Oscar shrugs. “Perhaps. But the coolant shouldn’t be so low so fast.”
“Probably the gauge sticking.”
Oscar’s not convinced, and he shouldn’t be—hewon’tbe for much longer. But his phone beeps, saving me and distracting him, and his usually sunny features twist with exasperation. A phenomenon out of character enough to draw me from the window while Mal takes my place to watch over Jack.
“What’s up?”
“This thing.” Oscar jerks his head at the tiny glucose monitor stuck to his bicep. “It tells lies.”
“How do you know it’s lying?”
“Because I am fine.”
I take his phone and study the red alert on his screen. “It says you’re low.”
“Itlies,” Oscar repeats, already tugging his pouch of tricks from his pocket. “One splash of salt water and it thinks I am dead. This is not what I agreed to.”
I suppress a smile. Oscar’s rarely grumpy, but if there’s one thing guaranteed to hack him off, it’s technology. Especially the kind that keeps him tied to his phone. “Aras likes you to wear the monitor,” I remind him. As if he needs a nudge to remember the little boy his entire existence revolves around. “He doesn’t like seeing you bleed.”
Oscar grunts, already pricking his finger and checking his blood sugar the old-fashioned way. “And I do not like to upset him, my friend. But this cannot be the way to reassure him.”
Perhaps it isn’t. And as Oscar shows me a number I know to be as green as Jack’s eyes, I lean further into his way of thinking. And yet I still fetch a new roll of waterproof tape and help him bind the monitor to his tattooed bicep. Because that’s what we do, isn’t it? Tape over the cracks and keep going.
Oscar doesn’t stay for a second breakfast. He takes a handful of snacks and heads out to haul in any crab pots that survived last night’s storm.
I go back to considering the fridge while Mal follows me around because he doesn’t like how he feels when he’s waiting for Skylar to come home. It’s a sweet privilege that he wants to be around me instead of hiding from his emotions on the roof or in the miles and miles he runs most days. Still hate that even the soulmate love he’s found with Skylar hasn’t healed him, though. They deserve to be happy and whole.You deserve that too.Maybe. But I don’t want it without Jack, and that’s why he has to share his best friend status with my busy right hand.
A heavy sigh escapes me as I chuck bacon in pans and crack eggs. Breakfast for the five thousand when Jack’s already told me he doesn’t want any and whatever time Skylar comes home, he probably won’t eat it either.
What a life.
It’s mornings like these I miss my own brother. Sev’s a tough crowd, but it doesn’t matter how much I piss him off, he’ll always eat before he rips me a new one.
That’s not what Jack did.
Course it isn’t. Jack’s never angry with me, only himself, and it’s so unfair my hand shakes as I poke at the eggs. My eyes burn and my chest aches and I wish I had the capacity to hate the men Jack protected when he stepped in front of that mortar round.
Gods, I’m inmyfeelings today. Feelings that hurt, and they shouldn’t. I’ve had years to get over what Jack did. To learn to live with it. But those moments when his eyes haze over against a world he doesn’t recognise, they don’t get any easier.
Mal leaves the kitchen.
A few seconds later, I hear a car pull up outside and I know without looking that it’s Skylar.
Look anyway, though, because I’m a sucker for the pure romance of Mal bounding down the steps like an overjoyed spaniel. For the magic of Skylar’s dry laugh as he’s swept off his feet by a tornado of Gallagher affection. I lean on the sink by the window and watch it play out, sound muffled by the old glass. Pretty sure I’ll feel the need to be somewhere else when they come inside, but I’ll take it to bear witness to the home they’ve found in each other. A love that’s not a cure, but a reason to keep breathing.
“Sol?”
Jack’s presence at my back seeps into me like warm honey. He doesn’t touch me, but he doesn’t need to.
“What’s up?”
His voice rakes my skin, deep and rough. “Let me do it.”
The breakfast.
I move aside without argument.
Fiadh pads to her cosy bed under the table, sand clinging to her silver fur, and Jack steps up to the stove, sleeves rolled up his tattooed forearms.