Warm.
Drunk.
Happy.
I feel Sol holding my face when all I can remember is me holding his last night. I hear my name on his lips, taste the salt of him in my mouth, but as fast as it dawns on me that maybe my dreams and memories have blurred together, it’s all gone again, spinning away to become something else.
No.
To become nothing.
Blank space between my ears. Nothing but grey in my vision and the wrong voice wrapped around my name.
“Jack.” Cool hands grip my arms. “Jack. Look at me a sec.”
Skylar.
He presses his thumbs into my pulse points.
Firm.
Grounding.
Reality shifts and the flat shade hazing my vision becomes the pewter of his disarming gaze.
“There you go,” he murmurs as I find my focus. “Breathe for a minute. Shut everything else out.”
How do I tell him I already have? That I don’t have a choice when my brain gets overwhelmed and boots my entire life overboard?
I’m not sure.
So I don’t.
I let the fog thin in its own time and come to on the sofa to an empty living room.
No Sev.
No Mal.
No Sol.
Just an ache in my head and heart that tells me this is real life and not whatever my subconscious tried to replace it with.
“I think I remember.”
“Yeah?” Skylar peers at me. “What’s that then? Something good?”
An answer bubbles up my throat, but I catch it before it spills out. I can’t talk to Skylar about this. Can’t talk to anyone except Sol, and he’s not here. He sailed away with hurt in his eyes and the anger he loathes so much shaking his limbs, and I hate that I wasn’t fast or strong enough to stop him.
Skylar sees all that land on my face. “He’ll be back.”
“Hmm?”
“Sol. But I can try and call Oscar if you want.”
Oscar.
Right.