Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2) (39)

I shift my attention to Lark. She’s shaking. Her brow is misted with sweat. She whispers a string of numbers. Two twenty-four three eighteen five thirty-nine six twelve six fifty-two. The sequence repeats twice before I manage to creep close enough without upsetting the dog that I can put a hand on her ankle.

“Lark …”

She still doesn’t respond. A chill washes over me. I’ve seen this look before. It was when I dumped her in the trunk of my car the first night we met. There was a plea in her eyes despite her defiance. I’d thought it was petulance.

I was wrong. Very fucking wrong.

I try to ignore the feeling in my chest like I’m sinking, caught by an anchor that’s pulling me to the darkest depths of the ocean. “Hey, duchess.” I squeeze her ankle, just a little, my wedding band an unfamiliar point of reflection in the dark. When Lark’s whispering slowly fades and her eyes focus on the patch of light on the floor, it feels like the first breath I’ve taken since the lights went out. “It’s okay.”

Lark doesn’t reply, just blinks at me for a moment until something seems to settle in her thoughts and she breaks her gaze away. Her cheeks flush a deeper crimson. She draws her legs in even closer to her chest and I let her go, though I don’t want to. It feels wrong, somehow. But she seems embarrassed to let me see her in distress. I shouldn’t want to touch her at all, even if I think she needs it.

I clear my throat and lean back to put some space between us without really moving away. “I’m good at fixing things,” I say for the second time tonight. “I can lift you out the roof hatch and then have a look at the mechanism.”

Lark turns her head toward me only slightly. Her inhalations are still uneven, her tears a continuous stream that she can’t seem to stop. “What about Bentley?”

“He’ll be all right in here for a little while.”

“How long?”

“I dunno, duchess. Maybe twenty minutes. Maybe an hour. It depends.”

Lark shakes her head and wraps a shaking arm around the dog, who sinks into her side. “No. I’ll stay.”

“Lark—”

“Go,” she says, her voice unsteady though her tone brooks no argument. She shifts enough to pull her phone from the pocket of her overalls, switching on the flashlight. “I’ll be fine.”

“You can call me.”

“I’ll call Sloane.”

That sinking feeling returns to fill my chest as I watch Lark bring up her favorite contacts, where my name doesn’t appear in the short list. She presses Sloane’s name but it goes straight to voicemail. Without glancing up at me, she tries Rose next, who picks up on the second ring.

“Boss hostler. How’s married life, pretty lady?” Rose says for a greeting.

Fresh tears still glisten on Lark’s skin and her shoulders tremble, but her voice is summer sunshine when she says, “Oh you know, lots going on. How are you, what’s new? Teach the good doctor any new circus tricks yet?”

Rose cackles on the other end as Lark gives me a glance that clearly says fuck off immediately. And I should want to leave. I should not want to linger here. Lark would rather be in this metal box alone with her fears in the dark than sharing the shadows with me. And it’s best that way. For both of us.

But when I back away from her pool of light, it feels like the wrong thing to do.

In the time it takes me to hop onto the table and open the roof hatch, I never hear a complaint from Lark, only her questions to Rose, anything to keep her friend talking or make her laugh. Their voices follow me as I force open the door to the second floor, which is not much of a reach from the roof of the elevator. I hop out to Lark’s open-plan living and dining area and head back down to the first floor, and with a little scavenging of tools from her craft room, I manage to fix the faulty electrical connection within the hour.

Lark looks as though she hasn’t slept for days when the elevator finally opens where it was supposed to. I roll the coffee table into place in the living room and we work together to get it just where she wants it. Lark stands back to look at her work for a long moment, her expression unreadable.

“It looks good,” I say. “Like it’s deserving of sentimental value despite being brand spankin’ new.”

Lark doesn’t rise to my teasing, nor does she hit back. She only gives me a faint nod.

I face her and suck in a breath. “Lark, I—”

“No.” She turns to me, her bright blue eyes are pink-rimmed from tears. “I’m done for today. Thank you for your help.”

I want to say more. I want her to talk to me. I want to listen. But there’s no give in her expression.

It’s for the best …

I give her a nod and let her show me to the guest room. She takes Bentley out for his final walk of the night as I unpack my bags. I don’t see her when she comes back into the apartment, I only hear her enter the primary bedroom with the dog in her wake. Though I cook enough for two and text her when it’s ready, she doesn’t appear for dinner. If it wasn’t for the quiet music that slips from the crack beneath her door, I’d be convinced that I’m alone. Even the gentle melodies fade away before midnight, and I go to sleep wishing I’d said more than I did.

I wake from a nightmare shortly after three in the morning and head to the kitchen for a fresh glass for water. The last thing I expect to see is Lark sitting curled in a round chair by the windows, a guitar nestled in her lap and headphones on her ears, papers spread before her and a pen discarded on the pages.