My vision’s hazy. I focus on my brother’s face. His dark brows and green eyes. The silver-flecked beard. His unshakable calm, as if nothing out of the ordinary has just occurred. As if he doesn’t have a shadow on his brain that affects every second of his fucking life.
I choke on a rough sound. “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Mal.” Jack edges closer. “Don’t. It was my fault—I know better than to come at a sleeping soldier like that.”
“I wasn’t asleep.”
“You were dreaming?—”
“I washere. And I shouldn’t fucking be.”
I say it to the air, not him. But Jack holds up his hands, surrendering to the irrational truth I can’t seem to contain. Then he offers me one to help me from the floor and I’m too dazed to do anything but take it and come upright, swaying at the vicious shift in my blood pressure.
Jack steadies me. “Are you drunk?”
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, onSkylar’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 missmydead 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 loveyou, 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.”
