Hell of a thing, to want a woman so much it aches in your gut and hear her think she’s just another night you’ll forget. But then I was the man she described and I couldn’t deny it.
She looked away then, her eyes going back to the marsh. “I can’t be that for anyone,” she whispered. “Not after where I came from. Not after what men took from me. I can’t be someone’s ‘good time.’ I won’t.”
Somethin’ snapped in me then—quiet but deep. A sound only I felt.
“Lark,” I said, turnin’ fully toward her, my voice rougher than I intended, “I’m not lookin’ for just a good time with you.”
She shut her eyes. Not dismissin’ me, but afraid that believin’ me might cost her too much.
“I just… can’t risk being wrong,” she said softly.
And that—that truth, that fear, that raw, broken honesty, hit me in a place I didn’t even know existed.
I didn’t touch her. Didn’t reach. Didn’t crowd her space.
Just turned the key, lettin’ the engine rise beneath us, somethin’ to break up the conversation. On the ride back, she still didn’t lean in. Didn’t rest her cheek against my back.
But halfway home… I felt her hands.
Light. Unsteady. Curlin’ around my waist—not ’cause she wanted closeness. But because she was tired of holdin’ herself so damn far away.
When we reached the clubhouse, she slid off before I’d even stopped, whisperin’ a soft, strained, “Goodnight.”
“Lark—”
She didn’t look back.
Just walked inside with her shoulders tight, like she needed the door between us to breathe again. And I sat there on my bike long after she vanished, feelin’ the ghost of her hands at my waist, and realizin’ I’d never wanted someone to trust me so damn bad in my life.
***
THE CLUBHOUSE HADgone quiet hours ago, the kind of quiet that only settled in after the whiskey ran out and the laughter burned itself to ash. I should’ve been asleep, but the walls felt too damn close tonight.
So even though I’d already taken a walk I headed out again.
The air was thick with the promise of rain, sky heavy enough to crush the horizon. My boots crunched over gravel as I madea slow lap around the grounds. Same path. Same steps. Same ghosts shadowin’ my heels.
But tonight, it wasn’t ghosts keepin’ me company.
It was her.
Lark’s voice kept echoing in my head—I can’t risk bein’ wrong.She’d looked at me like she meant it to the bone. Like lettin’ me in would cost her somethin’ she wasn’t sure she could survive losin’.
I understood that more than she knew.
“Could’ve fooled me,” I muttered, exhaling into the damp night.
“Talkin’ to the dead again?” Bolt’s voice drifted out of the dark, easy and amused. He sat on the steps, a cigarette glowing between his fingers.
“Just keepin’ the livin’ straight,” I said, walkin’ over to him.
He held the pack out without a word. I took one, lit it, breathed deep, the smoke curlin’ warm in my lungs.
“So,” he said after a beat. “You and the new woman.”
I gave him a look. “Ain’t no me and the new woman.”
He grinned around the cigarette. “Could’ve fooled me there, too. You’re wound tighter than a gun spring tonight.”
