“I’m practical,” Roxanne shot back. “You’ve seen her face. Her hands. That scar down her cheek alone… it’s tragic. Poor burned thing. He probably thinks he’s doin’ charity work.”
For a moment, nothing landed. The words passed through me like echoes in an empty room, hollow and cruel without finding purchase.
“She’s nice,” Cassie said, a little stiff now. “And he clearly likes her.”
Roxanne laughed. Bitter. “Oh, he likes her, sure. He likes me, too—on my knees in his office. But give it time—once he gets bored, she’ll be another girl he doesn’t remember. Only difference is, he’ll have to lie to her about it ‘cause she’s too fragile to handle the truth.”
Cassie sighed. “You’re awful.”
“I’m honest,” Roxanne said. “That man doesn’t save people. And he sure as hell doesn’t stick. When have you ever seen him choose just one woman?”
Something inside me gave way. Not loudly. Just a quiet fracture, clean and final.
I stepped back from the door, breath coming too fast, skin prickling everywhere it shouldn’t. For half a heartbeat, I pictured walking in there. Letting Roxanne see exactly what she’d underestimated. Telling her she didn’t know a damn thing about me. About what it took to keep standing after fire teaches you how easily everything burns. But that was the reaction she wanted. Proof she could still shrink me down to something manageable.
I wouldn’t give her that.
Instead, I turned and pushed through the back exit. The door clicked shut behind me, soft but decisive.
Outside, the night wrapped around me. Traffic passed. Someone laughed down the block. The ocean’s faint salt lingered on the breeze. Ordinary sounds. Real ones. They pulled me back into my body.
I leaned against the brick, fingers shaking despite myself, eyes stinging.
I wanted to believe it didn’t matter. That scars were just lines on skin and not invitations for other people’s cruelty. But scars aren’t passive things. They drag memory with them. They remind you, again and again, of heat and pain and how your body learned to survive something it never should have endured.
I breathed until the trembling eased.
When the door opened again, I knew who it was without turning.
“Lark?”
Chain’s voice.
I straightened, smoothing my expression into something neutral. “Yeah. Just needed some air.”
He moved closer, close enough that his arm brushed mine. Solid. Warm. Real. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. The word came easier the second time.
He didn’t press. Just stayed there, matching my silence with his own, letting the night fill the gaps. But I could feel his attention on me, patient and protective, like he already sensed the fault line beneath the surface. And I hated how badly I wanted him to prove Roxanne wrong.
Almost as much as I hated the quiet, unwelcome thought whispering at the back of my mind.
What if she wasn’t?
What if Chain wasn’t made to save anyone… and I was foolish for wishing he might try with me?
***
I WORKED. SMILEDwhen someone expected it. Took orders. Wiped down the bar like nothing inside me had shifted. I pretended I couldn’t feel Chain’s attention following me from behind the counter, didn’t feel the questions pressing at the edges of his silence. He didn’t force them. That somehow made it worse.
By closing time, I was already reaching for a towel, already moving, already making myself busy. I wiped tables that didn’t need wiping. Kept my head down when he passed too close.
He noticed. Of course he did.
“It was a long night,” Ruby said with a yawn. “I’m wiped.”
“I’ll finish up,” I said quickly. Too quickly. “You go on.”
