that awareness kicks me awake again. “Where did you go?”
Mal purses his lips, knowing what I mean. “You won’t like it.”
“So?”
“So, I don’t want to piss you off when you’re finally in my bed.”
“You’ve never invited me into your bed.”
That grin comes back, and brings me to life enough to notice Mal’s crouched on the floor, and that he’s wearing a shirt too big to be anyone but Jack’s.
It softens him, wearing his brother’s clothes, and he seems younger without his sharpest edges.
Or maybe it’s my eyes. They hurt. Everything does.
Mal squeezes my hand. “Still with me?”
“I think so.” I pause. Then… fuck it . “This is weird.”
“Which bit?”
“All of it. I’ve never been this messy around someone before.”
“It’s your fucking turn.”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Eh.” Mal shrugs. “Will you punch me again if I bring you some food?”
“Again?”
“I deserved it.” Mal lets go of my hand and rises from his crouch with more care than he usually bothers with.
He leaves without elaborating, and without him to distract me it sinks into me harder that I’m in his bed and wearing the same clothes I came home in. Where the fuck are my shoes? Where’s Jack? Where’s Sol? And shit, I have to be at work again soon.
I sit up higher, willing away the headache pressing down on me. Search for my phone before I remember it’s in pieces in the car I drove home with black spots in my vision.
“What are you looking for?”
Mal’s suddenly back. At least, it feels sudden to me.
“My phone.”
“Your phone’s fucked.”
“I know.”
“What happened to it?”
“I threw it.”
“Fair enough.” Mal has his hands behind him. He brings them forward with a bowl in his grip and sets it on the chest of drawers. “It’s in the kitchen if you really want it.”
“I need an alarm.”
“What for?”
“Work.” I swing my legs off the bed and plant my feet on the floor. “I need a fucking shower.”
“Go on then.” Mal’s tone holds the challenge he’s never been afraid to chuck in my face.
Until now, I’ve never been sure if it’s good or bad, but as I rise and the floor tilts, I know he’s the best person the world has ever given me.
I sit down and grip the mattress, glaring at the floorboards, willing my body to fall back in line while Mal watches, helping me more than he knows by not trying to stop me.
He’s not silent, though. “How’s that headache?”
“Fuck off.”
“So you can drop like a stone again?”
“Why do you give a fuck?”
Mal’s face does something I can’t decipher. Then he comes to me and holds out his hands. “I’ll help you shower.”
Mal shadows me to the bathroom. Then he gives me some space to put myself back together, and if he’s worried about me puking in the shower, he doesn’t show it.
But in any case, he doesn’t need to be—there’s nothing in me but the sports drink and electrolytes he’s poured down my throat, and I’m too busy trying to stay upright to think about losing it.
He gets dizzy in the shower .
Maybe that’s why he didn’t come in. I turn the water off, steam clogging my lungs, and let flashbacks of the last time we were in the bathroom together flood me.
The spray hits my chest and Mal’s mouth finds my neck, his hot lips fusing to the slick skin he’s claimed as his own.
Breathing rough.
Biting me.
He grips my hips like he owns me. Fucks me like he’s trying to brand me on the inside. Something permanent when we both know we’re on borrowed time, something I’ll still feel long after he’s chased release from my body and curved around me with his own ? —
The tiled walls around me distort. I make it to the sink and find fresh clothes stacked there. Just sweats and underwear, but it’s all I need.
I dress and open the bathroom door, aware I missed Mal slipping in and out, and how little it fazes me.
Because it’s him .
He’s waiting for me in the hallway, leaning against the wall. He comes upright as I near him, hands flexing as though he wants to touch me, but he jerks his head at his room instead. “Unless you’ve got a hankering for a wet mattress.”
I don’t have a hankering for anything except him, and I don’t need to think about whether to follow him into his room.
Head still throbbing, I sit on the edge of his bed while he retrieves the bowl from the chest of drawers.
“It’s yogurt.”
“No bananas?”
His lip curls. “I’ll eat six of those fuckers if you keep this shit down.”
“What makes you think I won’t?”
“Everything, Sky.”
Sky . Awareness hits me again, kicking my subconscious with a thud that ripples through me hard enough that Mal seems to feel it.
He sets the bowl aside again and comes closer. “What is it?”
“You told me you loved me. That’s why I punched you.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“No?”
Mal squats down, hands on my knees. “You hit me because I backed you into a corner. Like I knew you would, but I did it anyway.”
“Why?”
“Because this needed to fucking happen. You want me gone from your life, it’s done. But I can’t take a step away from you until I know it’s you who wants that. Not the part of you that’s still bleeding out from whatever the fuck has happened to you.”
We’re eye-level. His gaze is steady. Brutal. Honest in the only way Mal knows how to be.
I try to look away. Fail. “You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Don’t I?”
No.
He doesn’t.
He can’t .
I take a breath.
Mal speaks first. “My best friend died because of me.”
Vinnie . The soldier from the photos stuffed in his bag. “I bet he didn’t.”
“He did.” Mal grips my knees tighter, then brings a clenched fist to his chest. “This thing in my heart—I knew it was there and I never told anyone. Never did anything about it, even when it got worse.”
“Mal, that’s not a crime.”
“Say my name again.”
“ Mal .”
“Hmm.” Mal wets his bottom lip. “I hear that in my sleep.”
“You don’t sleep.”
“I do when I’m with you. It fucking kills me that I don’t bring the same calm to your existence.”