I take his advice and start eating, keeping my gaze to myself while the rigidity in Skylar’s set jaw battles the terror in the rest of his body as he tries to outrun whatever makes him this way. A race he eventually wins as he leans into the arm I have around him and picks up his fork.
But still I stay quiet, knowing how well-meant kindness can rip a struggling man wide open. I eat my dinner, and when I’m done, I sink into how good it feels to have his body against mine. I let my fingertips brush his bare arm, rough callouses to his soft skin, and try not to contemplate how it feels every time I see him like this when I have no room in my fucked-up heart to love anyone else.
“Do you feel better today?”
I trace more ink on Skylar’s lean bicep. “Aye. Fucking beer. It’s never been that bad before.”
“Never?”
“Not since I came here.”
“What happened before that?”
Food turns to ash in my stomach. Is that how he feels before he’s even eaten it? “Lots of things happened, and now I’m here. And I’m fucking sorry about last night. I know better than to drink like that. I read the leaflets.”
“That all you’re sorry for?”
“If you’re talking about some dickhead’s carpet burn, then aye, dead on. I’m not sorry for that at all.”
Skylar chews slowly. Then he swallows with a faint smirk, and I like it enough not to change the subject. “I need to tell you something,” he says.
“Go on.”
“The patient didn’t stay for treatment, and he gave a fake name. But I’ll know him if I see him again, so everything you’re doing to keep this from me, it’s not going to last.”
I’d figured as much. And that he might notice theMary Gloucester’shiatus from Porth Luck’s harbour. “Maybe you’ll have calmed down by then, eh?”
Skylar holds my gaze. A beat passes before he speaks again. “You’re not worried they’ll report what you did?”
“Round these parts?” I shake my head. “Porth Luck folk don’t grass. A lot has changed down here, but not that.”
“What if they come back?”
“Then maybe I’ll let you shoot them instead.”
I’m going hard for levity, but Skylar doesn’t smile. He eats as much as he’s going to and takes the plates to the dishwasher. The innards of the air fryer get chucked in too, and I decide I like the freaky little machine.
“I’m going for a shower.”
I’m still at the table, missing his perfect skin. “Why are you telling me that?”
“What?”
I lean back in my seat, take in his shuttered features, and miss him even more. “You don’t usually tell me your bathroom plans.”
“I’m being polite.”
“Why?”
Something that looks horribly like panic flares in those smoke and metal eyes. It’s gone in the split second it takes him to replace it with a piercing glare, but it wrenches my gut.
It’s not him you’re missing. It’s something else.
“Sky—”
“Don’t fucking call me that.”
He spins around, and exits the kitchen fast enough to give me whiplash. And I should be used to it. We’re both fucked-up. Every interaction we share reflects that, and my rational brain accepts it. My irrational brain wants to beat down the bathroom door as I hear it close a few seconds later, the shower drownedout by the music playing in the living room, and it’s another struggle I’m still not used to.