“No.” He kills the buzz and pockets the phone. I steel myself for a brutal exit, but he draws a little nearer and leans in, like a dare, teasing me with his close proximity. “How are you feeling?”
“Why are you asking me that?”
“Why not?”
“There’s no fucking need.”
“All right.”
He moves to step back.
My hand snaps out to snatch his wrist before I can contemplate what the fuck I think I’m doing. “How areyoufeeling?”
I’ve fought too many men to ever count. For fun, to the death, and everywhere in between. I know when someone’s about to deck me, and I brace myself for the impact, willing to take it and however many come after for as long as I get to keep my hands on Skylar.
But the hit doesn’t come. Whatever urge Skylar has to thump me, he suppresses it. Shoves it down,away, and the bland smile that sucks the life from him finds purchase in his features instead. “I’m tired,” he says. “So get the fuck off me and let me go to bed.”
Tempting, but as hard as I try—which isn’t all that hard—I can’t loosen my grip. If anything, I haul him closer, my lips at his ear. “You’re not going to bed. You’re going to that fucking torture chamber you call a gym.”
“So?”
“So don’t.”
Skylar almost laughs, but there’s zero humour in his gaze as he wrenches his arm, fighting to break my lethal hold on him. “Don’t lecture me on harmful behaviour. You think I don’t see you running half marathons every fucking day? You ever stopand think what it’d do to Jack if you keeled over at the side of the road and never came home?”
“As much as he stopped to think about me before he stepped in front of mortar fire.”
Skylar hisses through his teeth. “Let go of me.” This time I do, but he doesn’t step off. He stays where he is, breathing as hard as I am. Like we’ve just fucked instead of whatever the hell this is. “What are you doing today?”
I just laugh.
He fills in the blanks, shaking his head. “Wait here.”
“The fuck for?”
“Just do it.”
Skylar breaks away from me and ducks inside, taking the madness of his presence with him. And now he’s gone, I take a breath that actually fills my fucking lungs, but my head spins like I’ve just rolled off the waltzers at Killinchy fair.
Skylar, man. He has me messier than eight pints with Vinnie, and I swear to God, it’s getting worse.
There’s no other explanation for why I do exactly as he says and wait when I have shit I need to do today while Sol’s on dry land, working on boat maintenance with Sev tearing him a new one for reasons I’m not privy to.
At least, I’m not until Sev storms up the ramshackle jetty and hurls an iPad at me.“Youneed to deal with this.”
I catch the tablet. Then I catch Sev too, who can fuck all the way off if he thinks he’s chucking something in my face and getting away with it.
You’re still salty he threw that fritter at Skylar.
Not the time, Vin. Not the time.
I haul Sev back to me. “If you want my help, I’m gonna need more than that.”
“Yourhelp?” Fire burns in Sev’s brown eyes. “Are you fucking joking?”
No. But I don’t need a decade of elite military training to know more words are going to make this worse. So I wait, letting my silence simmer Sev down, doing the work my big fat mouth has become incapable of since—well, since ever, to be honest.
Sev snarls like an angry badger.