The irony.
Thecheek.
I’m not a fucking dog. If he wants my attention, he’ll have to do better than that.
Or so I think, but I find myself drifting to the window anyway. I open it as another pebble pings my way and whips inside, landing on my bed.
I lean out.
Mal’s still on the roof, obviously, but he’s minus the beer bottle now. It’s empty beside him with two others and it bothers me enough to draw me onto the uneven asphalt.
Gravel bites into my bare feet.
It’s silent, so I don’t mind it. I fall into a crouch in front of him in the small space and meet his blistering stare for the first time in a week, and only the third time in our entire lives.
Feels like more.
“You want my window wide open too?”
Mal appraises me through those thick, long lashes, sparks of light from the festoon bulbs in the garden glittering in his green eyes. “I thought you’d fallen asleep by the door. You stood there for ages.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Your shadow stopped dancing.”
He smiles a little, almost a smirk.
It’s fucking delicious and I press my feet harder against the stones to stop me smirking right back. Note the beer bottles again and match them to what I know about alcohol consumption and the pill bottle in the bathroom.
I know too much.
Jack made me look it up.
And now I hate him as much as anyone could ever hate a man like Jack Gallagher.
“I’m not much for dancing.” A sudden gust from the sea leaves goosebumps on my arms. “You’ll be disappointed if that’s what you dragged me out here for.”
“I didn’t drag you, Skylar.”
Heh. That’s what he thinks. But I’m not admitting it, or that the way his deep and lyrical voice wraps around my name makes me die a little inside, and it’s a good death. The best. One I want to consume me over and over again until I’m nothing but a husk on this roof. “Whatever. You wanna tell me why you’re really rattling my window?”
For a glorious heartbeat, Mal’s smirk intensifies. Then it fades. “I wanted to apologise for being a dick the other day. I’m a blunt fucker. Speak without thinking. Sorry you got the brunt of that.”
He means it, I can tell. But his confession makes no sense. “I thought you were trained to think.”
“That’s the theory.” Mal extends one of his long legs, his tanned calf coming to rest inches from my foot. “But this place…being around Jack and Sol. I feel fifteen again and not much like a fucking soldier.”
“You don’t need to apologise for that.”
“No? Well, I’m doing it anyway. It’d make Vinnie happy.”
“Who’s Vinnie?”
Mal shakes his head and looks away, returning his focus to the ocean. But not before I see the grief there and I know in my heart that Vinnie is dead.
It’s a cue I could take to go back inside. To leave Mal to his thoughts now he’s said what he wanted to say. But my conscience stays me, and I tell myself it’s because he’s drinking on the roof. That he could fall—or jump—and Jack would never get over it. But the truth is, the hurt in his gaze proves impossible to turn my back on.
So I don’t.
