I’d missed it all. All of it had been right in front of me, and I’d filed it undershe works hardand moved on. Because she’d made it easy to move on.
That was her whole trick, wasn’t it? Keep everyone focused on the animals, on the work, on anything but her, and nobody ever thought to ask what was falling apart behind her smile.
“I’ve got no money. I’ve got no more options.” She stopped. Her mouth was still open, but nothing came out. She looked at me, and her face was completely unguarded, the brightness stripped away, nothing underneath it but exhaustion and fear.
“I might lose Pawsitive.”
Her voice broke on the last word, and I watched something behind her eyes give way.
Her breathing went first. It fractured into short, shallow pulls that weren’t getting enough air, her chest heaving, her shoulders curling inward. Then her hands came up, and her fingers clawed into her hair and gripped hard. Her whole body started trembling, a deep, uncontrollable shaking that had nothing to do with the cold.
“I can’t—” She was trying to talk, but the words kept breaking apart. “I can’t— I built this— I can’t lose?—”
“Lark. Hey. Come sit next to the fire and let’s talk.”
I don’t even think she heard me. “I can’t lose the truck. We can’t do anything without the truck. I have to?—”
She lunged toward the open side of the overhang before I realized what she was going to do. Her hands grabbed at the rockedge and her body lurched toward the rain, toward the slope, toward the floodwater below, and there was nothing rational about it. She wasn’t trying to go somewhere. She was trying to get out of her own skin.
I caught her. Got my arms around her from behind and held on. Her back pressed against my chest, and I could feel every part of her shaking, the tremors running through her body and into mine.
She wasn’t fighting me. Her hands found my forearms and gripped hard, fingers digging in, holding on instead of pushing away.
“You can go,” I said. My mouth was near her ear, my voice as steady as I could make it. I wasn’t going to hold her back if she was determined to go. I knew what it was to face an army of demons. “But if you do, we’re going together. You want to walk out of here, I walk with you.”
She made a sound that wasn’t a word. A raw, broken noise from somewhere deep in her chest. Her knees buckled and I held her weight, and we went down to the ground together, her back against me, my arms around her, the fire behind us and the storm filling up the valley below.
I held on. I kept talking because it was all I had. I told her I was here. I told her we’d leave whenever she wanted to leave, but we’d go together. I didn’t tell her to calm down. I didn’t tell her she was okay. I didn’t tell her anything that wasn’t true.
Her fingers dug into my forearms and she shook apart against me, and I held on.
Chapter 10
Lark
Logan’s arms were around me and his voice was in my ear, and my body had stopped being mine.
The truck. The truck was in the water because I was so stupid. Every second I sat here was another second the water rose and the engine died and the one thing I couldn’t afford to lose slipped further out of reach.
And I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t move. Not just because of Logan’s arms wrapped around me.
My body had locked itself into a shaking that went deeper than my hands, deeper than the cold. It lived in my ribs, the muscles along my spine, the backs of my legs. Deep, involuntary waves that started somewhere beneath my lungs and radiated outward.
My breathing had fractured into short, sharp pulls that caught in my throat before they could fill anything. My fingers were locked on his forearms so hard I could feel tendons shifting under his skin.
His voice came through the noise. Low, even, close enough that I felt his breath warm against my temple.
“I’m right here. It’s going to be okay. If you want to go try to get the truck, we will.”
I tried to answer, and nothing came out. My throat was sealed shut, and my chest was caving in on itself, each breath shorter than the last.
And then it hit me. What I’d done. What I’d said.
The words I’d never spoken out loud to anyone had come pouring out of me in ragged, broken pieces. The mortgage. The bank. Three months behind. The heat I couldn’t afford and the propane I’d let run out and the grants that vanished.
I’d said all of it, every ugly thing I’d been swallowing for months, and I knew from the look on his face when he’d asked about the barn shower that he’d pieced it all together. I’d handed a man I’d known for three weeks every secret I’d been keeping from the rest of the world, and I couldn’t take any of it back.
“You’re not alone in this, Lark.” That deep voice again. The only thing that seemed to be able to penetrate this panic smothering me.
