“Stop you getting robbed every night.”
“We need a spiked fence to stop kids nicking bottles?”
“It’s not always kids, Jack. Grown men hoof that wall every fucking night.”
“Until you throw them off.”
“Aye, well. I won’t always be here, will I?”
Jack sets his pen down. “You’re leaving?”
Yes.
No.
Yes.
But the words snarl in my throat, caught in the same mess as the messages on my phone. I speak the truth instead. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Jack doesn’t like that answer, but it seems to make sense to him. He goes back to his stock sheets and I watch him work, swallowing the impulse to swipe it away and do it for him. Trying to ignore the hum of the fridges behind the bar, or wonder why they seem so loud today, tracking the information from the page to Jack’s brain. By his standards, maybe it’s slow, but it gets there, and I’m suddenly choked by so much admiration and love for my brother I can hardly fucking breathe.
Tell him.
I want to. And it dawns on me that I want lots of fucking things that have never occurred to me before.
Skylar.
I turn and catch him so still it feels like the pause before a grenade detonates, eerie and ethereal. Dread swamps me. I reach for him, but he’s already in motion, up in the booth seat we’re sharing and evading my touch.Standing, to step over me and vault the table.
I half rise to stop him.
But it’s too late. He’s gone, like he was that very first morning on that distant beach, and this time, the urge to follow him is as suffocating as all the words I’ve never said to my brother.
My brother who frowns at the bowl on the table and the empty space Skylar’s left behind. Who frowns atme, rubbing his temple, confusion and perception fighting for dominance.
Compassion wins. For me or for Skylar, I’ll never know. Just that he means it with his whole heart as he leans forward and jabs a thumb at the ceiling. “Go.”
I don’t need telling twice. I surge from my seat and blur through the bar, the urgency of a gunfight fuelling every step. Doors bang in my wake and my footsteps pound the stairs. I see Skylar ahead of me and I’m not quiet. I’m not trying to sneak up on him.
But the shock in his face as I overtake him in the hallway chills my blood. “Hey.” I block his path. “You left in a hurry.”
That shock. It doesn’t last.
Skylar stares with dead eyes. “What do you care?”
About him? So much.Toomuch. “I care.”
He laughs and it’s awful. “Piss off. You don’t care about anyone. You don’t care aboutJack.”
That hurts. And it’s meant to. He needs me out of his way. And perhaps for the first time, I let myself truly seewhy.
His set jaw and fisted hands.
The faint shudder in his shoulders and the too-fast rise and fall of his beautiful inked chest.
Not a fight, but a fucking war.
“Sky.” I hold my hands up, surrendering to whatever he needs from me right now, whispering the name I can’t tell if he hates or loves.
