He’sneversmiled at me like that—I’m glad of it, I don’t think I’d survive if he did. And my brother…he deserves the easy affection Skylar gives him. The love in Sol’s eyes as he grins from the other couch and grouses, “Git. You’ve stitched me right up.”
Jack snorts. “You’ll work it out.”
“Not today, I won’t.” Sol stretches his arms over his head and flinches as he realises his mistake, discomfort creasing his handsome face.
It’s my cue to venture further into the room before Jack notices. To watch it play out and see if Jack has more luck than me at prising the truth out into the narrow world we now share.
Honestly, I’m fifty-fifty, but as the split-second debate swings back and forth in my head, Skylar looks up and spots me too fast for me to have any hope of engaging who I used to be and backing the fuck up. Somehow heseesme, every thought, every feeling, and he makes the choice for me.
“You wanna play?”
He means chess, and he’s out of his fucking mind. But if he thinks I’ll back down from the challenge in his pretty eyes, he’s shit out of luck.
Sol scoots up to make room for me to take his place. I sink onto the couch, eyeing the hoodie that now covers Skylar’s torso.
It’s not his. It’s too big and I deduce he’s grabbed it from the stack of clothes folded on the sofa arm. Iresentit.
Because his body?
Fucking hell.
It’s as perfect as it is disturbing.
The inked skin.
The lean muscles.
The absence of so much as a scrap of extra flesh, as if his metabolism is just that fucking efficient.
Sol stands and drifts into the kitchen.
I stop staring at Skylar long enough to study the board and win the fight not to track him as he rises and follows Sol into the kitchen.
The white pieces—Sol’s pieces—outnumber the granite opposition, but Jack has him boxed into a corner. “He’s right. You’ve stitched him up.”
Jack slowly shakes his head. “Look again.”
I do, and as Jack leans forward, nostalgia sweeps through me, rattling my soul. Jack raised me playing games like this,while our dad indulged his grief in the bottom of a whiskey bottle. How many times had I thought I’d lost, only for him to show me the way?
The board sprawls out before me, the big picture obvious. Sol has more firepower, but Jack has him throttled in the corner, the only move left a quiet retreat. Atrap, I realise, as I spot Jack herding him into checkmate two moves later.
It’s reassuring to know my kind-hearted brother can still be a devious bastard. But he’s a better teacher, a patient one. He waits me out, and finally, I see it. The bishop. The knight. The pawn I have to sacrifice on Sol’s behalf for the board to breathe again.
I make the move. The board opens up and Jack takes it all in. I give him room to think, straining my ears for whatever’s going on in the kitchen to keep Sol and Skylar in there so long.
Radio silence, which is never good. Until the dust settles and you realise a whole operation has happened without you.
“Skylar brought me a chess set when I was stuck in the rehab unit. I thought I’d never played before.”
I refocus on my brother. “We played a lot when we were kids.”
“I know. I just didn’t for a while. Until all the fragments in my skull started talking to each other again.”
“How did you meet him?”
“Skylar?”
I nod, kinda hoping he’s forgotten, praying he hasn’t.