Not because I didn’t care. Not because I’d chosen Zach. But because the timing had been cruel, fear had made me stupid, and silence had done what silence always does.
My phone felt heavy in my hand when I finally pulled it out.
There was only one name I could think of.
Briar.
She wasn’t part of the club, and somehow I knew that mattered. She felt safe in the way neutral ground is safe, and right now that was all I could manage. We’d exchanged numbers the morning we met, something casual that hadn’t seemed important then.
My fingers trembled as I hit call.
She answered on the second ring. “Lark?”
The sound of her voice cracked something open in me.
“Hey,” I said, but it came out thin and unsteady. “I’m sorry to call so late.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she said immediately. “What’s wrong?”
I closed my eyes and leaned my forehead against the cool brick wall beside me. “I… I can’t go back to the bar tonight. Or the clubhouse.”
There was a pause. Not judgment. Just listening.
“Okay,” Briar said gently. “Where are you?”
I gave her the address, my voice steadier now that the decision had been made. Saying it out loud made it real. Made it final.
“I can be there in ten minutes,” she said. “Don’t move.”
“Thank you,” I whispered. “Briar… thank you.”
The line went dead, and I slid down to sit on the curb, pulling my knees up to my chest. The city hummed around me,indifferent and loud, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d left something unfinished behind me.
Chain thought I’d betrayed him.
That hurt worse than the misunderstanding itself. I could survive anger. Rage. Even hatred.
But disappointment?
Disappointment meant he’d already let go.
Headlights swept across the street a few minutes later, and Briar’s car pulled up to the curb. Relief washed through me so hard it nearly knocked me over. She was out before I could stand, wrapping me in a hug that smelled like laundry detergent and home.
“Oh, Lark,” she murmured into my hair. “You’re shakin’.”
I clung to her a second longer than I meant to, then pulled back, embarrassed by how close I was to falling apart.
“I didn’t know who else to call,” I admitted.
“You called the right person,” she said simply, opening the passenger door. “Get in.”
The car was warm and quiet, the kind of silence that didn’t ask anything of me. Briar didn’t press for answers as she drove, just reached over at a red light and squeezed my hand once, grounding me in the present.
I watched the city blur past the window and tried not to think about the bar, the clubhouse, the man I loved riding somewhere out there with a heart full of poison he thought I’d put there. Or the man I’d walked away from, who hadn’t chased me when I said no.
I didn’t know how to fix this.
I only knew I couldn’t go back yet.
