I move back from Sol and grab a protein shake from the fridge. It goes down like sand and I feel him watching me.Knowingme as well as anyone ever has until Mal.
My stomach twists. I need his attention off me, before I puke on his fucking feet. And if there’s an upside to someone fire-bombing my bedroom, it’s that Sol has plenty to think about. “This was Couch. Has to be.”
His face turns grim.Guilty. As if the fucked-up reality we live in is anywhere close to being his fault. “Whitlock warned us.”
I force my mind back to that night, when the Rebel Kings appeared at the kitchen door like ghosts. Because they’redifferentto everything I see when I look at them. Everything I think I know. They told Mal to wait that night. To go to them before he moved on Couch with his one-man army. It’s so fucked-up to hope that he listened. To know that he doesn’t listen to anyone. “You think Mal’s with him?”
Whitlock.
Folk.
Sol shakes his head. “I called Cam. They haven’t seen him.”
“You called Cam?”
More guilt mars Sol’s face. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“What did he say?”
“That they’d look for him where they’d expect him to be if he’s gone for Couch, but they don’t have many bodies to spare right now.”
Right. Because the Rebel Kings have gone so fucking legit they run their own festival every summer. One they built from the ground up in the fields where they burned my dad’s bike.
Sickness grips me. Too hard and too fast for nausea, it barrels up my throat as I screw the cap back on the empty bottle in my hand and crush it, slowly, breathing through my nose. “Who’s on the road?”
Sol snorts. “As if they’d tell me.”
Truth. Sol and Cam go way back, but beyond a bit of tobacco smuggling back in the day, Sol’s clean. He’s had to be to prop uphis own father who’d be as dead as mine if Cam O’Brian was the same as the man who came before him.
“It’s done and it ain’t yours to carry. Now let it rot with his fucking bones.”
It’s me that’s rotting. From the inside out. I fire the crushed bottle at the bin. I don’t miss. Sol’s speaking again, but I can’t hear him, and I wonder if this is how Mal feels when he stands up too fast. How Jack feels when his brain short-circuits. Then I bite down on the errant thoughts, because I know it’s not the same. It can’t be. They’re not doing that shit to themselves.
On my good days, I know I’m not either. But I haven’t had a good day in a while. I can only breathe when Mal’s fucking me, when he’s holding my face and being the most entrancing human I’ve ever met, and I feel like I’m clinging to something that won’t fucking float.
Acid burns my throat. I’m losing the war with my diaphragm.
Sol’sstilltalking.
No. He’s moving, reaching for me. But I’m already lurching away.
In the bathroom, I lose the protein shake and whatever else I’ve eaten in the last few hours. It isn’t much. In fact, it’s so little I recall every bite. Every swallow. Every resolution that this wouldn’t happen.
I wipe my mouth.
Brush my teeth.
I breathe air that doesn’t carry Mal’s cedar-wood scent and I miss it. I misshim, and it makes me feel weak.
Call him.
The idea feels foreign. But it’s better than hiding in the bathroom with a chainsaw in my stomach. It’s better than contemplating the reality that I have nowhere to sleep.
Jack’s still in my room.
I go to Sol’s and lie down on his bed. It’s warm in here, insulated by the books lining the walls. It smells good too, like Sol always has. But my phone is a snake in my hands. I place the call and it rings and rings and rings.
Then it cuts out.