Page 39 of At First Spark
Her jaw sets. “And you keep acting like I’m one strong breeze away from collapse.”
“No.” I push off the doorframe and step farther into the foyer. “I’m acting like someone who watched you hold a hose against a fire that could’ve gotten to the house in under two minutes and then sleep maybe three hours afterward.”
Her face stills. For one second, I think she’s going to fight me harder. Instead, she looks away. Toward the staircase. Toward the windows. Toward anywhere but me.
“I don’t have time to fall apart,” she says quietly.
Her words don’t surprise me, because I know exactly what she means.
I move closer before I think better of it, stopping a few feet away so it doesn’t feel like pressure.
“You don’t have to,” I say.
Her eyes lift to mine.
“That’s the thing,” she says. “Everybody keeps acting like if I let go for five minutes, I’ll recover. That’s not how this works. Things don’t stop because I’m tired.”
No, they don’t. That’s another truth I know too well.
The room sits quiet around us. Dust moves in the sunlight. Somewhere outside, a truck rolls past on the road without slowing. The whole world keeps going.
Lark drags a hand back over her hair, loose pieces slipping free again around her face.
“We need to board the window today,” she says. “And I need to clear enough of the rear hall to get the contractors in tomorrow if Nolan’s crew frees up on time.”
There’s a whole lot in that sentence I could ask about.
I catch on one part.
“Nolan?”
“My contractor.”
The way she says it tells me there’s more history there than the word contractor covers.
I keep my expression flat. “He local?”
“No.”
“Coming in.”
“Yes.”
Something settles low in my chest that I refuse to examine.
“Fine,” I say. “Then we get the place ready.”
Her brows pull together. “We.”
I look at the front hall, the contractor bags, the damage I can already see and the rest I’m sure is hiding.
“You think I’m going to let you drag boards and scrub smoke by yourself after last night?”
“Yes.”
“Then your judgment’s worse than I thought.”
That almost gets another one of those real smiles.
