Still not sure that’s where I am with Mal. But I don’t need him to elaborate about Orion. We speak the same language, and somehow I still have the muscle memory to fill in the gaps. To see the way his hands twitch, fighting the urge to check kit he’llnever carry again. To know that he won’t stop thinking about his friend until he knows for sure he’s okay.
It leaves the rest of us to worry about Mal, and I have a head start. Even with my fucked brain, I see the unnatural alertness in my brother that won’t fade for a while. The textbook shadow he can’t outrun, no matter how many times he loses himself in Skylar.
It’s a doorway I want to yank him through, but I can’t. He needs to sit with this—feel it—and live with the man he is when it’s over…and I’d be an idiot to think he’ll come out of it untouched.
Like Orion.
I embrace Mal again.
He hugs me back and it means the fucking world.
I’m not so keen on the look he gives me when he pulls back. “What?”
“Don’twhatme.”
“Why not?” I go back to the dishes, skin crawling like I know what he’s about to say, but I haven’t figured it out yet. “You’re fucking me with eyeball subtext when you know I won’t get it.”
Mal trails me to the sink. “If I ever do that, I don’t mean to.”
Right. Becauseheforgets that I’m not who I used to be. How the fuck does he think I feel?
Irritation prickles my skin. That untamed fury I hurled at Sol the other day. It’s still in me—it’llalwaysbe in me. But with everyone I care about under one roof for the night, subduing it isn’t as hard.
I drain the dishwater and face Mal. “Just say what you’re thinking. It’s easier that way.”
“Are you and Sol fucking?”
Christ. Leave it to my brother to spit that question with a straight face. That I asked him to is a distant thing to the ringing in my ears and instant heat rushing through my veins.
Fuck. I emptied the sink. I have nothing to do with my hands.
I ball them into fists, hating that Mal clocks every minute movement in everyone he’ll ever meet. “Why are you asking me that?”
Mal snorts. “Because you two in the same room is fucking wildfire.”
“Stop sayingfucking.”
“No.” Mal’s already speaking quietly, but he moves closer to me to drop his voice even lower. “Something’s changed, hasn’t it?”
“With what?”
“You and Sol.”
“Me and Sol.” I mean it to be another deflective question. But it doesn’t come out like that and I like how the words feel in my mouth. How they feel in the open, even if it’s just between me and Mal. “What do you mean?”
Mal gives me a moment to figure it out. Then he cocks a brow and gives me a droll stare just like our dad. Until it reminds me he’s already told me what he means and I give him a shove.
“Shut up.”
He laughs, and I love that for him. But I’m distracted by what he said the first time. About wildfire and Sol, and how it makes me feel.
“Do you think anyone else can tell?”
Mal checks the living room again, given I’ve propelled him to the doorway anyway. Then he comes back to me and I can’t gauge the emotion behind the stare he fixes me with. “Tell that you’re fucking?”
“We’re not fucking.”
But unlikeme and Sol, these words feel all wrong, and Mal doesn’t like them either. Something like disbelief flickers in his gaze and he stares harder at me, as if he’s trying to peel back layers for my sake, not his. “All right then,” he says after a beat.“But whatever you are doing, don’t let all the noise get in the way. You and Sol have something pure and you always fucking have. Don’t let anything else take that from you.”