Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2) (40)

She doesn’t see me. But I see her clearly. Puffy eyes. Blotchy skin. Swollen lips. The sheen of tears on her cheeks, as though they haven’t stopped. She’s stripped down to her raw edges, to the bloody knuckles from battling with life. I’ve lost skin in this fight to survive too, and though I’ve tried to cover the physical marks with ink, the ones in my memory never seem to heal. Sometimes old scars still ache, an echo of sharp moments.

Have I wounded her? I know I have. But maybe not with a fresh, shallow strike that would soon be forgotten. No, I think I sliced through thin tissue that first night we met. And there is something still bleeding deep beneath the wound.

“Two twenty-four three eighteen,” she sings, her gaze disconnected from the world around her as she stares out the window. “Five thirty-nine six twelve six fifty-two …”

I turn and leave before she can see me, feeling like I’ve finally settled at the bottom of the sea.





BANJAXED




Lachlan

I need to ask you a question.

SLOANE: Go for it.

Lark, her thing about dark enclosed spaces, what’s up with that?

SLOANE: Why don’t you ask her yourself? She’s your wife in this weird ass marriage that neither of you will tell me about, so if you want to play the part of husband, how about this novel idea: TALK TO HER.

I don’t think she’ll tell me. Was hoping you could give me some insight …?



Sloane’s reply takes a moment to come through, which I soon realize is because she spends that brief time yelling at Rowan about why I’m such a dickhead.

SLOANE: You think I’m just going to cough up my best friend’s history on a platter for you? Lachlan Kane, be so fucking for real right now.

ROWAN: Hey dickhead. My wife wants to know why you’re such a dickhead.

ROWAN: Should I give her the long version or the short version?

SLOANE: Do you honestly think I would tell you that? Seriously? GO FUCK YOURSELF.

ROWAN: Secure your eyeballs. Repeat. Secure your eyeballs.

SLOANE: If you’re having trouble with your “marriage” and talking to your “wife,” why don’t you crack a fucking book. A ROMANCE book, not more of your “history of leather” bullshit. It’s literally an instruction manual for dumbasses like you.

SLOANE: And get fucked.

SLOANE: METAPHORICALLY

ROWAN: If you can find insurance for eyeball enucleation, now would be a good time …



“Feckin’ bollocks.” I drop my phone on my desk and rest my pounding forehead on my arms as I try to work out what the fuck I’m supposed to do.

After that first night we met, I tried to push away every thought of Lark. I never looked into her. Never hunted her down. Though I spent until dawn searching for her once I realized she’d escaped from my car, shame had stopped me from trying to find her beyond that day. I didn’t even realize she was related to Damian Covaci until Leander ripped a strip off me for ruining the contract. I didn’t want to care about Lark Montague. But every moment that passes seems to upend my ideas of the woman I thought I married. And lately, it feels like I haven’t looked into Lark because I’m afraid of what I’ll find.

But I think she needs help. It feels like I’m the only one who can see it. And I’m at a total feckin’ loss at how to do it.

Since I moved in two nights ago, Lark has barely slept. The first night when I woke in the morning, she was still in that chair that faces the windows, headphones on, guitar in her grip. She was asleep, but it seemed restless. When I tried to move the guitar off her lap, she woke with a vicious glare, then padded off to her room without a single word. Last night, she didn’t appear in the living room, but the light stayed on under her door. Sometimes her voice followed it as she sang or hummed. She’s spent the last two days running around, only settling long enough to play a few minutes of a movie, something with Keanu Reeves, but she turned it off with a muttered “Constantine” when I asked the name of it. Otherwise, she’s either heading to Shoreview, where her aunt has just been moved and where she’ll start a new job as a music therapist next week, or taking her dog out, or cleaning with a precision that borders on obsession, or rehearsing with a band she’s supporting. I can already tell she’s exhausted.

I might not know her well, but she doesn’t seem the same since that experience in the elevator. And I need to know why.

Also, I am now unequivocally sure that I am an even bigger dickhead than I ever imagined.

The image of Lark sitting in the trunk of my car replays on a vivid loop in my mind. There was fear in her eyes. Determination too. Though they welled with tears, she blinked them away. She begged.

And I pushed her down and closed the lid.

“Feckin’ eejit,” I mutter, barely aware that I’ve said it out loud.

If Lark and I are going to figure out what the hell is going on and get what we both want out of this marriage, we’re going to have to work together. And we can’t do that if she’s falling apart at the seams. If I want to figure Lark out, I’m going to have to do it through her, not around her. And I’m way out of my feckin’ depth.

I’ve done a lot of dodgy shit in my life. Life has worn down most of my emotions to little more than smooth and polished stone. But every once in a while, I find a long-neglected feeling that cuts like broken glass. Such as, for example, the intense discomfort of the realization that I need to ask my sister-in-law for help.