I come with my fist pressed so hard to the tiles it’s still throbbing as I shake out my hair, drag some clothes on, and do the walk of shame from the bathroom.
Jack hasn’t moved. I pull his door shut and retrieve my phone from the spot I always keep it when I spend the night in his room. Close enough that I’ll hear it. Far enough that he might not.
As it happens, I’ve been so wrapped up in Jack the past few hours I haven’t registered the slew of messages buzzing through. I don’t register them now—not before I study a sequence of numbers I’m still learning to understand. The smooth green line with the tiny bump telling me Oscar’s had his breakfast already.
His message lets me know he’s on his way to give the boat a once-over. I ask him to check the pub roof too, Oscar’s closer to Jack in how meticulous he is. Then I reply to a message from my mum and pocket my phone, a flurry of activity that carries me through the flat above the Joker and to the living space where I find Mal sleeping on the couch with Fiadh, the dog he shares with Jack, curled in the crook of his elbow.
Windows wide open.
Sea breeze rendering the best efforts of the old radiators worse than useless.
Yet I hesitate to shut the windows and crank the heat. Mal’s been knee-deep in PTSD since he came home to us, and eventhough our summer of madness is long over, when Skylar’s not here to distract him, the boy needs to breathe.
I leave him be and skulk into the kitchen, reaching on autopilot for the coffee tin. Thedecafdust we all live on rather than risk Jack ingesting the wrong one. Mal too, though I’d never dare say it to his face.
“Did you sleepwalk in here?”
I jump a mile, hand flying to my chest. “Damn, Mally. Stop sneaking up on me.”
From the doorway, Fiadh at his feet, Mal sends me an edgy half grin that might seem cold to anyone who doesn’t know him. To me, as he falls into his favourite seat at the kitchen table, he just looks tired; he doesn’t sleep much when Skylar’s not here and it dulls his light.
I pass him my coffee and open the fridge instead, gaze sliding to the window to check the time while noting Oscar is already on theSirona, walking the deck, checking the hull. Skylar’s night shift should be over by now, but there’s no telling when he’ll be home. If he’ll want to eat or go straight to bed?—
A bolshy gust of wind blasts through the open windows in the living room, slamming the kitchen door shut. The sudden bang should startle me all over again, but I’m not shocked that the earth reacts to me thinking about Skylar going to sleep hungry.
I shut the fridge. “We need to banish the Ankow.”
Mal sips his coffee, observing me with a gaze far less fascinated by mythology than Jack pretends to be for my sake. Still, though. Mal’s been in my life since we were both little kids. Whether he wants to or not, he knows the Cornish yarns as well as I do. “You can’t banish your freaky death god.”
“The Ankow isn’t a god,” I correct him, my mind already on Jack, my feet already carrying me to the door. “It’s a warning?—”
The kitchen door opens.
Jack.
Sleepy still, but his Gallagher-green eyes are wide and searching until they land on me. “Did something happen?”
“Just the wind.” I go to him and slide an arm around his waist to guide him into the room.
Jack resists. “No, not that. In the night.”
“Storm woke us up.” I tread softly. Jack doesn’t always like to know he’s been distressed enough to call my name. “Then we went back to sleep.”
“That’s it?” A frown threatens his rugged features. “Nothing else?”
“Not unless you remember something I don’t.”
Mal snorts, taking my careless words for a bad joke. Jack’s consternation deepens and I know I need to fix it fast. Before whatever rattled him in the night comes roaring back and does far worse to him than wake him up.
His meds are in the drawer by the kettle, sorted into a planner so anyone and everyone can keep track of them if he’s having the kind of week where he can’t.
I retrieve the coloured box. Palm the mandatory anti-seizure drugs and point at the remaining huddle of meds he doesn’t always want. “Need these?”
“No.”
“Sure?”
Irritated, Jack takes the seizure meds from me and dry swallows them, ignoring the water bottle I offer him, looking anywhere but at me for a few loaded seconds. And then he does look at me, and his searching stare flays me wide open. Except…I don’t know why. Nothing happened last night that we haven’t lived through a thousand times. Unless he was more awake than I thought and my dick print scared him. It’s happened before; to both of us.