Leather & Lark (The Ruinous Love Trilogy, #2) (55)
“You didn’t need to convince them. You needed to give them enough doubt to stop them from acting. I’m sure they’ll send someone to keep tabs on you both over the next while, so if you want to go necking in public it wouldn’t be the worst idea—”
“Auntie,” I hiss, but she merely laughs at the embarrassment in my tone. Lachlan chuckles and I catch his eyes in the mirror. I know he can probably see my deep blush, the heat of it burning in my cheeks. “‘Necking’? Seriously?”
“What? I’m old.” When I let loose a heavy sigh, the levity slowly evaporates in the car and Ethel reaches toward me to take my hand. “Don’t worry, my girl. Sure, they will likely have lingering doubts. We presented them with a difficult situation to accept. But as for giving your parents enough reason to rethink any plans they might have been brewing to go up against Mr. Kane?” Ethel lets go of my hand to give Lachlan’s leather-clad sleeve an affectionate pat. “I’m quite sure you did that. The license was very clever, Lark.”
I blow out a long breath and look out the window as the familiar neighborhood slips past. I gnaw at my lower lip until I taste an iron thread of blood. “Maybe.”
“You did a good job, Meadowlark. I know it hurts now, but his heart will mend. Damian loves you dearly, always.”
“What was that about? With the license?” Lachlan asks, but I don’t reply. I don’t take my eyes from the suburban streets. Places I’ve felt lost in. Places where I’ve been found. The paths and passageways that my stepdad walked me down. The ones where he taught me how to ride a bike. The ones where he taught me how to drive. He spent the time to make this home my home. He did all the things my dad would have taught me how to do, had he lived.
“Lark never took the Covaci name,” Ethel says, her voice low and quiet. “She always said she would never leave that piece of her dad, Sam, behind. But she did it. For you.”
I can feel Lachlan watching me in the rearview. But I can’t bear to meet his gaze.
“Your wife just broke her family’s heart,” Ethel says. “And she did it to save your life.”
NETWORK
Lark
How can we come back from this when you left me in the dark?
You left me in the dark.
But I can’t stop myself. I can’t stop wanting you.
I scratch through the last few lines of text and close my notebook, placing it back in my bag as I watch through the window of my aunt’s room. I’ve never been so blocked with a song before. It’s like I just can’t figure out what to say. I can’t hear the notes that should come naturally. I’d like to think it’s because I’m tired. So fucking tired. But I know it’s not just that. In the last ten days since we went to my parents’ place, Lachlan has crept into my thoughts, into my daily life. He makes coffee and breakfast every morning. He brings me little things every night, as though he thinks they might help me sleep. A silk eye mask. He blushed when he gave me that. An incense diffuser. Tonight, he’ll make me a cup of chamomile tea and hand it to me with a haunted look in his eyes, just like he does every night. He’ll disappear into his room and then we’ll do the whole thing all over again tomorrow, over and over until we die.
But one thing Lachlan hasn’t done? Apologize. And I can’t seem to let go of those first moments we met. My hurt still festers, and maybe I just need him to open that wound. But he won’t.
“Well, fuck him,” I whisper and lean back in my chair.
“Yes, fuck him. I need to live vicariously through someone and Ava’s love life is boring. I’m half-convinced that husband of hers is a robot,” Ethel says.
A surprised gasp leaves my lips as I sit up straighter and look toward my aunt. She shoots me a devious grin before she raises the back of her bed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you,” I say.
“You didn’t. I’ve been watching you stare out that window for the last ten minutes. That Kane boy getting under your skin?”
Though I roll my eyes at the teasing spark in my aunt’s voice, heat still creeps into my cheeks. “He’s trying.”
Ethel nods and coughs but waves me off when I rise to help her with water or tissues. This time her cough takes a long while to subside. Unease burns in my guts. Guilt creeps into my veins. She’s been so lively with all the scheming lately, but maybe it’s taken too much out of her. She suddenly looks so frail, pain etched across her crinkled skin.
Despite her protests, I press the call button for the nurse, who enters a moment later, followed by a doctor, who comes in while the fit still rumbles on. The doctor maintains her professional detachment when she tells me they’re going to administer an IV for pain relief and antibiotics to prevent secondary infection, but I’ve been around facilities like this long enough to know that the prognosis of Ethel’s cancer is grim, and this might be the fast deterioration of a disease my aunt refuses to treat.
Ethel’s cough dissipates as they ready the fluids and prepare the cannula. “I don’t like needles,” my aunt says, her eyes darting toward the door to her room and holding there. I’m about to follow her gaze when she grabs my hand. “Sing to me for a distraction, girl.”
“What would you like?”