Fucking hell.Thisis why I’ve worked so much over the past few weeks, picking up every shift going, spending my rest days by the river instead of at home. I need my people—I need my family. But it’s hard to deny, even to myself, that I’ve stayed away to avoid Sol’s kind and hopeful heart latching on to what lurks between me and Mal.
I back up from Mal and dip into the gym, snatching my hoodie from the floor and tugging it on before I return to the doorway and squeeze past Sol.
He lets me past and I’m halfway up the stairs when he calls my name.
Sighing, I turn back, ignoring the neon laser of Mal’s amusement and focusing on Sol’s sudden nerves. “What?”
“I’m making dinner in a bit. Sit with us?”
Sit with us.
Nevereatwith us.
But he’s caught me on a good day, and it’s the best feeling in the world to accept his invitation with a dry nod. “Shout me when it’s ready.”
Two hours later, I jerk awake from a post-shower doze to a knock at my door. “Yeah?”
No one answers. Yawning, I stagger upright and open it. To Mal. Sans his own shirt this time, and I’m too sleep-addled to temper my reaction. “Fuck’s sake. What do youwant?”
Mal smirks and musses my hair the way Jack does. “Dinner. Try smiling, yeah? It suits you.”
He did not.
He did.
Mal ambles away, long legs encased in the cargo shorts he seems to live in, bare feet on the hard wood that floors any room that isn’t a bedroom or bathroom.
It shouldn’t be fucking sexy. But even his retreating back does something to me. Something that has me trailing after him, still rubbing my eyes, all the way to the kitchen where I discover a full house.
Jack.
Sol.
Sev.
Oscar and Aras, his little boy, who’s already apparently familiar enough with Mal to monkey up his legs and climb on his back. “Teti says you can fly.”
Mal chuckles, and it jars me—it’s the first time I’ve heard him laugh without an edge. “That was nice of your dad. But I’ve lost my wings.”
“We were talking about parachutes,” Oscar supplies from where he stands at the stove with Sol, both of them fussing over fish. “I tried to draw one to show him, it did not go well.”
“You couldn’t show him on your phone?”
Oscar shrugs. “I do not like to teach him with screens. Books, maybe. Or paper photographs.”
Mal’s gaze slides to where Jack sits at the table, counting stock with a pen and paper. Like he expects his brother to sense the weight of his stare.
Sol intervenes, nudging Jack, pointing over his shoulder.
Jack blinks. “Hmm?”
A beat passes that anyone not as obsessed with Mal as I seem to be probably wouldn’t notice. Then Mal says the last thing I expect. “Do you still have those old para photos from the desert?”
“Which desert?”
“The one they sent us to after basic.”
Jack taps his fingers on the table, thinking, glancing at Sol like he so often does when he’s not sure he knows the answer to something.