Chapter Thirty-Two
BY THE TIME dusk settled in, I’d already been on the floor at Hight Voltage for hours, moving from table to table on the leftover rush from earlier, that buzz that came from doing something well and knowing it.
Chain had been quieter since we got back. Not distant. Just more watchful.
I caught it in pieces. A glance when he thought I wasn’t looking.
The way his attention found me without effort, like gravity.
It wasn’t new exactly, but it was… different.
Less territorial bravado, more something unguarded.
Want, yes, but threaded through with a softness I knew he didn’t hand out freely.
I held onto that longer than I should have. Let it settle somewhere tender. Let it feel like mine.
When the crowd thinned, I drifted toward the kitchen, planning to steal a glass of water and a moment to breathe. I pushed the door partway open.
And stopped.
My name floated out first, too clear to be mistaken.
“Lark.”
Roxanne.
Her voice was smooth, almost lazy, the kind that never had to raise itself to be heard.
“Please,” Cassie said with a quiet laugh. “Don’t start again.”
“Oh, I’m just sayin’,” Roxanne replied. “You really think she’d be workin’ here if Chain didn’t feel sorry for her? That girl’s a project, not a prize.”
My chest locked up. The air didn’t want to move.
Cassie scoffed. “You’re jealous. That’s all this is.”
“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. SMILED when 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.”
She studied me for a second, then nodded. “Night, Lark.”
The door swung shut behind her. The bar emptied fast after that. Lights dimmed to a warm, muted glow that made High Voltage feel smaller, quieter. Like the walls were leaning in.
When I turned, Chain was standing in the doorway to his office.
“Come here a minute.”
“I still need to—”
“Now, Lark.”
Not harsh. Just final.
I followed him inside. The office smelled like whiskey, leather, and him. He shut the door and leaned back against it, arms crossed, blocking the only exit without touching it.
“You gonna tell me what’s goin’ on?” he asked. “You’ve barely looked at me since earlier.”
“I’m fine.”
His jaw flexed. “You keep sayin’ that. You don’t look it. So try again.”
The lie hovered on my tongue. It would’ve been easier. Safer. But I was tired of swallowing things whole.
“I heard Roxanne and Cassie talking.”
His brows drew together. “About what?”
“About me.”
Something shifted in his face, the easy calm gone. “What’d they say?”
I met his eyes because if I didn’t, I wouldn’t get it out at all. “That you pity me. That I’m just some damaged girl you feel sorry for. And that you like her too. In your office. On her knees.”
The silence that followed pressed in hard. The room felt smaller.
He pushed off the door. “That’s bullshit.”
“I know what I heard.”
“And I know what’s true.” He took a step closer, frustration radiating off him. “I was with Roxanne. Once. A year ago. It wasn’t here. It wasn’t even in this building.”
“That doesn’t change the fact you still work together.”
His eyes narrowed, searching my face. “Yeah. We do. Because she does her job. That’s it. She’s someone I slept with when I was drunk and stupid, and it didn’t mean a damn thing.”
“Not to you,” I said quietly. “But it meant something to her. And to women like her. And I’m not going to be one of them.”
Confusion crosses his face. I knew I was being unreasonable. I knew I was giving him whiplash with my hot and cold approach. But I couldn’t seem to stop myself.
He stopped in front of me, close enough that the air between us felt charged, his anger aimed everywhere but at me. “Lark—”
“No.” I didn’t step back. “You want honesty? Here it is. I’m afraid, and it kills me to admit it.”
His voice came rough, edged with disbelief. “You really think I’m out to use you and toss you aside?”
I hesitated.
That was answer enough.
Something shifted in him then. Not wounded. Fired up. Determined in a way that made my chest ache.
“You don’t know what it’s cost me to hold back around you,” he said. “I want you. I don’t deny that. But not because I feel sorry for you. Not because I can’t help myself. Because I choose you. Every single day. I’ve never set out to hurt a woman in my life.”
My breath caught, but I kept my face composed. “I can’t be sure.”
He held my gaze for a long moment, chest rising as he reined himself in. Then he nodded once. “Fair enough.” He stepped aside and opened the door. “I’ve got a few things to take care of before we leave.”
I walked past him, heart hammering, the space between us stretched thin and volatile. At the doorway, I stopped. “Chain?”
He looked at me, eyes dark, unreadable.
“I didn’t say I don’t believe you,” I said softly. “I just need to know the difference between a man who wants me and one who actually means it.”
He nodded. No promises. No defense. Just acceptance. “If you don’t trust me,” he said, “then there’s no way to prove it.”
I left before I could tell him the truth. That deep down I already did, and that the rest of me was still learning how to stop waiting on the fire.