I wanted to punch something.
“And then I hear myself saying all of this, and I feel like a—” I stopped. Tried again. “Reid wasn’t some guy who forgot to make a call. He was in pain. The kind of pain I know, because I’ve been close enough to it to recognize the address. When it’s that loud, you can’t hear anything else. You can’t see past it far enough to pick up a phone.”
My hands were gripping my knees. I made myself let go.
“So what does it make me, being angry at a drowning man for not waving?”
The silence held. Lark sat up beside me. She didn’t rush to fill it, and I could feel her choosing her words with the kind of care that meant they mattered.
“You remember that woodpile I chopped?” she said.
I looked at her.
“You handed me an axe and let me destroy a cord of firewood, and when I was done, you told me I was allowed to be angry. That the rage was mine and I was entitled to every bit of it.” She held my eyes. “Nobody had ever said that to me. And you stood there and told me it was mine to have.”
Her hand found my arm, just above the wrist.
“Being angry at Reid and understanding why he couldn’t reach out aren’t two different things, Logan. But they live in the same place. You’re angry because you loved him. Because you would have shown up. That’s not selfish.” Her fingers tightened on my arm. “That’s what love sounds like when it doesn’t have anywhere to go.”
The anger didn’t leave. The grief didn’t leave. But they found a different arrangement inside my chest, one that wasn’t crushing the air out of me. I could carry them both if they weren’t stacked on top of each other.
I covered her hand with mine.
“Reid was my family,” I said again, quieter this time. “He was my brother in every way that mattered. And the guys last night, Hunter, Beckett, Coop, they’re the same thing. Hunter was in my ear during that operation, not because of a command structure. Because he knew what I carry and he was watching for it.”
“That’s what people do when they care about you,” Lark said. “They pay attention.”
I looked down at Tova, who had put her chin on my knee. “Like you. You put a dog in my cabin because you saw what I needed and decided I didn’t get a vote.”
“You definitely did not get a vote.”
“My point is that family isn’t always the one you were born into. Sometimes it’s the people who show up. Who pay attention. Who put a dog in your cabin. Blood has nothing to do with it.”
Lark was quiet for a while. The sky above the ridgeline had gone from copper to a deep, bruised purple, and the first stars were pressing through.
“Speaking of, I’ve been thinking about calling my family,” she said.
I turned to look at her. She was watching the sky, her jaw tight, holding something she’d rather not hold.
“My parents,” she said. “To ask them for money.”
I knew what it would cost her to pick up that phone.
“The drug runners may be gone, but the acceleration clause hasn’t gone away,” she said. “My family has money, Logan. More than enough to get me out of this jam without even knowing it was missing. It would solve the problem.”
She said it flat and practical, her voice stripped down to the bones of the problem.
“It’s the only path I can see.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t tell her not to do it, because it wasn’t my call and, honestly, I didn’t know how to come up with that kind of money either. I took her hand and laced my fingers through hers, and we sat there in the grass while the last of the light drained out of the sky.
The ridgeline went dark. Tova shifted between us, pressing her weight against both our legs, and Lark’s thumb traced a slow line across my knuckle.
We stayed until the stars came out.
Chapter 23
Lark
