Page 123 of At First Spark
“She doesn’t escalate unless she has a reason,” I say slowly. “And I think someone gave her one.”
Something in her face shifts. Softens a bit. Hard to tell in the dark and rain and the fact that I’m suddenly very aware of how close her hand is to mine on the center console.
Together, we seem to silently agree to dash into the house, both of us wrenching the doors open and running inside.
We make it inside half-drenched in spite of the dash from truck to porch. Mom meets us at the door with towels and concern she’s too smart to dress up as anything else. Rook comes skidding across the kitchen floor like he’s been personally offended by weather and abandonment in equal measure.
The house closes around us, warm and bright and full of storm sounds muffled by good walls. For a few minutes, there’s motion and noise—wet jackets peeled off, muddy shoes kicked free, Mom issuing orders that are really just care, wearing a firmer voice, Rook shaking rainwater onto everyone and everything like it’s his sacred duty.
Later, when the storm settles into a steady downpour and the lights flicker once but hold, Mom heads to bed, making sure every door is latched and every window is secured. The house quiets in stages after that until it’s just the weather, the low hum of the refrigerator, and Lark standing in my kitchen in one of my sweatshirts, hair still damp from the rain, looking like she should be exhausted and wired at the same time.
I know the feeling. She reaches for a mug. Then stops halfway. Then starts again.
I watch all of it because I can’t seem to help it when she’s in motion. There’s intention in everything she does, even the small things. Maybe especially the small things.
“You going to say it?” she asks without turning.
“Say what?”
“That you don’t like Nolan staying behind.”
I lean one shoulder against the doorway and fold my arms loosely. “Do I need to?”
“No.”
She pours tea instead of coffee. Steam curls up around her face, softening nothing.
“Then why are you making me work for it?”
“Because I’m trying real hard not to be the guy who tells you what to do every five minutes.”
That gets a low sound out of her that might be a laugh if it had less tension in it.
“You fail at that pretty often.”
“Yeah.”
She turns then, mug in both hands, and leans back against the opposite counter. The kitchen light catches the gold-brown in her eyes and the faint flush still high in her cheeks from the run through the rain.
“Yet,” she says.
“Yet what?”
“Yet I still came back here.”
I step closer before I mean to. Not enough to crowd her. Enough to feel the shift in the room.
“That because of the farm,” I ask, “or because of me?”
I don’t give her room to deflect. I need to know. And maybe I need her to choose me again.
She looks down into her mug, then back up. The storm rolls over the roof in a long, steady rush.
“Both,” she says.
Nothing in me is built to hear that and stay careful.
I stop in front of her. Close enough now that I can take the mug from her hands and set it aside before she spills it when her fingers start shaking. Close enough to see the exact second she realizes I noticed and decides not to deny it.
