Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2) (37)

“Okay … well … go for it.”

“I will.”

“Then what’s stopping you?”

“I don’t want to lose my place. It has to go right here. Yep. This exact spot. I can feel it.” A grimace flickers across her face before it transforms into a smile that’s both pained and a bit … deranged. “There’s a star-shaped cake tin in the kitchen, second cupboard to the left of the stove. Can you please go grab it for me?”

“You have a cake tin shaped like a giant star? Why does that not surprise me.”

“Just please go and get it, would you?”

“What’s that smell …?”

A sudden blush ignites in Lark’s cheeks. “Bentley. He farted.”

I shift my attention to the dog, who looks toward Lark at the sound of his name. He lets out a disgruntled huff and glares at me as though I’m the one who passed wind. “Are you sure he’s not sick or something? It smells like he ate something rancid. You should change his food.”

“I’ll take that under advisement, Lachlan, but for the love of all things holy, pretty please with a glittery cherry on top … cake tin?”

“All right, all right. I’m going.” With an eye roll that Lark doesn’t see, I turn on my heel and leave the room, but not before I give her a final glance over my shoulder. Head bent, shoulders slumped, I can almost feel her relief.

I fasten my belt as I head toward the stairs and up to the apartment, where my two suitcases lie unopened next to the door. The cake tin is exactly where she said it would be, which for some reason I find surprising. Lark seems chaotic, yet when I peek in a few cupboards, everything is highly organized. Mugs lined up by size and design. Tea organized by color. Every tin of soup or sauce in neat rows, labels facing forward.

Storing that observation away, I take the cake tin downstairs and enter the room where Lark hovers over the table as she free-pours a thin stream of black epoxy on the surface. When I pass the star to her and wait to see what she’ll do next, she mutters a thank-you but doesn’t take her eyes from the table surface. She sets the star down to surround the small dollop she’s already poured and then speeds up the process until she’s filled all the angles and points with glittering black resin.

I lean against the table edge and cross my arms. “Everything good?”

“Mmhmm. Great.” Lark falls into silence, all her concentration on the edges of the metal as she checks the boundaries for any bleeding black edges. When she seems satisfied, she sets a UV lamp over the star and turns it on before wiping down the rest of the table. She hums as she works, a melody I don’t recognize until she lets the lyrics start to slip out. The tone of her voice is both haunting and pure, both light and shadow, like you can take what you want from her and hear the song the way only you need to.

“You’re a fan of the Smiths?” I ask. Lark’s singing fades to silence, the wiping slows, and she regards me for a long moment. “‘How Soon Is Now?,’ right?”

“Yeah. You like them?”

One of my shoulders lifts in a shrug before I bend to retrieve my wayward knife. “I like that song. Not all their stuff.”

“Same.” She turns her attention back to the table but glances over her shoulder at me as though she can’t keep her gaze away. “You listen to a lot of music?”

“Yeah, at the shop.”

“The leather studio?”

“That’s right.”

“You made the wing above Sloane’s booth,” Lark says, and I nod. “It’s beautiful.”

“Thanks.”

Lark watches me for a moment as though expecting me to elaborate. I could tell her how it was the largest piece I’ve ever made, or how I hand-tooled every feather individually before laying them all together. Or maybe she hopes I’ll ask her if I’ve heard her sing before today, whether I know any of her music. And I have, but I don’t say that either. I sure as hell don’t need more connections to Lark than the legal ones that already bind us. I want them easy to snap when the time comes. So I remain silent.

I see something in her eyes. Disappointment. Maybe a little bit of hurt.

Lark goes back to her project, and before long she resumes humming as she cleans the table surface and examines the edges. She says nothing more as she works, not until she casts a glance to the clock above the workshop sink and then her watch, her lips moving in a silent calculation. She turns the UV lamp off and sets it on her workbench before turning to face me.

“Help me get it upstairs?” Lark asks, and I eye the table before lifting my gaze to her.

“You’re done?”

She nods.

“Fine,” I say, “but only if we’re using the elevator. I’m not carrying this feckin’ thing up eight million stairs like we did with your couch when I helped you move in last year.”

Though Lark rolls her eyes, she looks nervous, the most nervous I think I’ve seen her about anything. “Okay,” is her only reply before I take position to push the cart, and she begins to steer the leading edge, Bentley following behind us down the corridor.

When we reach the century-old Otis freight elevator, the doors are already open, the floor covered with a thin film of dust. It’s the first untouched area I’ve seen so far in this massive building. Granted, I haven’t been to every hidden room or storage area, but it’s hard not to notice how clean this place is despite its size and former purpose. Even the windows are perfectly streak-free, no spiderwebs wavering in the drafts from their corners, no desiccated insects gathered on their sills.