Smells likeMaldid last night, and the realisation has me reeling, but I don’t have time for that. Not here.Neverhere. I get a hold of myself and find the focus everyone under my care needs me to have. “How did you do that?”
“Barbecue. Fucked up lighting it.”
“When?”
“Last night.”
“And you’re only just coming in now?”
“Looked all right after eight pints.”
It’s a story I’ve heard before, one that’s turned out to be true. But as I ask more questions and get more vague answers, my bullshit radar flashes red.
My relief arrives to take over from me.
“Wait there,” I tell the man. “I’ll take you through.”
I escape the front desk and escort him to a bed in the trauma unit while he avoids my gaze like the plague.
By chance, Marc is still there. Or he’s back for another shift. I’ve lost track. Regardless, he doesn’t buy the man’s story about barbecues and lighter fluid. “Looks like a flare injury to me. You don’t get that gunpowder stink from much else. Nothing a civvy can get hold of anyway.”
“What are you doing with him?”
“Burns unit if he ever comes back from the bog.”
And in the end, the man doesn’t. He disappears without a trace, and he’s not the only patient to do it today alone, but it plays on my mind as I finally get my shit together and leave the hospital.
In my car, I tap through the messages Sol and Jack have sent from Sol’s phone.
Sol:it’s jack. ur l8. u ok?
Sol:Taking Jack to my mum’s. Be back for close down. Let me know you’re home?
For my sake, not the pub’s. But I’m irrationally annoyed with Sol for reasons I’m not sure of yet, and the gunpowder scent still cloying my senses nonsensically seems to be a fucking clue.
I reply to Jack and drop my phone on the passenger seat. The early evening sun catches the screen, and for the first time in a while, I don’t want to go home. I’m keyed up and overtired, a state of mind that usually leads me to fuck someone and never talk to them again. But I don’t feel like doing that either, so I just drive, finding speed on the country roads I know well enough topretend I’m someone else for a little while. Someone who rode a Harley at a hundred miles an hour without giving much of a shit who got in my way.
I’m not that person anymore—I’m notfifteen, and I haven’t been for a long time. Not since my childhood was eviscerated overnight and I becamethisinstead. A functioning mess Sol used to argue wasn’t all that bad. But he doesn’tknow. No one does, and they never will.
Not as long as Cam keeps his promise.
Cam O’Brian.
My need for speed peters out as thoughts of the Rebel Kings president fill my head. I haven’t talked to him in a while. By choice or necessity, depending on my mood. Kinda miss him, but I always have, and I’ve never let myself think hard enough about it to figure out if it’s affection for an old friend or warped nostalgia.
I don’t think too hard about it now. Thankfully, I run out of road for where I want to go and ease my car into the secluded parking spot near the hidden lagoon.
It’s a warm evening, a world away from this morning’s bitter winds, British summertime in full swing. But the sun has come late enough that most people have stayed home, and for the second time in recent memory, I have the lagoon to myself.
You weren’t alone last time.
Memories of Mal’s kisses, of his dick hot and heavy even through his clothes, surge through me. I dump my bag and strip, stepping into the shorts I swim in when I come here after work. Then I dive, my simmering blood cooled by the chilly water, and I swim and swim and swim until I run out of breath.
Then I swim some more until I’m so close to passing out I almost don’t bother to stop.Almost. I’m not feeling that dark today. I break the surface, flick water out of my face, and I know before my lungs fill with air that I’m no longer alone.
Mal.
I’m not even surprised. But I’m still wildly unprepared for the splash across the lagoon and his stupid grin as he pops up in front of me.