Then he leaves me in the cellar with the scent of stale hops and beer-stained wood, and it’s a fucked-up thing that I drawstrength from his vulnerability, but I do. I feel it as I return to the bar with steadier balance and a stronger grip. With clear thoughts and comprehension capabilities that don’t feel like swimming uphill through the thickest, wettest sand.
It’s a quiet night by Porth Luck’s standards. I send half the bar staff home early and try not to think about what nights like these mean for our bottom line. Mal and Skylar don’t need an income from the Joker. Neither do I, really. I have an army pension and I don’t buy much save clothes to replace the ones that get ruined by constant beer spills. Or blood and other things when seizures send me to the deck.
Sol, though.
Sol.
His name is an echo in my cavernous brain.
I shut the till, suddenly so aware of him it’s a shot of adrenaline to my veins.
Need him.
A whisper in my heart as my gaze jumps ahead and I spot the mop of dark curls beyond the beer garden.
He’s on the boat, wearing grey weatherproof trousers that cling to his legs and a green woollen jumper that brings out the bronze flecks in his eyes. Not that I can see his eyes from here. Just the tension in the rest of him. Uncharacteristic agitation that has me halfway to the door before I’m waylaid by a beer fiend.
Lots of them actually.
The ukulele club has finished playing in the tourist bar and all twelve of them want a drink.
By the time I come up for air, Sol is crouched at the stern of theSirona, the boat he’s loved since he was seventeen. The vessel he’s fought his whole life since to keep. Half vanished through the hatch that leads to the engine bay, his shoulders flex as he wrestles with something, leaning his full weight into itbefore he gives up and a flash of motion sends whatever tool he’s using clattering down the deck.
I’m too far away to hear the impact, but it startles me all the same. Sol’s had plenty to be angry about in his life, but it’s a rare day he loses his temper. So rare I forget he has one and it has nothing to do with my banjaxed brain.
Something’s wrong.
Like the current has shifted against the wind and no one can feel it yet. No one but him, and maybe me.
Fuck the bar.
I slip from behind it while someone’s still talking to me. Leave them in the hands of one of the seasonal bar staff who’s stuck around for the bleak winter. I head for the garden door, but it opens before I reach it and someone says my name.
It’s not Sol. For a protracted second, that’s all I know. Then I take in the tawny hair and blue eyes of a man with the same rangy build as my brother, and recognition sets in.
Folk Whitlock.
Another Rebel King.
There are a lot of them around these days while they fulfil their contract with the town council to rebuild the burned out lifeguard base here, and the lifeboat station up the road in Porth Ewan. Bikers. Builders.Fighters.I’m not sure where Whitlock falls on the spectrum. Just that he was from my world long before he climbed on the back of a Harley.
He’s a soldier. And a friend, maybe. I’m not sure. There’s something about Folk Whitlock that always jars my brain. Something that feels like more than I know. But doesn’t everything?
I return to the bar, aware of Folk behind me. Open a fridge and retrieve a beer bottle before I turn back to him. “This one? Fuck. No. You don’t drink…right?”
Folk smiles a little and folds his body onto a bar stool, flexing his hands with a barely perceptible wince. “Not for a long time. Good memory, though.”
I choke on a wry chuckle. “Doubt it. Are you looking for Mal? He’s upstairs.”
It makes sense that he would be. Folk has been Mal’s veteran support since my brother was medically discharged from the Regiment. From way back when I panicked before Mal came home that I couldn’t be what he needed. I’m over that now. I’ve learned that Mal just needsme. But he needs other people too, especially tonight, and Folk Whitlock is one of them.
“I was here anyway,” Folk supplies while I fish a bottle of water from the other fridge. “Security check on the site.”
The lifeguard station. “You’ve had trouble there?”
“Not yet.” Folk accepts the water with a nod, his gaze lingering on my forearm for a moment.
At the paras tattoo?