Only Oscar shifting beside me breaks the spell. He palms my empty bowl and chucks in the yoghurt pot. He doesn’t speak, but the question in his eyes is clear.You good?
Not yet, but I will be. I nod, showing him whatever it takes to let himself leave when he needs his bed after a long night as much as I do.
Oscar touches his fist to my shoulder and takes my bowl to the sink, murmuring to Jack and Mal. Mal turns his head enough that I see him grin and I like it enough to revisit how he felt pressed against me on that distant beach. How hard and strong he was everywhere, not just his dick. His hand is a ghost on my jaw, his lips hot on mine. We didn’t get that far, but thinking about it has me shifting in my seat, too ensnared by what might’ve been to catch whatever makes Jack growl and follow Oscar out of the room.
For a man as built as he is, Jack’s fast on his feet, his tread light on the old floorboards. He’s gone before I can blink and it shouldn’t surprise me. Jack often taps out of conversations he thinks have got away from him. But his abrupt exit throws me and not just because it leaves me alone with Mal.
It’s knowing I’ve been too caught up in my own shit to help Jack handle his.
It’s Mal’s face as his brother leaves.
I hear Jack go downstairs to where Sol is tossing the beer order in the cellar with enough disorder to calm Jack down. That Sol ishere, which matters. No one comforts Jack like he does, even if the reason why hurts to think about.
“That a thing here?” Mal’s deep voice fills the room. “Any more of this and there’ll be less of it.”
His accent is faint, like Jack’s—it’s been a long time since the Gallagher family left their small hometown in County Down, and I know Mal grew uphere, in Porth Luck. But enough Northern Irish lilt clings to the words that it takes me a second to grasp I don’t know what any of it means.
I ease back in my seat, glad Oscar took my bowl and yoghurt pot. It’s easier to forget the monster on my shoulder if I don’t have to look at the evidence.
Mal’s leaning against the counter again, his stance as relaxed as his gaze is sharp, and I try to match what I see with what I already know about him. But while I’m pretty certain it’s more than he’d be comfortable with, it’s not much, and none of it is visible from the outside anyway.
“You’re going to have to translate,” I say eventually. “I don’t speak Killinchy riddles.”
Mal pauses long enough to wet his lips. A barely there dart of his tongue I wouldn’t notice in anyone else. “The flouncing out thing,” he clarifies. “Sev went first and Jack’s done it twice in ten fucking minutes.”
“Sev doesn’t want to be here.” It’s no secret. “But Jack can’t handle the admin side of the pub on his own and Sol’s no good at anything he can’t do with his hands.”
“What about you?”
“I’m good with my hands too.”
Mal’s stare heats, a faint smirk twisting his lips before he reins it in. “That’s not your real answer.”
It isn’t, and I’m not shocked he’s sniffed it out so fast.
“Mal’s a blood hawk,” Sol mused, studying the dregs of his pint. “There’s not much he doesn’t see, and he sniffs out bullshit like a fucking dinner lady.”
At the time, the analogy had made me laugh, but I don’t like not knowing if Mal noticed Oscar babysitting me through a shitty bowl of oats. I hate it, and I shouldn’t. He’s not my friend. My family. He’s not my brother or my lover. I shouldn’t care what he does or doesn’t see.
Idon’tcare.
He’s not a permanent fixture in my life. Jack talks in circles by accident sometimes, but that much he was clear about.
“If he comes at all, he won’t stay. He doesn’t like it here.”
Suits me, and I’m happy to give Mal the truth without blinking. “I don’t help run the Joker. Jack and Sol won’t let me because they feel bad for needing my contribution to buy it.”
Mal considers that, and I wonder if he’s putting it together with what littleheknows aboutme. “I’m guessing that would be a good deal for you if this place wasn’t on its fucking knees.”
“How do you know it’s on its knees?”
“I’ve had a lot of time to kill recently. Some of it I even made use of.”
That heat flickers in his eyes again, sparking behind those long lashes. It takes me somewhere else, even though those snatched moments with him should be as distant to me as the last few days have been.
I wanted him.
Iwanthim still. Enough to imagine his phantom scent on my skin. Enough to wonder how his messy hair would have felt wrapped around my fingers when I should’ve forgotten him the instant I walked away.