It’s hard not to follow them. To spend the rest of my fucking life peering into Jack’s Gallagher-green eyes to check he’s stillthere. But I feel like punching someone, so I stay upstairs, opening beers and tipping them down the sink before a drop hits my tongue. Pacing around, my nerves in my eardrums, and so fucking tired I’m wracked with head-spinning nausea.
Because I need something else to fuck with me right now. Something else to fucking chew on as I process how much it hurts to yearn for Skylar like this.
We don’t talk while we fuck.
We don’t talk after.
And I’ve realised I fucking miss the quiet moments and edgy conversations we shared before this.
I misshim?—
Becauseyou want both, knobhead. To fuck him and know him. Because youlovehim, and how about that, eh?
Cheers, Vin.
I’ve run out of beers to pour away.
I pick up my phone again and reattach myself to Skylar’s message, typing and deleting the same replies as yesterday and the day before. I’m not built for text conversations. Or any conversation that matters, and Skylar matters. He’s mattered to my brother and Sol for a long time, and I’m the reason he’s not fucking here.
It’s a sickening realisation. One that stops me deleting the message thread with Chris Morris even though I can’t stand to look at it. One that has me leaving Skylar’s message unansweredagainand abandoning my phone in the kitchen.
I take a shower—a cold one. I’m not in the fucking mood to spend an hour with my head between my knees. After, I drink a dose of the electrolytes someone’s restocked in Skylar’s cupboard of nightmares and think about trying to sleep, but I never can when he’s not here, not at night, and I find myself pacing again, my phone burning a hole in my pocket.
Christ, I find myself at his fucking door, fully dressed, ready to run this shit out of my head, staring at his empty bed, and it’s all I can do to cement my feet to the floor?—
Nope. I can’t do it.
I slip inside and lie down on his bed. Shut my eyes, just to see, if it’s him, or the bed that’s like a tranquilliser dart to me when we’re not fucking on the carpet. I will my brain to shut the fuck up, but if anything, it gets louder, and I feel that rage in me again. The irrational fury that makes me want to take a dirt nap?—
A dusty nap.
Vinnie wakes me, regret simmering behind the war paint and stupid grin on his face. “Time to go. You good?”
I’m awake, so I’ll do.
Vinnie helps me up. Shoves water and chocolate on me, then moves on to dad someone else.
He moves too fast.
Everything does.
I smell blood in the gritty air before we roll out.
Danger.
Death.
Gunfire surrounds us.
Bomb blasts batter me.
Then the heat.
The silence.
I’m alone.
Looking for Vinnie. For Moth. Raven. Orion.