Chapter 8LARK #2
“Anyway,” he says, shaking his head, “we were out in the middle of nowhere with time to kill, and Jack got this idea that we could turn an ammo can into a fully functional barbecue pit. Said he saw a guy do it once.”
I glance over my shoulder at him, raising a brow. “And you believed him?”
He lets out a quiet chuckle. “Jack could convince a nun to rob a bank. He had five of us buying into this genius idea like we were about to revolutionize grilling.”
I can already feel the laughter building in my chest. “So what happened?”
Boone sighs dramatically. “We set a whole-ass field on fire.”
Laughter bursts out of me before I can stop it.
Boone shakes his head, smirking. “Command was so pissed we spent three weeks doing grunt work. Jack swore up and down it wasn’t our fault, that the grass was just ‘unnaturally flammable.’”
I shake my head, still laughing. “Jack sounds like a stand-up guy.”
Boone’s smirk fades.
It’s subtle, but it happens. The lightness in his face dims, his jaw tightens just slightly, his grip on the reins shifts.
He exhales, looking out past me, past Springsteen, past this entire damn ranch.
“Yeah,” he says, quieter now. “He was.”
The weight in his voice tugs at something in my chest. I want to ask what happened. Want to ask why his voice sounds heavier, why his shoulders suddenly look like they’re carrying more than they were a second ago.
The old me would have.
The old me would have leaned in, would have wanted to know every piece of him, would have carried his sadness like it was my own.
But I can’t be the old me with Boone.
I can’t be the girl who asks questions she shouldn’t, who falls into him like it’s inevitable, who invests in a man who once packed his bags and left her behind.
So I don’t ask.
I shift a little in the saddle, stretching my spine, letting the silence between us stretch with me. “God. When’s the last time we did this?”
“Senior year.”
I blink, glancing over at him. “Seriously?”
His grip on the reins tightens slightly and he nods. “We took Red out. Rode down past the south pasture, followed the tree line all the way to the bluff. You said you wanted to see the valley from up high before it got too cold.”
The memory stirs in my chest. The air had been crisp that day, thick with the scent of pine and the last traces of summer. The sun hung low, casting everything in gold as we rode through the fields.
We had stopped at the bluff, the highest point on the ranch, where you could see the valley stretch for miles.
Boone had tied Red’s reins to a fence post, and we sat side by side on the worn wooden rail, our legs swinging, the world quiet except for the occasional rustle of the wind through the grass.
“You told me,” Boone says, “that if you could do anything, you’d go anywhere. Everywhere. That you’d never stay in one place for too long, because there was too much world to see.”
I feel it then—that tug low in my chest. The one that always hits when I think about all the places I swore I’d go but never did.
Paris. Rome. Some little town in Ireland with crooked streets and fog-covered hills.
I thought back then that if I stayed here, I’d disappear. That I’d forget how to want more.
A smile curves the edge of my mouth, soft and almost sad. “That sounds about right.”
Boone doesn’t respond at first, but I catch the shift in him—the way his shoulders lower like something inside him just gave in. “Your hair smelled like lavender that day,” he says. “Wind kept blowing it back into my face on the ride, it was all I could smell. Still smells like that.”
Something catches in my throat.
I look over my shoulder, aiming for something playful, something easy. “Someone has a good memory, don’t they?”
Boone adjusts his grip on the reins, his voice quieter now. “There’s not a thing I don’t remember when it comes to you, Lark.”
The words settle deep, heavier than I want them to be.
I swallow hard, turning forward again. I don’t ask what else he remembers.
And I don’t tell him that I never made it past Montana.
That all those big, sun-drenched dreams I carried at eighteen—full of train tickets and half-planned road trips, of hostels and strangers and nights spent under skies that weren’t mine—never left the notebook I scribbled them in.
I never stood at the edge of the Cliffs of Moher.
Never saw the northern lights flicker like gods dancing above Iceland.
Never climbed the worn stone steps of Machu Picchu or swam in the hot, still waters of a cenote in Mexico.
Instead, I learned how to measure formula with shaking hands. How to hold a baby and my breath at the same time. How to stay.
Love looks like sacrifice more often than it looks like adventure. There are different kinds of bravery and maybe mine was this. Choosing a life that didn’t match the map I’d drawn, and building something beautiful anyway.
