Chapter Twenty-Six
MORNING CAME SOFT and gray. The kind that pretends to be peaceful until you notice how still everything is.
I woke with the sense that something was off before I even opened my eyes. The air in my room felt heavier, the kind of weight that only comes from knowing someone—or something—had been near.
I sat up slowly. The door was still locked, the window cracked just enough to let in the humid air. My bag sat where I’d dropped it the night before, half spilling open, my purse beside it. Nothing looked touched. But I knew better.
I reached for my jeans pocket, the one where I’d shoved the burned note. Empty.
For a long second, I just stared, heartbeat thudding in my ears. Then I upended the bag, shaking it out onto the bed. Lip balm. Keys. A few crumpled bills. No paper.
The note was gone.
I sat back, forcing slow breaths, trying to make sense of it. Maybe I’d dropped it. Maybe I’d thrown it away without thinking. But I remembered locking that door. I remembered the sound of the bolt sliding home.
“Get a grip,” I muttered. “You’re just tired.”
Still, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking. A knock sounded from the hallway, and I nearly jumped out of my skin.
“Lark?” Chain called through the door. “You up for a driving lesson?”
I swept the scattered things back into my bag. “Yeah,” I called, trying to sound normal.
When I opened the door, he was leaning against the frame, coffee in hand, eyes intense as ever. “You okay?”
“Fine,” I said automatically.
“Don’t lie to me this early,” he drawled. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
“Guess you’re rubbing off on me.”
That earned the smallest grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He studied me a moment longer, then took a drink of his coffee. “After you eat come find me out front.”
I nodded, careful not to meet his gaze too long. Because if I did, I might’ve told him everything—the smell of smoke, the note, the way it vanished. But some things were better buried. At least until I knew whether my past was still alive… or if I was just losing my mind.
***
THE MORNING AIR still carried last night’s rain, raw, clean, lifting steam off the asphalt as the sun climbed higher. Chain waited by the truck near the back lot, coffee in one hand, keys spinning slow in the other. I was worried after last night he may not continue to teach me to drive.
“You look awake,” he said.
“A shower will do that.”
He handed me a second mug of coffee he’d brought along, his fingers brushing mine just long enough to trip my breath. Warm, calloused, steady. He acted like it meant nothing. My pulse disagreed.
“Figured we’d start slow today,” he said, nodding toward the truck. “No traffic. No witnesses.”
“Comforting,” I muttered, taking a sip. Then, “You sure about this?”
That grin—lazy, dangerous, unfair—spread across his mouth. “Not even a little.”
He tossed me the keys. They jingled through the air; I caught them—barely—and stared at the truck with a mix of nerves and anticipation.
“Clutch, brake, gas,” he said. “You remember?”
“I remember you yelling at me last time I stalled.”
“I wasn’t yellin’. I was coachin’ loud.”
I rolled my eyes and climbed in, working to steady my breath. The seat was warm from the sunlight and smelled faintly of leather and his cologne, which was becoming addictive as much as familiar. Chain slid into the passenger seat, and the truck immediately felt smaller, air thicker.
“Alright,” he said, voice soft and patient. “Start her up.”
The engine coughed alive. I eased my foot off the clutch and lurched forward hard enough to nearly kiss the wheel.
Chain laughed—deep, genuine, the kind of sound that rumbled straight through me. “Good start. Almost killed us.”
I shot him a glare I didn’t really mean. “You’re not helping.”
“Relax, darlin’. You’re doin’ just fine.”
Something in the way he said darlin’—easy, warm, without a hint of ownership—slipped under my guard before I could stop it. No one had ever spoken to me like that before. No demands. No judgment. Just quiet belief.
We made a few jerky loops around the lot. By the third one, the rhythm started to make sense, the weight of the wheel, the vibration under my feet, the breeze through the cracked windows.
“See?” Chain said. “Told you you’d get it.”
“Barely.”
“That’s how everybody starts. Trick’s not quittin’ before your brain figures out what the hell your feet are doin’.”
I glanced at him. Sunlight caught the edge of his jaw, highlighting the faint stubble that softened his usually sharp expression. He looked different in daylight. Or maybe I was different in daylight.
“Did you always know what you wanted to do?” I asked.
He huffed, amused. “That come with the drivin’ lesson?”
“Just wondering.”
He leaned back, thinking. “Not really. I just knew what I didn’t want. Didn’t want rules. Didn’t want someone tellin’ me what I could be. So I picked a road and rode till it felt right. Same as my daddy.”
“That simple?”
“Nothin’ about life’s simple, Lark. But it gets easier once you stop runnin’ from who you are.”
I stared out through the windshield, his words landing heavier than he probably meant them to. Stop running from who you are.
“Maybe one day I’ll figure out who that is,” I said quietly.
Chain didn’t look away from me. “You already know,” he said, softer now. “You just don’t believe it yet.”
The truck rolled to a stop, engine idling low. Sunlight spilled across the open road ahead, but the space between us felt closer, warmer, fuller.
His arm lifted, resting on the back of my seat as he leaned in to look past me toward the road. The movement brought him close—too close—and I felt the breath he exhaled touch my cheek.
“Wanna try the highway next?” he asked, voice low and smooth as warm smoke.
“Not a chance. At least not today.”
He smiled—slow, easy, knowing. “Didn’t think so.”
But neither of us moved.
The hum of the idling engine filled the silence, steady and alive, wrapping around us like a heartbeat that wasn’t sure which one of us it belonged to.
Finally, I shifted the truck back into gear and turned us toward the clubhouse, though the quiet between us stayed warm and full all the way there.