Aye, I mean, that’s where my masterplan comes unstuck, but I cling to it as the thick wooden door of the pub rips open and a man as tall as me bounds down the stone steps.
Windswept hair, nautical tattoos. Bronze brown eyes that were all kinds of things to me when I was a confused tween, Sol Bosanko bears down on me. He leaps the last few feet and lands close enough I smell the ocean breeze on him and see the years that have passed since I last saw his handsome face. His bright grin and emotive gaze.
“Mally.” He sweeps me into a hug. “Thought you got lost.”
I am lost, for as long as I’m in Porth Luck, but I keep the words in and return his embrace, starved for fraternal touch.Whatever’s happened and whoever we are, I love Sol, and I’m so fucking grateful he’s been here while I haven’t.
The moment passes. He lets me go as heavier footsteps descend the stairs. He melts away, and my brother’s there, broader and older than I remember, his steady presence the same, but so fucking different every ounce of breath leaves my lungs.
Jack Gallagher’s taller than me, the scar on his temple hidden by his hairline. But the way he stands, it’s off, subtle slackness marring his left side. And his eyes…one of them feels shifted, as if it got shunted to the side by a fearsome blow and never entirely found its way back.
Because that’s what happened.My brother has a traumatic brain injury and I haven’t been here for him enough to have a fucking clue what that means for him.
Jack clears the last few steps. His hands twitch at his sides, but he doesn’t touch me. He never really has, not since we were little and our mam didn’t come back from a deployment in Sierra Leone. He’s alwaysseenme though, and he digs in deep, mapping my face and the years we’ve missed.
Who I was, who I am.
And whatever he sees, he doesn’t seem to like it, but he smiles, gruff and warm behind the beard covering his jaw. “You look tired.”
His voice is the same. Rougher than mine, but it wraps around me like a friend as dear to me as Sol, and relief washes over me. I huff a clipped laugh and before I can overthink it, I hug him, not thinking about the unbalanced strength I feel in his solid arms, not allowing myself to compensate.
If we fall, we fall.
But we don’t. We survive and Jack pulls back, mussing my hair. “Sol told me not to tell you, but I didn’t think you’d come.”
“You weren’t wrong to think that. I didn’t fucking want to.”
Jack nods, a sigh breaching his lips. “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”
“Nothing happened to me.”
Argument flickers in Jack’s gaze. Then uncertainty. He glances over my shoulder to where I assume Sol went, and I see him let it go as he shifts to wave me forward. “Come inside. I’ll show you around.”
Around the pub I own and the flat upstairs. I couldn’t give less of a fuck, but despite my reluctance to be here, seeing Jack unlocks something inside me. I follow him into the pub, theemptypub—it closed an hour ago, and there’s not much to see that can’t wait till morning.
Or maybe Jack’s the one who’s tired.
Either way, we don’t linger, and my heart drums that fucked-up tattoo as I trail him to the flat upstairs. To where I live now, whereSkylarlives. I should be focusing on my brother’s deep frown as he punches a code into the lock, the way he switches arms to push the heavy door, but I find myself scanning every shadow for those tousled blond waves, craving a hit of that smoke and metal stare as Sol hums a shanty tune from where he’s retreated to his own space.
Jack shows me the living room with its Norse-themed chessboard and battered couches, a book with a cracked spine splayed on the floor, as if someone fell asleep reading it. A kitchen that smells of bacon and toast. A bedroom—mybedroom—that shares a bathroom with the last room on the landing.
Skylar’s.
The door’s shut. But it doesn’t matter. I know before Jack tells me he’s not here. I feelit in my bones and I’m not sure I want to look too closely at why.
Sunrise sneaks up on me. One minute I’m stuck in a cursed night that won’t fucking end,pacing around my big bed to the soundtrack of Sol’s kid brother coming home drunk and falling off the couch in the living room. Then it’s dawn on a bright summer day, and time to face this new/old world of mine.
Or at least the bathroom that’s all Skylar.
He’s still not here. I’d know it even if I hadn’t spent all night listening for him. I stillfeelit, which is fucking ridiculous, but it is what it is.
I open the bathroom door and take a breath, scanning the neat space—thecleanspace, though anything and everything seems clean to me after nine months living on remote bases and dusty outposts. Just like being alone so much with both feet on solid ground feels like a sock being stuffed down my throat, civilian life a looming nightmare I’ve never had time to fear before now.
I miss my crew.
My friends.
We’re scattered far and wide and I don’t know how to fix it. It’s too easy to keep my thoughts on who the shampoo in the shower belongs to and pretend everything else never happened.
