I take her back to Sol’s car and she hops in the passenger seat as if she’s been doing it her whole life. She curls up as my phone vibrates in my pocket. With Skylar on my mind, I find myself expecting his name on the screen, but it isn’t him. It’s Folk, who I’ve somehow lost track of in the last twenty minutes.
Folk:You think you’re the damage, but what if you’re the fix?
I twist my head around Folk’s words all the way back to Porth Luck, and I don’t stop to contemplate when my brain started thinking of the Joker ashome. What’s the point? For as long as I’m here, it just is, even though Skylar’s car is gone.
Skylar’sgone.
I kill the engine on Sol’s rattly hatchback. The air feels deadly quiet without the strained noise of the old car, but the peace doesn’t last long.
Jack rips the door open before I’ve ditched the seatbelt. Unclips it and all but yanks me to my feet. “Where the fuck have you been?”
Coming upright so fast usually sends me straight back down again, but the Rebel Kings have fed and watered me so well I don’t waver. I root my boots to the ground and let Jack manhandle me.
“Where’ve you been?” He asks again. “Did you go after someone?”
“Aye, dead on.” I can’t lie, but I speak with enough sarcasm that Jack’s bunched shoulders drop a couple of millimetres. “Didn’t catch them.”
“No?”
“No.” I remember the dog. Weave out of Jack’s hold and round the car to fetch her. “Stole a hound, though.”
I open the passenger door. The dog hops down, sniffs the air, then trots to my brother and sits at his feet like he’s fucking Jesus.
It’s a moment where I expect him to blink. But he doesn’t. He crouches to greet the dog and she’s all up in his face. Helaughs—she’s Jack’s dog now, and for the precious seconds they seal their bond, everything is perfect.
Then I remember Skylar’s not here and worry pinches my heart. I glance around all the same, as if he’s hiding in the sand-flecked sheds where Jack keeps spare chairs. But all I see is barren driftwood and the push and pull I’ve felt for months now comes roaring back.
I miss him.
I love him.
And I understand what Folk and Cam have tried to tell me. But it’s hard to escape the fear that I might’ve inflicted more damage on him just by existing.
“I’m not pissing about. Where the fuck have you been?”
Jack.
He’s up in my business again, though there’s a dog between us now, perched in his arms like a smug meerkat. “I’ve been worried.” He keeps trying. “Sol said you wouldn’t kill anyone, but I kept waking up in the night thinking you had.”
“I’ve killed lots of people.”
So has Jack. But this is different, and I know it. Just like I know he’s not gonna shift an inch until I give him some semblance of the truth.
“I didn’t slot anyone. Was never going to. I just needed some fucking space.”
“From what?”
“Myself. It fucked me up to see a hot one in Skylar’s bedroom. It’s been a while since I had to put hands to a fire bomb.”
Jack frowns—of course he does. But it’s not confusion. It’s empathy and concern, and he stares at me so deeply I want to squirm away from him.
I don’t.
I stand my ground. But how he looks at me…it fucking hurts. My brother might be missing a whole lot of context, but he sees the pain in my eyes for what it is.
“There’s a place we can go,” he says, slowly, giving me time to shut him up. “If you’re getting triggered. No shrinks and shit—unless you want that. Just blokes who’ve seen the same fucked-up things you have.”
“It’s not about what I’ve seen.” I tap my temple hard enough to rattle my eyeballs. “It’s uphere. I can’t catch a thought without having a hundred more and it’s driving me fucking crazy.”