A grinding beat flares in my chest, like a Jackal engine rumbling to life. Or a meaty Harley Davidson, like the ones that put that sad fire in Skylar’s eyes.
It’s an odd thought to have alongside a sensation that feels like I’m dying. To feel a surge of attraction as my pulse booms like actual fucking death.
My hands twitch with the need to rub at my chest. Mysweatinghands, like the beer bottle Skylar hasn’t touched since I invaded his evening with my fucked-up mood. A roll of joyous bass pounds the walls from the bar next door. More thunder, only this time I can’t be sure it’s real, and the bitter taste of anxiety rises in my throat.
It becomes my anchor, that acid searing my windpipe. The only tell I’m still upright as a run of off-beat thumps blurs my vision and my surroundings tilt with a subtle lurch, as if I’m standing on the softest sand in boots built for hard ground.
I need to sit.
I need to lie the fuck down.
I need to be anywhere but this stinking fucking bar, and I need itnow.
Air too thick clogs my throat. Sweat trickles down my spine and my breath starts to shorten, letting me know this core-deep malfunction is digging in for the ride.
Skylar.
I can’t tell if he’s still looking at me, but it doesn’t fucking matter. I hear his voice and it’s too much. Those rough northern vowels that feel like silk when they shouldn’t. The deep timbre that eviscerates my common sense more than any booze ever has.
Go.
I let my misfiring body take over and push off from the bar, shoving through the cram of bodies, the noise, the stench of beer and sweat and unwashed men, until I reach the door and propel myself through it.
Outside, vicious wind hits me. Cold rain. It should feel good, to be out here. To be free. To bealone, away from Skylar’s piercing gaze, but I don’t feel anything but the lurching thump in my chest, the squeeze in my lungs, and the irrepressible urge to do something really fucking stupid to make itstop.
Like jumping out of a plane. Or climbing the wet roof to reach my open bedroom window.
My boots hit the floor, rainwater dripping from my hair. I shake it out. Regret it as the room tilts with more force than the bar downstairs and I stagger to my bed with a light head and legs that feel like I have an overloaded bergin strapped to each thigh and too much rhythm in my ears.
Nausea grips me. Vertigo. I lean forward, scrubbing my hands down my face, trying to ground myself in the sound of doors opening and closing and footsteps descending the stairs.
Sol.
Jack, maybe.
If it’s both of them, I’m alone up here, and I should feel relief.No onecan see me like this. But I don’t feel relief. Not even a little, and I rake my face again, slower this time, forcing cleaner air into my lungs than I ever could downstairs.
Seconds pass. Then minutes. I have a grand old time kidding myself that was it—the crowds, the noise. Being jacked from the fight on the boat. This shit, it’s just spare adrenaline fizzing my blood. Textbook PTSD. Maybe both. Who cares? It’s all fixable. None of it’s permanent.
But as the minutes grow longer, even as time seems to stop, I know it’s not that. That it’s never goingto bethat, because the physical fault lines in my body are inseparable from whateverpsychological mess I’ve brought home from a decade of war and losing my best friend, and the only time I don’t feel like I’m no longer alive is when I’m with Skylar.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I need to leave—this room, this pub, this town. Before I can’t.
My phone is on the windowsill, where it always is when I can’t think of a reason to want it anywhere near me. Below the contact details for Vinnie’s widow and Folk Whitlock is another number. An open-ended job offer that will take me to the other side of the world and everywhere in between. My pulse starts to slow as I tap out a message to an old mate—a coincidence, but I latch onto it anyway. Fire the message into the ether and focus on drawing more air into my parched lungs.
Eventually, I find some semblance of calm. My body feels like my own again and I need some fucking food.
I rise from where I’ve fossilised on my bed with aching limbs and cracking joints, and venture out of my room. The flat is cool and quiet, save the muffled thrum of sound from the pub below. Even the thunder has stopped, if it was ever there at all.
It’s dark until I get to the living room. Find a low lit red lamp casting an eerie glow over the sleeping form of my brother, and a different pain lances my heart. One that matters more.
I crouch by the sofa and study Jack’s face, lines of pain carved into his rugged features, brows cinched together even in sleep, and my resolve to leave Porth Luck takes a bullet to the gut. Not a fatal wound, but one I can’t ignore as guilt throttles my lungs, anger too—at the men I fought at sea when I should’ve been here to help my brother through whatever’s happened to him tonight.
If they come back, I’ll kill them.