I’m not sure. So I let it go—let it slip from my mind as if it was never there at all. “That might change when you get to the water supply. We had all our copper pipes nicked last year.”
“By who?”
“Someone who needed them more, I guess.”
Folk smiles. “That’s a magnanimous way of looking at it. They teach you that in the Regiment?”
“In my squadron maybe. Not sure about Mal’s. You want me to get him?”
“No, let him be. I really was just passing.” Folk eases from his stool. “Take care, Jack.”
He’s gone then, taking his water with him. And it feels weird.Ifeel weird. Folk’s been around since my brother came home. He took one of Fiadh’s pups—Ariel—for his little girl, and I like his company. It’s easy in ways it always is around soldiers who’ve fought the same wars I have, though he probablyremembers them better. But whenever Folk leaves, something flickers inside me. A place half-remembered. A name on the tip of my tongue. It’s a tiny thing. Insignificant, and nothing compared to the hammer blows I get around Sol lately. Yet, that flicker gnaws at my awareness enough I grip the bar to ground myself, searching for Sol.
Always, always searching for Sol.
Until I find him. Inside, which should bring added relief as drizzle begins to haze the windows. But he’s not alone. He’s leaning against the dresser at the far end of the bar with a glass of liquid amber in his hand and a woman in his orbit. Cheeks flushed, eyes bright in the low light of the Joker. He’s laughing,talking,living, and my stomach curls in on itself, ugly and mean, wrenching with an emotion I haven’t earned. An emotion that feels like jealousy.
I turn away.
Turn back a few seconds later as Sol’s Kraken-soaked chuckle fills the air, warm and resonant. Because he’s enjoying the woman’s company. Enjoyingher, maybe, and I scramble to figure out if I know her, from the present or the past.
Has he fucked her before?
The possibility shakes me. And it shouldn’t. Sol likes women. He likes men. He likessex.
Right?
My brain crowds with memories from too long ago for me to place. From years and years before my fat head took the impact of a mortar round. Sol used to hook up a lot. Way more than me. Probably because he was better at it, so it should feel normal to watch him lean closer to this woman with her blonde hair and creamy tits. But my stomach betrays me again, twisting as my thoughts spin from their usual meander to something sharper, and a searing reality hits me like a boulder to the skull.
He doesn’t hook up anymore.
A nonsensical thought, and Iknowthere’s every chance I’m wrong—that I’m just missing shit, like I always do. That maybe I’mchoosing tomiss it. But…
I’m not fucking wrong. I know it as much as I know Skylar never hooked up again after Mal came home?—
And they fell in love.
It’s a lot for my damaged brain to handle at once. A hailstorm of emotion. I rub my chest, frowning a crater into my face. Someone calls my name, but it’s not Sol, so I don’t respond. I push through. Go back to work. Force every tangible thought from my mind. Block anything that isn’t counting money, wiping up beer, and locking doors. And it almost works.
But Sol. He’s a drumbeat in my veins. A rhythm I can’t escape, even if I wanted to. And I don’t. I just want—I just need?—
Him.
My brain whispers it as I lock the last door and climb the stairs to the flat. Guilt stabs my belly again. Sol’s tactile, emotional, and warm. Vibrant.Human. It feels so wrong to know he’s been without the closeness he’s always craved.
The brush of skin.
The heat of breathless laughter.
It feels so wrong thatreliefdances inside me and I fucking hate myself.
I shut the front door with more force than I intend, my weaker arm giving way. The slam echoes—to me at least, and I cringe in the silence it leaves behind.
Thechargedsilence. Swear to all fuck, I smell sex in the air, and though I know it’s not Sol and the woman from downstairs, agitation propels me to the kitchen instead of my bed.
Or maybe it’s the sound of Sol growling into his phone. Or the clumsythunkas he curses and tosses it on the kitchen counter.
The phone skitters and clatters to the floor.