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“He is all right,” I murmur.

Mal nods, but tension bleeds from him, and in this moment, at least, he is alone too.

I move closer to him and drop an arm around his shoulders. I don’t say any more, but Mal isn’t a man who needs many words. He needs Skylar, and his family, and however morose I am feeling today, I know that includes me.

The scene begins to simmer down.

Skylar finds us by the sea wall. Mal crowds him with less force than Jack claimed Sol, but only because Skylar is breathing hard, sweat shining on his tattooed skin.

“You are okay, Skylar?” I ask, though my voice sounds detached, to him and I both, I think.

He nods, slow and absent, his mind still on the teenager paramedics have scooped from the pavement and onto a stretcher⁠—

A helicopter rattles the earth.

It comes in low, shifting air and sand, a heavy thrum I feel more than hear, in every bone and nerve. The air ambulance casts a shadow over the seafront and something in me answers before I can stop it. A flicker, dark and cold. The weight of my body not being mine punctuated by an impossible rhythm I know isn’t real, because no helicopter came for us that night, for Sol and I, the storm was too fierce. So maybe this memory is a dream. A waking nightmare, perhaps.

I don’t know.

As the ground shakes and the air throbs, I discern nothing beyond the sound of it reminding me of being dragged from the abyss as I tried to make sense of dying alone in the ocean.

You weren’t alone.

No. Because Sol saved my life too, and I reach for him on instinct now Mal has stepped out of my embrace. Find his shoulder with my hand as the rumble of motorbikes somehow overrides the commotion of the air ambulance landing on the beach. A familiar sight and sound in Porth Luck. After years of absence, the Rebel Kings are back, and I don’t mind. They are my friends. Some of them are my found family as much as Sol and the others, and my mood lifts as the rider leading the pack rolls to a stop and lifts his visor.

Rubi Matherson.

He tips me a nod and dismounts, joining our huddle by the sea wall. “They get ‘em out in time?”

No one answers. Because despite Skylar’s heroics, no one truly knows, a truth Rubi accepts with a grimace before he edges closer to where I stand. “Everyone okay?”

Probably not. Skylar’s adrenaline is fading. I see a tremble building in his taut frame while Mal watches him with tense eyes, an expression near identical to Jack, who stands beside him, caging Sol in his arms, as if he’s reliving nearly losing him to the same ocean. And Sol is upset—he is an easy man to read. An easy man to love. I squeeze his shoulder again before I let my hand slip away and answer Rubi. “It was teenagers, I think?”

I look to Skylar.

He turns his head a little and seems startled to see Rubi among us. As if he’s been somewhere else the whole time.

I see it.

Mal does too and tugs him closer, and it is nice to watch Skylar let him. To witness him lean into Mal’s taller frame and find comfort in the love of his life. I didn’t know how much my friend needed a heart like Mal’s until he found it.

“I don’t know what happened,” Skylar says, to me, to Rubi, as Mal laces their hands together. “The racket didn’t wake me up until they brought them to shore.”

Rubi absorbs that. “Got shit done, though, didn’t you?”

“They’d have managed without me.”

I don’t agree. I heard the paramedic tell Skylar to stop. Watched him ignore them and drag that young girl back from the brink of death. But as she’s loaded into the air ambulance and the chopper prepares to take flight, I understand his need to downplay it. I keep my thoughts to myself as I scan the crowded streets and my gaze falls on another biker.

Folk Whitlock. He’s on the phone, eyes on the chopper as it begins to rise, exasperation creasing his face.

The helicopter takes flight for real, disappearing into the distance. Mal and Skylar go inside as Folk drifts closer, still on the phone, and the fading noise leaves room to overhear the bones of what he’s saying.

“…to live on a derelict farm for however long it takes to rebuild it, who am I to stop him?” Folk listens for a moment, shaking his head. “He doesn’t want my help.”

A statement that seems to end the conversation. Folk pockets his phone with a sigh and Rubi gives him a one-armed hug. “Little brother giving you grief?”

“Absolutely not. He’d have to acknowledge I exist for that.”