LARK #2
He climbs into bed beside me, the mattress dipping under his weight. The scent of pine and laundry detergent and crisp mint toothpaste hits first—clean and warm, a sharp contrast to the mess inside my head. Like something I could reach for with my eyes closed and know that I was home.
He brings the kind of comfort that doesn’t ask for permission. Just wraps itself around me and settles in.
I set the laptop on the floor, the thud soft against the worn wood. Like if I can just tuck it out of reach, I can keep the weight of it—the pressure, the fear, the responsibility—from crawling back up my spine.
“You don’t have to handle this for me,” I say, my voice quieter now. “It’s not yours to carry. You didn’t sign up for any of this.”
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away.
Just tilts his head, eyes steady on mine like they’re holding me in place.
“No,” he says. “But I signed up for you.”
And God.
It knocks the breath out of me. That sentence. The way he says it like it’s fact, not a performance. Not a rescue.
Then he leans in, kissing me like he means to say the rest of it with his mouth. No hurry, no noise. Just this deep, grounded intensity that pulls every sharp edge inside me into something softer.
He kisses me like he wants me to stop apologizing for taking up space.
When he pulls back, he doesn’t go far. His lips hover close, his breath still mingling with mine.
“So yeah,” he says. “I signed up for this, too.”
I swallow hard, the ache building low in my throat. My hand lifts on instinct, fingers brushing the cleft in his chin, resting there like it always used to, like my body still remembers how to touch him without thinking.
“I hate feeling like someone’s burden,” I admit quietly.
His hand moves to my face, his thumb brushing just beneath my cheekbone like he’s trying to erase the words before they can root too deep .
“You’re not,” he says, soft but sure. “You never were.”
And then he kisses me again.
Not to hush me.
To anchor me.
To press the truth into my skin like maybe—if he’s careful enough—I’ll finally believe it.
I kiss him back, fully this time. With both hands. With all of the fear and gratitude and want I haven’t figured out how to say out loud. He presses in closer, like he belongs there, like I belong with him.
When we finally pull apart, I shift slightly, just enough to notice the leather-bound journal sitting on the nightstand beside him. It’s worn around the edges, the spine softened from being opened and closed more times than someone like Boone would probably admit.
My fingers drift toward it. “Is that yours?”
Boone follows my gaze, runs a hand through his hair. “Yeah.”
I blink, surprised. “I didn’t know you journaled.”
He shrugs, casual—but there’s a flicker of hesitation behind it, something unspoken resting just beneath his ribs.
“My therapist recommended it,” he says. “Figured it couldn’t hurt to try.”
My brows pull together. “You go to therapy?”
He lets out a quiet laugh—not embarrassed, just faintly amused. More at my surprise than the question itself. “Not as much now. Used to go weekly. Down to every other.”
I nod, slow. Don’t say anything for a beat, because it catches me off guard. Not in a bad way. Just in that relearning-someone-you-thought-you-already-knew kind of way.
Boone Wilding, who used to handle everything with a clenched jaw and fists shoved deep in his pockets, letting someone help him? Letting someone in?
“That’s…really good,” I say, my voice softer than it was a second ago. “I’m proud of you.”
He looks over at me. Eyes gentler now. Like he heard that deeper layer in my voice—the one that meant more than the words did. He opens the journal resting beside him, flipping past pages like they aren’t private, like letting me in means all the way.
He stops halfway through, pulls out a photo tucked between two dog-eared pages. It’s creased down the middle, edges worn thin from too many times being folded and unfolded.
“Remember my buddy Jack I mentioned?” he asks, handing it over.
I take it carefully, thumb brushing the corner so I don’t smudge it.
The photo’s old, grainy—but Boone’s face is unmistakable.
Buzz cut. Sun-burnt nose. A cocky grin like someone said something inappropriate right before the shutter snapped.
His arm’s slung around another guy—Jack, I’m guessing—blond, built like Boone, both of them in uniform with sweat on their shirts and dirt on their faces.
Boone’s flipping off the camera. Jack’s sticking out his tongue.
It’s chaotic. And weirdly perfect.
“You look like babies,” I say, smiling.
“We were,” he murmurs, mouth tipping up, but only slightly. “We had a good time, though.”
