About any of it.
I’m wondering why you think you know me so well.
Until that moment, I didn’t. I’ve been too caught up in wanting him. In sleeping in his bed. In fitting only a fraction of the pieces together fromall the thingsno one talks about. And even now, as I jog home with the setting sun, I’m colossally aware the instinct I had by the lagoon barely scratches the surface.
But I’m good at reading men. I’ve had to be to live this long, and Skylar?
We’re more alike than I realised. I saw the switch in him—the one I’ve been training out of myself since I was sixteen years old. The one that burned to life as he thought harder aboutwhyI inflicted that injury on someone than perhaps he had before. The one that promised untamed violence. And that’s the piece that doesn’t fit.
Because Skylar’s a healer.
I make it back to the Joker and stride through the locals’ bar, loitering only long enough to listen out for gossip about what happened on the water last night. But I hear nothing except bitching about Brexit and take my cue to fuck off upstairs.
The flat is cool and quiet. On the coffee table, I see why, my phone lit up with a message from Sol.
Sol:Taken Jack to my parents. Back later xx
Something that’s almost relief washes over me. I lost most of the day napping in Skylar’s bed, and I’ve run myself back to life since then. But I’m exhausted in ways that have nothing to do with physical fatigue, and I welcome the silence for as long as it takes my thoughts to return to Skylar.
He looked tired.
And I’m kidding myself about having no regrets.
Wish I hadn’t left him.
Wish my brother was home too. I’ve got used to him shuffling up beside me and peering at my face. His hands on my shoulders, one stronger than the other, but warmer than they’ve ever been. The quiet starts to get to me, and I realise I miss all the people I live with. Family. Friends. Whatever Skylar is to me, an entity so scarily undefinable I don’t even fucking try.
I retreat to the bathroom and wash the lagoon from my skin. When I get out, I hear music and assume Jack and Sol have come home, and relief pours through me again. But it’s real this time, and Folk Whitlock’s mellow voice becomes a ghost in my head.
Empty space...if you don’t fill it with the right things, the wrong things find you.
I’m starting to believe him, and it has nothing to do with spiky boat trips and flare guns. Or Skylar. Because there’s nothing wrong with the lift in my chest as I drift out of my room to find the noise wasn’t Sol and Jack coming home. To the sight of him as shirtless as when I left him, tipping a broom aroundthe living room to the soundtrack of a band that sounds more like Sol than him.
“This isn’t metal.”
Skylar spares me a glance. “It’s Sev’s housework playlist.”
Sev then. Close enough. “Is it fucking mandatory?”
We parted on such weird terms, I half expect him to blank me. But Skylar laughs, and it’s like seeing the sun for the first time after spending a week in a flooded mountain cave. “I’ve never heard anyone sayfuckas much as you.”
“And you’ve never really heard me say it.”
Skylar snorts and tosses something at me. “You left them on the grass.”
Underwear.Mine. This is what I meant about him being dangerous. Add in the dazed circus my mind has settled into and I don’t stand a fucking chance.
Skylar goes back to his broom, reminding me it’s my turn to do this shit in a few days and I need to get on it before Jack does it for me.Reminding mehow entrancing it is watching Skylar do mundane things like sweep floors and wipe dust from the TV.
It’s hard to look away, even with my underwear half in my face. I free myself from the boxers and add them to the tiny pile in my room. I need new clothes, but the prospect of hauling more than I have wherever I go next puts me off buying more. That and I just don’t fucking want to. I like the old ones. Frayed collars, bleached cotton. Threadbare as hell, but they’re mine. Moulded to my body. I don’t know who I am without them.
Deep thoughts about ropey shirts and shorts, but here we are. HereIam, spacing out in my room when I have a front row seat to a hot blond being all domestic and shit.
I go back to the living room. Skylar’s done with the broom and he’s fucking around with a mop. I’m in the way, but I need him. And he seems to know it as he spares me a glance.
“All right?”
“Aye.”
