Probably.
Definitely won’t fucking miss, a thought that takes hold as my brother stirs awake to find me looming over him with murder written all over my face.
I move back, giving him space, but in my addled state, I’m not fast enough, and his strong hand clamps around my wrist, confusion colouring his gaze.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I pull my arm back, but Jack doesn’t let go.
He uses the momentum to sit up and grabs my other arm. “What is it? What happened?”
“When? Tonight?”
Jack blinks hard. “I don’t know.”
“That should tell you I’m fucking fine then.” But I don’t pull back again, finding comfort in the tactile nature he didn’t have when we were young. “What about you? Music too loud?”
Jack releases one of my wrists to rub at his least favourite eye. “Aye. Rattles my skull.”
“Does it hurt?”
He shakes his head, slowly, the frown I’m still getting used to drawing his brows together again. “I don’t really know. Pain up here”—he taps his temple—“it’s fucking weird. Sometimes it hurts so much I stop feeling it.”
It shouldn’t make sense. Or fill me with fresh sickening grief to know he’s not in as much pain as he could be. But these things, I can’t control them. They happen anyway and all I can do is stop Jack scrubbing his eyeball clean off his face.
So I do it, knock his hand away, and it leaves us clinging to each other’s wrists as if we’re punctured life rafts drifting in the dark. I don’t know how to save him, or tell him I’m drowning too.
We let go.
I move to the kitchen while Jack puts himself back together and make toast and jam like our mam used to in the noughties. Brown bread, butter, and too much seedless raspberry gloop.
Jack comes up behind me and peers over my shoulder. “So you do know how to feed yourself.”
“Fuck off.”
He snorts and stirs decaf instant coffee in chipped mugs. We eat and drink together and it doesn’t feel as strange as everything else has since I came back here.
I start to believe I’ve got away with it. That he hasn’t noticed the flayed sensation still lingering in every fucking nerve. But not for the first time, my brother sees more than he seems to think he’s capable of.
He pushes his plate aside and rests his elbows on the table, old tattoo ink bleeding into his skin, his gaze weary, but keen enough to have me fixing my own on a knot of wood in the table top. “Have you been to see Vincent’s widow?”
Vincent. Vinnie. His real name was fuckingTom, but no one ever called him that. Except maybe his wife. “No.”
“Has anyone from your crew?”
“Raven did.”
“That’s the one that never smiles, right?”
“Raven fucking smiles.”
“Didn’t when I knew him.”
“That was a hundred years ago.” I don’t mean to snap, but it bubbles out of me anyway, and hits my brother square in whatever part of him he’s digging deep for to have this fucked-up conversation.
He flinches, like I’ve thrown a rock in his face, and that damn eye screws shut and stays that way.
I can’t look at him. I wrench my body from the bench seat I’ve claimed since I’ve lived here and take our plates to the sink. Put them in the dishwasher. Wash my hands for no reason at all.