And I don’t ask if he ever pictured a life with me—if, in those quiet, in-between moments, he let himself imagine what it might’ve looked like.
Us, here. Something real. A house tucked back on this land, maybe with a wraparound porch and chipped paint we’d pretend we’d fix someday.
Mornings with coffee mugs we never bothered matching.
Kids with his honey-brown eyes and my fire in their bones, running barefoot through the fields until the sun disappeared behind the hills.
I don’t ask if he ever saw me in it—really saw me.
Sitting on the counter, eating dry cereal straight from the box while he stirred something on the stove.
Sharing Diet Cokes in the sticky summers.
Stealing the blankets in my sleep. Singing off-key to every song on the radio during long drives.
Laughing too loud. Always taking the last fry.
I don’t ask if he ever imagined me curled up next to him on the couch, feet in his lap, watching old Westerns and pretending to care about the plot just because it made him happy.
Or if he remembers how I used to sneak sips of his coffee, just to wrinkle my nose at the taste and make him roll his eyes.
I don’t ask if he ever let himself wonder what might’ve happened if he’d stayed.
If we’d stood a chance.
If he ever wanted to.
I don’t think I want the answer.
So I just keep riding. Eyes on the horizon. My mouth outh shut.
And my heart wide open in all the places I swore I’d closed off for good.
**********
By the time we reach the main house, Hudson is already there, perched on the porch steps beside Wren. His face is still pink from the wind, hair sticking up in places, his grin wide as he talks animatedly to her.
Boone shifts behind me, and I take that as my cue to get off this damn horse. I move carefully, swinging my right leg over, gripping the saddle horn as I slide down. My boots hit the dirt, and I take a second to steady myself, knees a little weak, body still humming with residual tension.
Boone swings down next, landing solidly, all muscle and ease. He gathers Springsteen’s reins in one hand, running a palm down his neck, his voice easy, unreadable. “Gonna take him back to the barn. I’ll be back in a few.”
I nod, watching as he walks away. His strides are slow, unhurried, his broad shoulders rolling under his flannel with each step.
The late afternoon sun catches the curve of his jaw, the strong line of his back.
My fingers twitch at my sides, like some part of me still remembers what it felt like to reach for him.
“Lark? Is that you?”
The voice makes me turn, and suddenly I’m being wrapped in a hug, a warm, familiar one that still smells like vanilla and fresh linen.
Molly.
She’s holding a casserole dish in one hand, a stack of Tupperware containers balanced against her hip.
Loretta is behind her, dark hair swept into a loose bun, her sharp brown eyes scanning me with a knowing kind of amusement.
She’s in her fifties now, still as sturdy as ever in her faded jeans and worn button-down, the same no-nonsense woman who’s kept this ranch running on a full stomach for as long as I can remember.
Molly squeezes me tighter, and for a second, I let myself sink into it. Because if Alice was the one who raised me, Molly was the one who reminded me I wasn’t alone.
Molly Wilding was warmth. That’s what I remember most about her.
When I was little, Molly was the one who braided my hair before dinner, her fingers quick and sure, pulling my wild blonde waves into something neat. She always had a way of making it feel like love, like safety—like I belonged there.
When I was nine, she taught me how to bake, letting me stand on a stool next to her in the kitchen while she measured out flour and sugar. She’d let me lick the spoon after mixing the batter, laughing when I got chocolate on my nose. “That’s the best part,” she’d say with a wink.
When I was twelve, she was the one who held me after my first heartbreak, when a boy at school promised me something he didn’t mean.
She let me cry into her shoulder, smoothing my hair and telling me that some boys don’t know how to hold onto a good thing when they have it. “But the right one will,” she promised.
And when I was eighteen, standing in this very driveway, crying as I told Boone goodbye, she was the one who found me afterward.
Who pulled me into the kitchen, put a warm plate of food in front of me even though I swore I wasn’t hungry, and told me I was going to be okay. Even though I didn’t believe her.
Now, as she steps back to take me in, her eyes are as knowing as they were back then. “Well, would you look at that,” she murmurs, shaking her head like she can’t believe it. “I always knew you’d find your way back here, baby girl.”
I pull back just enough to look at her, taking in the crinkles at the corners of her light brown eyes. Boone’s eyes. Hudson’s eyes. “You haven’t aged a day.”
Molly grins, her free hand cupping my cheek for just a second before she steps back. “You always were full of it.”