He drops silently onto the carpet and comes to the bed as I start to sit up, blinking away my worst nightmare.
His palm hits my chest and he eases me back down, tapping a finger to my lips. “Don’t wake up.”
“I’m not asleep.”
“Aye, but you should be.”
I don’t know what that means. But as Mal stretches out on my bed, barefoot with the scent of an ocean gale clinging to his clothes, I’m not sure it matters.
I’m not sure anything does, except him and the barbed corkscrew in my stomach.
It still hurts.
Mal shifts onto his side and stares at me in the dark as if the walls I’ve built around myself are made of the thinnest black lace. As if he can see through my skin. “You’re even fucking hotter with that war wound.”
“Hmm. I don’t know about that.”
“Just believe it then.”
The cramp in my belly amps up a gear.
I don’t blink.
I don’t breathe.
I donothing.
And yet Mal’s hand skates over my abdomen, warm and solid. It splays out, like it does when we’re fucking. He leaves it there long after he falls asleep, and all I can think about is how I’ll feel when he’s gone.
23MAL
I don’t go to Madrid. The texts from Chris Morris go unanswered and I pretend they don’t exist. And that I’m not batshit crazy for blanking him or reaching out to him in the first place.
Both scenarios are strong possibilities, but I have other things on my mind.
So many fucking things.
I hang from the corroded drainpipe, threading cable from a bracket I’ve bolted to the Joker’s salt-worn bricks. My bare feet dig into a narrow ledge in the cracked wall, the wind battering me like an old pal, and I can’t deny that I like the snap of adrenaline.
Helps me remember who I am.
Who I want to be.
I screw the surveillance camera into place, ignoring whoever’s heckling me from the ground.
It’s not Jack. Of that I’m certain. If anyone understands how I feel up here, it’s him. Unless he’s forgotten how it feels to jump, but I don’t think he has. I think he’s forgotten how toremember, but I’m too much of a fuck-up to help him with that. I’m too much of a fuck-up for most things right now, but this…this I can do.
Bolt cameras to the walls.
Build higher fences.
Bang my brother’s friend in the shower.
Against his bedroom door.
In the utility room in the pitch dark, my hand over his mouth, my lips fused to his neck.
Last night.