“No, but I’d lie to you if I had.”
Dark humour lights Mal’s eyes. “Good to know. Can Itellyou something?”
I nod, slowly, feeling the weight of the food in my belly, and everything that’s passed between us. His phone is on the coffee table. He brought it with him from the bedroom like he’s expecting a call on a device, until now, he’s seemed happy to drop in the sea.
That job.
Madrid.
I’ve seen the messages?—
“I’m not leaving.” Mal cuts through my spiralling thoughts. “Whatever happens with you and me, I need to be where Jack is for a while. I never realised how hard it’s been to live without him until I got him back.”
Relief soothes the wounds I’ve ripped open. “Does he know?”
“I think so. I told him I’d go to some military head shed with him. Get my noggin evaluated.” Mal raps a fist to his temple.“Unless he thinks I’m lying, but he should know me better than that.”
“Is this you warning me that you’re sticking around?”
“If you need warning.” Mal’s sprawled on the couch, long limbs everywhere. But his gaze is shrewd, and what’s coming should rattle me.
Should.
It doesn’t.
“This thing you have.” He skates a palm down my bare torso, ghosting it over my belly, before he drags it up again, chasing the goosebumps he’s left in his wake. “I’m not good at saying the right shit. But I want to learn. And I want you to know I’m here, for whatever you need.”
This thing. I wish it had a better name. I wish it didn’t exist. “I don’t want you to change.”
Mal’s hand slips from me. “Not even a little bit?”
I put it back. “No.”
He smiles, but it’s brief, replaced by unfamiliar seriousness all too soon. “I’m not like Jack and Sol. I’m definitely going to fuck this up on a regular basis.”
“You can’t fuck it up worse than I have.”
“I wanted to shake you awake and force feed you.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t do it. You made me crumpets and didn’t say shit when I ate them like a fucking sparrow.”
Mal concedes that, but it’s hard to know what he’s thinking. What I’m thinking when this is the frankest—and longest—conversation I’ve ever had about this.
“I need to stop calling you Sky.”
I’m startled enough to gauge we’ve been silent a while.Sky.Disquiet tugs at me. Ghosts. Demons. But the truth is stronger. “I don’t mind when you do it. That’s what freaked me out.”
“When did you last see your mum?”
“Yesterday.”
Mal’s brows raise, I’ve caught him off guard. But he’s a fast thinker—too fast for me. He joins the dots before I do. “And before that it was the night in Saltkiss Bay, wasn’t it?”
“Nearly. I was seeing her the next day. She keeps—” I stop. I breathe. “I’m trying to stop going, and sometimes she leaves me alone for months at a time, but every summer she reels me back in and I?—”
Fuck.
My gut twists.