Morning wood.
Night wood.
Nap on the couch wood.
We never talk about it and I can’t see that changing this morning.
Jack, though. He’s still staring at me as though he needs more. Like he can’t start his day untilIgive him more. So I go with the truth.
“I think you had a dream. You had goosebumps when I came in, but you didn’t seem scared, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Jack’s gaze has drifted to the window.
He snaps it back to me. “A dream?”
“Maybe. You want breakfast?”
Jack shakes his head. Slowly. Then he clicks his fingers, summoning Fiadh from Mal. “I need to walk her.”
He leaves.
Without breakfast.
I want to die, but I’m used to the sensation of my heart expiring in my chest. Devastation is my baseline. It doesn’t even make me think of the Ankow anymore.
That wind, though.
I chase it into the living room and shut the window.
Mal follows me, still drinking his truly terrible coffee. “You want to tell me what the fuck that was all about?”
Jack’s long legs have already carried him past the harbour wall and to the beach. He sets Fiadh free and the slender lurcher sprints away from him, catching the slipstream of the bitter winter breeze.
He crouches to watch her, something he usually does with some semblance of a smile. But the set of his broad shoulders is tense, and I wish I’d handled him better. That I’d had better words for him after a night that’s left him so rattled.
“Sol.”
“Hmm?”
“Don’t ignore me.”
“I’m not ignoring you.”
“Aye, you are.” Mal tosses a sofa cushion at my head. “What do you do in that bed of his that fucks you both up so much if you’re not actually fucking?”
Mal’s filterless take on life is why I love him so much. Why he’s so good for Skylar. For all of us.
But his question…it hurts, and I don’t have the answer. At least not one I want to discuss with Jack’s little brother. Gods. What am I supposed to do? Admit I’ve been in love with my best friend my whole adult life? And that just when I’d learned to live with it, one mad drunk night—mad, drunk, andhot—changed everything,and thenthe world literally ended, taking that seismic shift with it?
He doesn’t remember.
Jack, not me or Mal, and it’s a lot. And I’m tired.
Too tired to face a Mal-fuelled inquisition, and I’ve never been more grateful to hear Oscar’s tread on the stairs, even as his handsome face lets me know the second I see it he’s bearing bad news.
“The roof is fine. Our girl is running hot, though, and the oil light is flickering again.”
My heart finds new depths to navigate. “Sensor?”