“Nothing, I just…” Jack’s attention meanders to Mal’s closed bedroom door. “Something felt off up here.”
My head still spins from Mal’s touch. His kiss. The wild fuck I didn’t know I needed so much. Only the dark of my room hides the cooling sweat on my skin. The teeth marks marring my inked shoulder.
I scrub my hands down my face.
Jack notices and backs off. “Fuck. Sorry. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m awake.”
“You look tired.”
I am tired. I haven’t slept since…I don’t actually know. Since before Mal stumbled into my roomyesterday. And I have to work in the morning. I have to be safe to guard people’s health and keep them alive.
But Jack…I love him. He’s my home as much as Sol. Shutting the door in his face is as unthinkable as Mal fucking me against it had been an hour ago. “Can you make me some toast?”
Jack’s frown becomes something different. Something that makes my soul scratch and burn. But he nods and steps away. Giving me space. Letting me take a breath that finds more freedom than I anticipate.
I’m not shaking anymore.
It’s like I never was.
22SKYLAR
Just this once.
A mantra that comes to mean absolutely nothing. That first night, I sit with Jack and choke down the toast he makes me, while he tries to stop himself going back to work.
Back toSol.
He fails, drawn to his best friend like the tide to the moon, and that night I’m glad of it, despite the pain their uncharted heartscape causes them both.
I go to bed.
I sleep.
I go back to work.
Two nights later, Mal comes to my room.
We don’t talk. We fuck, and I feel like I’m losing as much as I’m gaining. Because nothing so messy can ever be a cure, and the shaking inside me—it comes back. I can’t keep my food down. I mainline protein shakes. Fill my body with water. Stay out of the gym, because it just might kill me. I eat the meals Sol puts in front of me. I fuckingsmile. But I crave Mal’s touch with a different hunger. A sharp and constant yearning I can’t escape.
His mouth.
His dick.
His penetrating stare as he holds me against the wall and takes everything I have left, then tells me how much he wants to smoke.
We like walls.
Doors.
The shower.
His body fits mine as if he was made for me, and the biggest mistake I’ve made for a long time is too fucking good to give up.
Friday evening, my shift gets cut short when a dementia patient whacks me with his walking stick. A junior doc patches me up, but he’s not built for A&E, and I drive home with blood oozing from my temple.
It’s not my best look. I park my car and get out hoping no one I give a fuck about catches sight of me before I clean this shit up.