I go back to the window and check the sea again. Scan the cove, the harbour, and the finished lifeguard base. A defibrillator the Kings paid for is built into the sea wall. It has me looping back to Dav’s forced rehab stint and the sheer bewilderment on Sol’s face before he’d run from the anger coursing through him, sparing everyone else his emotions. Has me lurching to recallwhyhe kept whatever happened between us all these years ago from me and trying to recall if he told mewhy.
But I can’t do it, and it pisses me off.
“Hey.” Mal fills the space beside me. “Catch yourself on.”
I smile at that. Can’t help it. Mal doesn’t remember much about living in Killinchy with our mam and dad, but I do, and I love that it’s something we share. Love to hear it seep into him, unguarded and free. “I am calm.”
Mal snorts. “You look like you want to deck someone.”
“I’d never hit Sol.”
“Don’t give him that face then or he’ll never believe you.”
“Shut the fuck up.”
Mal shuts up, and I find I don’t like that either. I don’t want to tell him shit about me and Sol, but he’s right about the boiling point inside me. Iamangry. And I do want to hit something,a roiling rush of feeling that has my hands flexing until a rattle distracts me.
A med bottle.
Mal upends it and palms a pill into his mouth.
It jars me. “Were you okay while you were gone?”
Mal nods as he dry swallows the pill, shooting me a droll look as I press his forgotten mug into his hands. “I’d have been grand even if I wasn’t. Had a medic with me the whole time.”
“Regiment?”
“Good as—holy shite, what’s going on with those fucking clouds?”
Mal backs up and moves towards the door. He’s too fast for me to grasp what he means. And so I follow blind as he darts down the stairs and outside.
Cold air hits me, my surroundings everything I expect them to be. The harbour, the sea wall, the salty breeze. Everything is the same.
Except…it isn’t.
Too quiet.
As if the gulls have dropped out of the sky, and the wind…it smells wrong. Metallic. Heavy. As if it’s bleeding from a wound we can’t yet see.
The clouds.
I take another cue from my brother and spin around to face the horizon. A black seam bisects the sky. A visible rain shaft hovers beneath, dragging against the sea, and the water is thick and bruised andwrong.
Fuck.
Sol.
He’s out there. A realisation Mal echoes with a low growl that rattles my nerves as the wind drops to nothing, a cursed reprieve. For half a second, everything is profoundly still. Then thunder rolls over the bay, deep and close, and the first blastof wind hits the harbour hard enough to make the boats strain the ropes. A savage gust that tears across the water, sharp with bone-deep certainty. Awarningthat a freak storm is coming.
Beautiful.
Violent.
And theSironais directly in its path.
24SOL
The first hit of wind is deceptive. I glance up from checking the battery I fitted with steadier hands than I’ve had since way before Jack fucked me last night.