Jack’s eyes flash to mine as Skylar emerges from the cellar, wiping his hands, but he doesn’t voice the thoughts that clearly match the predictable nightmare in my head. Doesn’t name my dad or mention the security footage we could easily check.
He turns to Skylar. “You don’t have to change barrels.”
Skylar gives him a dry look. “I wouldn’t have if either of you were here. What happened to the charity box?”
“Some out-of-town wanker nicked it,” Jack lies so smoothly I’m almost sick in my mouth. “Fuck-all in it, though.”
If Skylar knows he’s talking shit, he doesn’t let on. He just nods and jerks his head at the ceiling. “I’m going to bed.”
I glance at the time, trying to figure out if enough has passed for whatever dinner he ate to be safe. But if I ever knew the maths, I’ve forgotten it, and a feisty glare from Skylar keeps me quiet.
He lets Jack hug him. Then he comes to me and draws me into a rare embrace that goes on longer than I expect, and runs deeper, as if he needs the contact more than he needs to be self-contained.
He misses Mal.
Hardly news, but feeling that emotion trembling beneath his cool skin is too much for me. “You want me to come upstairs with you? I have some time before we go.”
Me and Oscar. To sea until dawn, chasing a big catch for a buyer who pays cash but will only take volume. Cash I need to pay Oscar, to pay the bank now the loan shark is gone, and maybe even replace the back-up battery we’ve been without far too long now.
“It’s fine,” Skylar says. “I need to sleep, I’m in at six.”
I know that. It’s why I’m heading out at midnight, so I’ll be home before he leaves and Jack won’t be alone. But the lines between what I know and what I want are so blurred I can’t tell which way is up.
No more rum.
Skylar goes upstairs. Jack hovers, as if he has something to say, but the Joker is too busy for a real conversation, and too soon, he’s pulled from me, and I’m dragged into a noisy sing-along that does nothing to keep me from the rum.
By the time me and Oscar board theSironaat midnight, I’m bladdered enough that I need a nap. And not just because of the parts of myself I’ve drunk numb. It’s for the parts of me that can never be numb. The parts screaming as the tide takes me from Jack and the only way to silence them is to bury my head under an old tarp and sleep away the hour it takes us to reach the crabbing ground.
Then it’s all hands, even drunk ones, on deck. We work through the night and I’m horribly sober and hungover when Oscar decides for me it’s time to head home.
He pilots while I lean against him, sipping the first real coffee I’ve had in months. And by real, I mean the powdered instant Oscar drinks because his parents drink it, and he has people he misses too.
“You are okay, my friend?”
The question is measured, an invitation, not a demand, and maybe I could tell Oscar every single thing that’s on my mind. But my phone finds a signal as I take a breath, and the name on the screen has me pulling away from him and shouting my frustration to the stars.
Lisa.
I swear to the gods it’s only that she never calls this early that has me swiping up and pressing the cracked device to my ear.
“Sol?” My mum’s voice comes breathy and tinny, the offshore signal we’ve sailed into still patchy and thin. “They’re here.”
The ocean keeps rolling, theSirona’sengine enjoying a rare good day and humming like a dream. I step away from Oscar and close my eyes. “Who’s they?”
“Bailiffs. The bank are taking the house.”
“What?” Cold settles in my bones, as thick and heavy as the dawn air. “Now? I thought there was more time?—”
“Well, there isn’t now, is there?” Lisa snaps, a shriek, almost. “I thought you were sorting it.”
Because she doesn’t know about the men I paid first—the ones who don’t send letters, or men at dawn with iPads and lanyards. Hell, she didn’t know aboutthislast time I spoke to her. Or maybe she did and she honestly thought I could turn water into wine. “Mum…”
The line crackles, dead air silencing the call.
I wait for it to come back, leaning hard against the gunwale, avoiding Oscar’s gaze as he gets a read on me anyway and increases our speed, motoring theSironahome with enough of a clip to have me wincing for the cracked engine block.
The line crackles again and I catch the tail end of whatever Lisa’s tried to say to me while she’s been gone.