Sol stumbles outside.
He’s drunk.
Jack lets his hand drop and darts his gaze between us, torn, and this time I make it easy for him.
I leave before he can catch me.
I don’t get far. There’s nowhere to go unless I want to fight every dickhead local weaving their way home from a night on the juice.
Slipping around the building leads me to the bins. There’s no one around to see me, but it’s habit to move with stealth. I spoke truth to my brother.Onis more natural thanoffand I ghost through the shadows, close to the wall. It’s how I hear some fucker scale it before he’s set a foot to the brick.
Jack.
Sol.
Skylar.
They’re all inside. Oscar’s gone home and Sev, if he’s not in London where he should be, he has a fucking key.
I’m bone-tired, but my body reacts to the faint shot of adrenaline like it’s go-time on the jump ramp, dragging me back to the ghost reaching out with both hands from Jack’s paratrooper ink. I feel a literal chute strapped to my shoulders, hear the roar of the wind again, and it pisses me off.
I leap, reaching the top of the wall first, barrelling out of the silence into the path of whoever’s on the other side.
Recklessness steals over me. I don’t give a fuck who it is. I deck them back to earth and they land with a dull thud.
The hooded figure scrambles to their feet and darts away. I watch them go, fighting the temptation to chase them down, a distant doctor’s voice ringing in my ears a hundred decibels lower than the aircraft noise still haunting me.
Moderate exercise.
An hour ago I didn’t give much of a shit, but that was before I almost face-planted off the roof, and sprinting after some kid who probably hid a weed bag behind the bottle bin isn’t high on my list of ways to die.
You’re not dying.
Not from this, but as the sharp shock of adrenaline fades, I don’t feel all that alive.
I track the figure as it disappears into the night.
Male.
Adult.
By now, he’s too far away for me to tell if he’s armed, and I try to remind myself that I’m in fucking Cornwall, not?—
A door shuts somewhere inside the pub. It startles me. The interloper vanishes from view and I swing my gaze to the only window left open.
Mine. Which means the door wascloseand thinking it might be Skylar’s drives all thoughts of intruders from my brain.
“I’m thinking, that I should probably remind myself I’m never going to fuck you.”
Aye. That’ll do it. And maybehe’swhat left me dizzy when I tried to walk away from him.
Wishful pondering, but I’m not too proud to cling onto it. I swing my legs back and hop down from the wall, only to retrace my steps and climb the side of the building to the roof.
It’s not hard, but fatigue weighs on me and I know why. It’s that pesky thing I couldn’t bring myself to admit to Jack.
“How are you sleeping?”
I’m not.