He kissed me.
He made me come.
And now my mum’s in my face about the very thing only Jack has ever given me respite from.
“You can’t keep doing this.” Well-meant firmness clings to her words. “Your dad’s made mistakes, I know that. But you can’t punish him forever.”
The absurdity of it is almost funny. But I know if I laugh, I’ll never stop, and it’ll break me. “I’m not punishing him. Did he say where I hit him?”
“Sol, it’s obvious where you hit him. He has a black eye.”
“Yeah, okay. I meanwherewerewewhen it happened? Cos it didn’t happen here, did it?”
She has to give me that. Has to accept she knows Jack well enough to trust he’d stop me doing something so plainly awful. Because it is awful. I’ve wanted to thump my dad more times than I can count, but the thought of actually doing it keeps me awake when I’m not worrying about crab prices, cracked engine blocks, and the fear that my best friend will have a seizure bad enough it takes him from me for good.
Lisa’s talking again. Caught between old fears and the reanimated afterglow of Jack’s bruising touch, I barely hear her. The cold bites deep, but I’m impervious as I chase the hazy recollection of Jack’s perfect kiss. Of his strong hands roaming my body and the relentless focus in his green eyes as he learned the path to my pleasure and took me apart.
Relearned.
Grief pummels me, sudden and sharp. Grief andguilt. My head spins and I fight to stay upright, latching onto the tail end of my mother’s delusions to tether myself to earth.
“…you need to apologise and put this nonsense behind us.”
“Apologise,” I repeat, numbness seeping in, both real and imagined, as the earth-shaking rumble of an approaching HGV sounds in the distance.
The beer delivery.
Behind me, the gate to the bin yard creaks open, tethering me to the family I chose. “What’s Dad doing today?”
Lisa stops ranting and blinks at me, her big eyes round with thick liner and spidery lashes. “He’s got some work on at the old Letherby Farm.”
Yeah, right. That farm’s been abandoned since the old man died last year. There’s no work going there, legitimate or otherwise. But I keep that to myself. Take the fruitcake parcel from my mum and promise to be a better son. I’ve aged a thousand years by the time she leaves, and the temptation to board theSironaand power out to sea is so strong only the lack of fuel in the tank stops me. That and the tingling presence behind me.
Jack.
He’s in the yard, waving the beer lorry in, but his gaze is on me, his face folded into the kind of frown that’s never good, and the guilt I felt before my ma even left comes roaring back. I can’t fathom what’s happened between us, and knowing my dad has messed up so bad someone’s seen fit to deck him in the face, I can’t grasp the headspace to figure it out.
He kissed me.
Yeah, brain. You said.
The beer lorry parks and the driver shuts the engine off. The sudden quiet is deafening and Jack hasn’t looked away from me.
Go to him.
Gods, I want to. But I’m half naked and torn in a dozen directions. Nothing about me is going to soothe him right now.
“Your phone’s blowing up.”
I jump a mile. Mal pushes the device against my chest. “Sev’s called you ten times this morning.”
My heart flips. Sev only calls me to chew me out about business things I’ve failed to do for the Joker or check the latest family crisis hasn’t finished me off. Since Mal’s been home, the first scenario has happened less and less. Bills get paid, taxes get filed. The second one, though. It never ends, and if there’s one person who knows it as much as me, it’s my kid brother who ran all the way to London to escape it.
My phone rings in Mal’s hand.
I take it and silence the call without looking at the screen.
Mal gives me a look. “Cold?”