I tune back in as Mal grinds out an explanation that has my brain ticking and clicking, neuro tinnitus that drives me crazy when I let it. “Copper pipes?”
Mal nods. “Someone had the lot.”
“How?”
“Dunno. Didn’t ask.”
“What’s that got to do with Sol?”
Mal frowns. “What makes you think it has anything to do with Sol?”
“Cam came here. You saw him.”
Skylar’s eating the white ice cream Sol keeps in the freezer for him. His spoon seems to shiver in the air, but he keeps eating, for Mal’s sake, maybe.
Mal, who rises with his full plate and dumps the contents in the bin. “Cam and Sol are friends. It’s not weird for them to talk to each other if Cam’s here anyway.”
“Cam doesn’t come to Porth Luck for fun,” Skylar counters.
“Who the fuck does?”
The bin thunks shut and Mal leaves the room. Skylar’s heart follows him, I can tell, but he loves my brother enough to give him some space. He keeps eating. Cool as you like to anyone who doesn’t know him. Anyone who hasn’t lived with him for however many years I have.
“How are you doing with having the Kings around?”
Skylar’s spoon scrapes the bowl. Before he fell in love with Mal, he’d have deflected the question. But finding his person has changed something fundamental in Skylar and he lets me see the conflicted emotion in his eyes. “I don’t love the bike noise. Makes me feel fifteen again. But I respect what they’re doing. These waters have been too long without lifeguards and lifeboats.”
He’s not wrong and my thoughts reroute to Sol piloting theSironaalone in the frigid winter chop. Him against the elements with no one at his side, and anxiety claws at me, so sharp it hurts. But it’s a pain I have to live with.
Sol is the sea. He’s the thunder, the lightning, the waves. I am the land waiting for him to come home.
“What else happened this morning?”
I slow blink, remembering where I am. Who I’m with.Skylar.I need to answer him.“Mal didn’t tell you?”
He shakes his head. “Not really.”
That could mean anything, and I wrestle between guarding my brother’s confidence and giving Skylar what he needs to take care of him. Fight to choose my words carefully so they say what I need them to when they spill out of me. “Something on the radio triggered him. I don’t know what, I didn’t get there in time.”
“Flashback?”
“Think so.”
Skylar frowns as guilt gnaws at me. I know better than to think I can predict my brother’s war with his mental health, but seeing him so rattled haunts me.
“Did he say what he saw?”
Christ, yes. In so much detail I’m not sure he meant to. But that detail, I keep it to myself and give Skylar the steadiest look I can muster. “He didn’t want to talk about it.”
Skylar absorbs that and takes his bowl to the sink, washing it before he comes back. “He’s been having nightmares since Orion and the others went under.”
“I know.”
“He told you?”
Can’t be offended by Skylar’s surprise. Like everyone under this roof, my brother isn’t great at talking about his own shit. But he told me about this—maybe because he thought I’d understand, when the truth is the sixteen years I spent in the military feel like they happened to someone else. Even the stuff I remember is pixilated. Faded. An existence too distant to be mine.
I wish it was like that for Mal. Wish the horrors he remembers weren’t so vivid and real. But then, if they were, he might not have stayed in Porth Luck long enough to fall in love with my friend. And for my friend to fall in love with him.