I believe him. But I can’t grasp the context. Jack was born a straight talker. It’s the Gallagher way. But like everything, the route from his thoughts to his mouth got derailed when he was hurt and sometimes I don’t know if he’s trying to tell me something momentous, or it’s just how his brain spits the world outtoday.
Like right now.
I hate it when you’re cold.
It’s a shift from his aversion to all things damp. And what does he mean? My skin? My clothes? The actual temperature, or the fact that he doesn’t sleep well when I go to sea in the winter?
“You should get in the shower.” He drags the words through broken glass. Like Saint Malone when his throat shuts down and he fights like a gladiator to tell you what he needs.
Jack’s a warrior too. And being cared for by him is so sacred I almost weep, which at least stops me popping wood. But it’s a barbed silver-lining in a cloud of agony. I don’t care about my dick. About the wrenching heat clawing at my insides. The untapped want that’ll surely kill me one of these days. I care that he’s staring at me like he’s broken something. That on some level, even if he doesn’t know it, he’s afraid—an emotion I swore to the gods I’d flay myself alive before I let him suffer it again.
We move in the same moment.
Jack slides his hand down my torso and over my ribs before it slips away, but I don’t give in to the ricochet of his touch. I pull him closer, wrap my arms around him, and I hug him and hug him and hug him until some of the tension binding his frame gives way. “You’re all right, love. I promise.”
6SOL
I’m not so naïve or daft to believe that’s enough. That whatever is shifting between me and Jack will fade like a dying wave.
We need to talk.
I know that.
And after, everything might change.
But then one night I roll home after a long shift at sea and everything I’m so worried about…it goes still, and our existence swallows itself.
I lie on the sofa, one boot off, the other halfway unlaced. Jack’s in my arms again, but it’s a world away from a hug. He’s locked up, tight as a cable, whole body trembling as he pushes his face into my shoulder.
Nystagmus. Sounds like a god, but it’s the devil reborn. An ambush of horror that knocks him flat every time it combines with other TBI symptoms in a perfect storm, and I swear, it’s almost as bad as a seizure.
At least, it is for Jack. I saw it the second I came home and found him already reeling, and I know what he needs. Because we’ve been here too many times for me to count.
I’m so sorry this happened to you, Jackie.
I stroke his head, shifting on the couch, turning him a little so he can fit himself to me the way he’s learned to when his brain does things he can’t handle on his own, letting me be the anchoring weight and warmth he’s always been for me. “It’s okay, love. I’ve got you.”
Jack groans his fear and frustration. His arm jerks towards his eye, but his coordination is shot, and I catch his hand, guide it down, and slide my own palm over his trembling eyelid.
Sol, it’s going to fall out.
Nope.
“Not on my watch.”
My whisper dies and the world shrinks to the soft pressure in my hand and the relentless tremor beneath while Jack breathes against me, while he hides in my embrace as the storm within banks low, fuelled by the shadows on his brain. I’m his only lighthouse. Without me, he’d curl up on his bed alone and flinch away from anyone else. The horror that one day I won’t be here when he needs me is my greatest fear. A nightmare that’s already come true.
You weren’t here.
No.
But Skylar was, and he’s here now. He checks Jack’s pulse and coaxes him to open both eyes. I never ask what he’s looking for. I’m just grateful to call him our friend. Grateful whatever he sees is enough for him to turn his attention to relieving me of my stray boot.
He tugs it off and steps out into the hallway where Mal is pacing, refusing to come any closer to a scene that might be familiar to the rest of us, but he’s never witnessed before. Distantly, his distress cuts me to the bone, but I’ll worry about it later. For now, it’s Jack and only Jack.
Everything always, Jack.
He’s so tense. I rub his shoulders with my free hand and silence closes in on us. A suspended reality, like even the old walls are afraid to listen.