Fuck, I needSol.But I can’t lean on him every moment my heart yearns for him. If I did, I’d never be upright, and he’d never be without the weight of me slowing him down.
Get your shit together.
Sometimes I can’t.
Tonight, I latch onto River O’Brian’s hard-won calm and find my rhythm again. Pour ale and cider. Take the money. Open the back doors to the storm so the Rebel King bikers gathered under the smoking shelter can hear the Irish lament more tied to their ancestry than Sol’s.
It’s a night that lasts forever. Time slips through my fingers. It’s late when I lock up, the Joker still rattling in the bitter wind, salt and ale clinging to my skin.
I’ve lost track of Sol. He’s not supposed to be working tonight, but I know he won’t be far. I flick off the lights and contemplate the alarm system. Mal says it’s simple, but I’ve come to learn there’s no such thing for me. Too many buttons. Too many teeny bulbs that blink and flash with no reason I can find. Give me a weapon to strip and clean. A field radio with sand in the dials. This shite means nothing to me.
Somehow, I figure it out, safe in the knowledge wherever my brother has taken himself tonight, he’ll be back to check my work.
Check and test.
It’s the Regiment way.Itaught him that, long before he followed me into the SAS, and I remember it, clear as day. The conversation. The bad Guinness we sank in some dodgy bar while we had it. Can’t recall who I was, though. What I liked, what I hated, and these great yawning holes in my foundations sometimes hit like a truck.
Sudden.
Heavy.
Noise and light I’m not equipped for these days.
I blink it away before it takes hold. Let instinct draw me outside to where Sol stands on the sea wall, at one with the storm, his face tilted to the lashing rain, the wind in his hair, arms raised in worship to Mother Nature.
Mad bastard.
Except, he’s not.
Sol’s just wild, the elements in his blood, and as much as I flinch every time the lightning strikes too close, I love seeing him like this for as long as I can stand him being wet and cold.
Which isn’t all that long. I step out into the gale, rain soaking my clothes. “Sol.”
He doesn’t hear me. The wind is too loud and he’s too lost in his communion with the weather.
“Sol.”
He turns as I reach him. As I wrap my stronger arm around his waist and hoist him down.
Sol laughs. “I wasn’t going to jump, Jackie.”
“I know.” Even Sol’s not bonkers enough to take a dip in the roiling winter chop tonight. “Come inside.”
He makes a defiant sound low in his throat. One that goes straight to parts of me I don’t know what to do with anymore, even when I’m with him.
Especiallywhen I’m with him.
But he doesn’t resist as I tow him inside and shut the doors behind us. Doesn’t fight me as I steer him to the stairs, water dripping on the flagstone floor and my arm stays locked around his waist all the way to the top.
On the landing, we kick off our shoes and veer left to the bathroom we share. Sol takes a step towards his bedroom, but I tug him back. “You need out of those wet clothes.”
“I’m going to.”
Maybe. But he won’t dry his hair. Or his tattooed skin. He’ll fall asleep with rain on his pillow, dampness seeping into his bones, and I…I can’t bear it.
“Sol.”
“Okay, okay.”