Or at least to the shower. But the two steps it takes me to reach the bathroom fast become four.
Five.
Six.
I breach Skylar’s doorway. He’s on his bed, AirPods in his ears, the white of them stark against the dark hood that slips down as he sits up a little to pin me with a stare I can’t read.
He doesn’t say anything.
Neither do I.
But my body betrays me again and I step into his room uninvited, padding across his carpet.
I crouch by the bed and pluck an earphone from his ear. Fit it to my own, accepting he might deck me for my trouble.
But he doesn’t do that either. He watches me absorb the angry music thrashing down the tiny speaker with those pewter eyes and his lips stay firmly closed.
“Metal?” I cock my head. “You don’t seem the type.”
“What type is that?”
His gravelly northern voice gets to me. I don’t know where he’s from. I don’t know anything about him except what he lets me see, and I sense the trap in his flat question. In his dull stare. I’m about to fuck up and we both know it.
“I don’t know. Like a biker, maybe. But Whitlock doesn’t seem much for all that either.”
Skylar’s gaze darkens. My heart thuds a distorted beat, waiting for whatever nightmare lurks inside him to spill out. But those forever seconds don’t last. He draws a breath and wipes his face clean of any emotion that isn’t vague irritation. “What do I care about Folk Whitlock? And why the fuck are you in my room?”
Truthfully, I don’t know. I’m tired, my brain is overfull of rival fisherman ramming Sol’s boat, and Skylar does something to me I haven’t learned to live with yet.
I take the little white earphone out and pass it back without answering the question. Our fingers brush and a differentshockwave rattles me, spurring me into action before I regain enough faculties to just fuckingstop.
His hands, his arms, the exposed skin of his neck…
He’s fuckingfreezing.
“Why are you so cold?”
Skylar arches a brow. “Why’s your hand on my throat?”
Because it belongs there.And it’s not the unvetted thought that throws me for a loop, I’m used to it around Skylar. It’s Vinnie’s laugh—the belly chuckle that filled a room. A chopper. A ditch. Whatever fucked-up place we found ourselves—if he laughed, we all did.
Laughing at you now, brother.
Lucky him. I take a sledgehammer to his ghost, a metaphorical one, and focus on the cool skin beneath my palm. The flat stare drilling a hole in the side of my head.
Skylar.
I’m as obsessed with him as I am terrified of Vinnie forcing his way into my conscience, and I’m not boneheaded enough to believe the two phenomena aren’t connected. I just can’t handle them both at once.
Awkward silence doesn’t worry me. I let Skylar eviscerate me with his eyes while I use his unexplained body temp to calm myself down. And it works, until my hand slides from Skylar’s neck, I move to stand—to escape how it feels to lose that contact—and black spots dance in my vision.
I root a fist to the carpet, cursing the deafeningwhooshin my ears, fury my only company for however long it takes my blood pressure to reset its stupid fucking self. However long it takes me to realise the sole reason I haven’t toppled over is Skylar gripping my elbow.
It should annoy memorethat I’m not alone right now to deal with this shit in peace. But despite the cold fire of his touchtonight, there’s warmth in that gesture too. Whether he likes it or not, Skylar’s a natural caregiver, even for me.
The roaring in my ears fades. It leaves me with that bolstering touch and I don’t pull away from it. I don’t want to. So I let it sit to see what he’ll do, and eventually, he just fucking sighs.
“You wanna take a seat?”