I look down at the photo again, at the way Boone’s leaning in toward Jack, both of them caught in that ridiculous mix of exhaustion and adrenaline. There’s an ease in the image I haven’t seen on Boone’s face since high school.
“Are you and Jack still close?” I ask, glancing back up at him.
He doesn’t answer right away. His jaw tightens, just enough to be noticeable, the muscle shifting beneath his skin.
His gaze stays locked on the photo, like there’s something in it only he can see.
The playful edge that had crept into his voice is gone now, replaced by something quieter, more careful.
“I was a team sergeant,” he says finally. “Basically, I was the guy responsible for our twelve-man unit. Made the calls, kept them safe—or tried to.” His thumb runs along the edge of the blanket, slow and steady. “Jack and I served together for a while. He was part of my team.”
There’s something about the way he says it—my team—like the weight of those words hasn’t eased with time.
“We were assigned a mission in Afghanistan,” Boone continues, his eyes still on the photo.
“Intel said there was a bomb maker operating out of a village near the mountains. He’d already killed American troops and some civilians.
Our job was to go in, capture him alive, get out before anyone even knew we were there. ”
His voice is steady, but there’s a tightness behind it, something that tells me he’s walked through this memory more times than he’s wanted to.
“We had to split up for the approach. Jack was our best guy for recon—close surveillance, moving quietly. I picked him to lead the advance team, two guys with him. It should’ve been clean. We’d done so many things like that before.”
The muscles in Boone’s forearm tense beneath his skin, but he keeps going.
“They got ambushed. A second group was waiting, more than we expected. Jack got his guys out, pushed them back toward safety, but he stayed behind.” Boone’s voice dips, rough around the edges. “He covered their exit. Took fire so they wouldn’t have to.”
He swallows hard, eyes still fixed on the photo like it’s holding him there.
“He didn’t make it out.”
The room goes still, Boone’s silence more telling than anything else. I reach for his hand, threading my fingers through his, and he holds on like he’s done it a hundred times and would do it a hundred more.
I haven’t thought much about what he must have gone through while he was away.
Not because I didn’t care—I did. I do. But there’s a part of me that didn’t want to look too closely, that didn’t want to imagine the shape of his life without me in it.
And Boone never offered much. He’s always been good at keeping things locked up, his past kept neatly behind the closed door of things we never talked about.
Until now.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper, the words catching in my throat before I can stop them. They feel small, almost stupid, like they can’t possibly reach the place in him that still hurts .
Boone nods, barely, his gaze still distant. “I’ve carried it for five years,” he says, his voice low and worn. “The guilt. Wondering what I could’ve done different. If I should’ve sent someone else, made a different call, gone myself. I think about it all the time. Replay it.”
“Stop,” I say, sharper than I intend, my voice cutting through the quiet. I lift his hand, still wrapped around mine, and press it to my lips, holding it there for a breath. “You can’t do that to yourself, Boone. You can’t live inside of the what-ifs.”
His eyes flick to mine, searching, but I don’t let go.
“You did the best you could with what you had in front of you,” I say, my voice softer now, steadier. “That’s all anyone can do. That’s all any of us get. Just…the moment in front of us and the hope that we don’t get it wrong.”
Boone’s shoulders rise with a breath that doesn’t seem to fill his lungs all the way. His hand stays in mine, his thumb brushing once over my knuckles like he’s not even aware he’s doing it.
The light from the nightstand lamp casts a soft glow across his face, catching on the curve of his jaw, the faint crease in his brow that never really goes away.
He looks tired—not just in the way people are at the end of the day, but in the way people are when they’ve been carrying something heavy for too long.
Like if he puts it down, he might forget who he is without it.
Boone exhales. “That’s easier said than done,” he says, quiet, but not defensive—just honest.
“I know,” I tell him softly. “But guilt is sneaky. It convinces you that if you hold on tight enough, if you punish yourself long enough, maybe you’ll earn a different outcome.
Like suffering will somehow make the ending less permanent.
” I pause, watching him. “But it doesn’t work that way.
The past already happened. You don’t get to go back.
All you get now is the time you still have. And what you decide to do with it.”
Boone doesn’t respond, but something in him shifts—his posture softening, the fight draining from his shoulders like the weight’s still there, but he’s tired of holding it alone .