“Liar.”
Sol meets my gaze for a charged second. “All right. I thought it was something you might actually wear, and maybe we could put that medical ID tag on it Skylar’s always bugging you to get.”
“Aye. Maybe.”
Sol snorts. “Worth a try. Looks good on you anyway.”
“Back at you.” I echo his earlier words as I finish fumbling the clasp on his wrist. Mal is going to have a grand old time when he clocks us, but I don’t care. And for a moment, everything is easy. Light. Then the reason I dragged him out of the kitchen snaps back into my head and I take a seat on Sol’s bed, a place I’vespent more hours this week than all the time we’ve lived here. “How was Oscar?”
Sol’s still studying the bracelet. “He’s good. I thought he’d be hopping mad at me, but he wasn’t.”
“Why do you always think everyone’s angry with you?”
Sol laughs, but without a shred of humour this time. “Can’t keep everyone happy, eh? But it was because I’d pissed off Oscar that we wound up so far out. Maybe if we’d been closer to shore when that squall hit…I don’t know.”
“It’s not your fault the weather gods chose violence that day.”
“No, but it’s my fault we were late out.”
“Dav’s bullshit isneveryour fucking fault.”
“What about my bullshit, Jackie?” Sol wedges a hand into his messy curls and leaves it there. “And what about your right to be angry with me?”
“I’m not angry with you.”
“Yes, you are. You told me that.”
“No. I told you I was fucking fuming, but it didn’t matter because I was in love with you.”
Sol blinks. “What?”
“At the hospital. You…fuck. You don’t remember?”
The shock on Sol’s face answers for him. The disbelief. He drops his hand from his hair and searches my face, as if the words might be written on my skin. “You said that?”
“Aye.”
“When?”
“When you got upset. That’s not why I said it, though.”
“Why did you say it?”
“Because it’s fucking true.”
Sol stares at me harder, a deep frown I’d be proud of creasing his face. Thinking, thinking, thinking, as he tries to reach through fog for a memory he might never find. Then he groansand covers his face with his hands. “My wildest dreams came true and I missed it.”
“You didn’t miss it.” I reach for him and haul him between my legs. “You’re just hearing it twice.”
Sol slowly lowers his hands and his gaze is as wild as those dreams he’s talking about. “I used to say that to you…back when you hadn’t been awake long. You told me to fuck off.”
“What an arsehole.”
“Never. But Jackie…do you mean it? Really? I let you suck my dick and think it was the first time.”
“So? I’d forgotten anyway. It was always going to feel like the first time.”
“That’s a generous way of looking at it. Generous to me, at least. You don’t feel manipulated? Like I took advantage of you?”