LARK #5
I sling my jacket over my shoulders, already reaching for my bag, already shifting into the next part of my day—getting Hudson to practice, making sure he eats something that isn’t a gas station granola bar, remembering to throw a load of laundry in when we get home.
“See you tomorrow,” I call, my voice blending into the lull of the afternoon slow-down.
Dawn barely looks up from the register, lifting two fingers in a lazy goodbye. Opal mutters something under her breath that could be either a farewell or a complaint about the griddle.
I take a step toward the back door, ready to leave. And then the front door jingles.
It’s instinct, nothing more, that makes me glance back. A habit I don’t think about. Just a split-second check before I walk out the door.
But then my heart stops, because that’s when I see him. His face.
I know that face.
I built a piece of myself around it.
His hair’s darker than I remember. Still brown, still thick, but shorter now—tidier, like life forced him into structure he didn’t ask for.
The ends still have a mind of their own though, just enough to hint at the boy he used to be.
The one who let it grow too long in the summers and never remembered to comb it unless someone reminded him.
His jaw’s sharper now. Scruff lining his cheeks and chin, the kind of five o’clock shadow that says he works outside, stays busy, and probably comes home too tired to shave. It suits him.
The cleft in his chin is still there, the same one I used to trace with my finger when we were young. His shoulders are broader, his chest solid beneath a jacket that looks worn and well-used, like it’s seen more miles than it should have.
And his hands—God, his hands.
They’ve always been big, but now they look like they belong to someone who’s built things. Fixed things. Lost things. The kind of hands that carry weight without complaint.
And then his eyes. Honey-colored. Still sharp enough to see through me. Still soft enough to make me wish he wouldn’t. Familiar in the way something is when you’ve memorized it without realizing, when it’s become part of you.
I know those eyes.
I wake up to them every morning. I see them across the breakfast table, in the rearview mirror, beneath a baseball cap tilted too far over a twelve-year-old forehead.
My stomach flips, a deep, sick kind of drop.
Boone Wilding.
The boy I spent my whole childhood with. The one who whispered promises to me under a sky so wide it felt like it was holding us.
Boone hasn’t seen me yet. His gaze sweeps the diner, taking it in, registering the ways it’s changed, the ways it hasn’t. There’s a tension in the way he holds himself, like he’s bracing himself for impact.
But I see him .
I see the boy who always smelled like dirt and sunshine, like hay and river water, who spent every summer barefoot until the soles of his feet were tough enough to walk on gravel without flinching.
The boy who used to catch fireflies in an old Mason jar, who swore he could keep them alive forever if he just poked the right amount of holes in the lid.
I see the boy who swore he’d teach me to drive stick when we were thirteen. Who let me sit in his lap in his father’s rusted-out truck, the leather seats sun-cracked and hot. His hands covered mine on the wheel, steady and patient, his voice warm in my ear. “Don’t jerk it. Just feel it.”
I did. Or I tried. We lurched forward, skidded sideways, and nearly clipped a fence post. I braced for shouting, for blame, for the sharp edge of disappointment. But he only laughed, soft and breathless, like none of it mattered. He never told his dad. He never made me feel small for it.
I see the boy who kissed me for the first time.
We were fourteen, back behind the barn, where the grass grew high and the summer heat stuck to our skin.
I was still learning how to live inside my body, unsure of my hair, my clothes, my voice.
Everything about me felt like something borrowed. Ill-fitting. Awkward.
Except him.
He was the only thing I didn’t question. Not the way he looked at me. Not the way he reached for my hand like it had always been his to hold. Not the way his lips touched mine—tentative, unpracticed, and somehow exactly right .
There was nothing uncertain about him.
I see the boy who sat next to me at my dad’s funeral, stiff in a button-up that didn’t fit him right, his knuckles white where they gripped my hand. He didn’t say anything. Just held on so tightly my fingers went numb. So tightly I knew he wouldn’t let go first.
I see the boy who whispered I love you against my skin like it was a secret, like it was something sacred, something we could hold onto forever.
And I see the boy who left. The one who walked away, who took more than just himself when he did.
His gaze sweeps over the diner, then lands on mine. His body goes still.
Recognition flares across his face—his breath catches, his jaw tightens, his eyes flicker with something I can’t name but feel like an electric current in my spine.
“Lark?”
His voice hits me in the chest. It’s still the same. Low and deep and smooth, like butter sliding across a hot pan.
I don’t wait.
I don’t think.
I turn.
I push through the back door, my heart hammering against my ribs, my hands unsteady as I shove them into my jacket pockets, as if I can physically tuck myself away, make myself disappear.
The cold air slaps against my face, shocking in the way only early spring in Montana can be, still holding the last bite of winter. But I barely register it.
Hudson is in the car, flipping through his magazine, completely unaware that the ground just shifted beneath me. I slide into the driver’s seat, my hands gripping the wheel too tightly. The engine rumbles to life, and I pull out of the lot without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror.
My pulse is still trying to catch up, my breath too shallow, my brain too loud. I can’t let myself think about it, about him. Not about the way Boone’s eyes locked onto mine, not about the way his voice caught on my name, not about what happens next .
Beside me, Hudson flips another page in his magazine, the sound sharp in the quiet. Then, after a pause, he looks up. “You okay?”
I keep my eyes on the road. “Yep. Why wouldn’t I be?”
I glance at Hudson, at the face I just saw inside the Bluebell. The same thick dark hair, the same skin that tans too easily in the summer. The same freckles Boone has, sprinkled across his nose like brown sugar. Even the same tiny cleft in his chin.
He doesn’t notice me looking. Just flips another page, brow furrowed in concentration, feet propped up against the dashboard even though I always tell him not to.
He shrugs, the way only a nearly-teenage boy can, casual but perceptive. “I don’t know. You’re just acting…weird.”
I grip the wheel tighter. “I’m fine.”
But I am not fine.
I am anything but fine.
I am the polar opposite of fine.
Because twelve years ago, Boone Wilding left this town, and he was never supposed to come back.
And he has no idea that he has a son.