Panting.
Wild-eyed.
Lips savaged and swollen.
I know I look the same.
The space he’s forced between us hums with the energy of a minefield. Of an open battleground. But my body buzzes like we’re still connected, and Skylar…he licks his lips. Like he wants it all over again.
Like he wants itharder.
I want that too. All of it. But more simmers beneath the surface. So much more. And for the first time, it truly scares me. Like a buried deep part of me knows I won’t survive the most earth-shattering kiss I’ve ever experienced being the first and last we’ll ever share.
Distance.
I need it, we both do, and Skylar’s voice cuts through the clattering silence, low and wrecked with the same despair I’m starting to feel.
“Get out of my room.”
I rise, turn my back on Skylar, and walk out, and if I’m dizzy for any reason other than him, I don’t fucking know about it.
I’m in my own room before I truly know what’s hit me. My window is wide open and the weather’s darkened even more while I’ve been holed up in his room, on his bed, my fucking mouth on his like it has any business being there.
I laugh without sound or humour. Bitter wind whips in from the sea, an echo of sorts, and I find myself wondering if I’m even awake right now. If I’m even alive. Skylar is most fantasies I’ve ever had come true, at least the ones that didn’t centre around Vinnie. It makes sense that he’s not real. That none of this is, and I never woke up from the bomb blast in Syria.
My heart thunders. I press my palm to it, willing the static in my ears to fuck off. Drunk on Skylar, I can’t tell if it’s PTSD or Afib bullshit, and I’m so sick of fucking acronyms I want to scream.
The feeling—the hysteria—is fleeting. I’m good at controlling my emotions. At pushing them down and down and down until they disappear, even if logic tells me they’ll be back to haunt me when I’m least prepared for it. I take a breath, cataloguing surroundings that are, by now, familiar enough that it doesn’t take long. The wind seeps into me, cooling me down, and as my eyes fall closed, it begins to rain. Really fucking rain, shattering any chance of peace. But I don’t mind the racket. Quiet’s no fun when I’m alone.
I open my eyes and pull the window in a little. Not closed, but no longer open enough to let the unhinged Cornish downpour soak my bed. I need that fucking shower, but I’m suddenly reallyfucking tired, and I stagger to my bed instead and sink down, dropping my head low.
My pulse pounds in my ears, fast and loud. It’s not scary—it shouldn’t be, I know what it is. But the sharp thud kicking the shit out of my ribcage disturbs me. It makes me think of the worst time it happened. It makes me think of Vinnie all over again and I can’t catch my breath without seeing the life fade from his eyes.
Get a fucking grip.
I lose my t-shirt for something to do. Tug it off and toss it with cold sweat slinking down my neck. My phone lies on the bedside table. I pick it up and swipe the screen for no reason I can think off, expecting a whole heap of nothing. But a missed call greets me—a number I plumbed into the phone before I even got here. A number that if I’d dialled it the night I met Skylar, would’ve rung in his fucking hand.
He called me.
Six hours ago.
I stare at the notification, a phenomenon that’s still new to me, and my feral heartbeat starts to slow.
It doesn’t take a genius to work out why Skylar called me.For my brother. Sol knew Jack would fret when the waves kept us out at sea longer than expected and his own phone gave up the ghost.
But despite the vague thread of common sense that drove me out of Skylar’s room and into my own, despite the sensation of his literal shove still imprinted on my skin, I like that I was on his mind.
It makes the fact that he’s always on mine easier to bear.
11MAL
Time is slower in Porth Luck. Another week goes by. Maybe two. I sail with Sol every day Oscar doesn’t, and occupy myself fixing broken things around the Joker when he does. But none of it shifts the weight that settles in for good once the rush of kissing Skylar finally fades.
I don’t appreciate the reality that it’s never going to happen again—that itcan’t. I see that boundary around his relationship with Sol, withJack.Familial, protective, fuckingvital. What could happen if I fuck with it andfuck it up.
Skylar might leave.
Fuck. I don’t like that. I don’t like itat all, and even thinking about it puts me in a mood that has most people in this town moving out of my way.