Chapter 19 #2
Lark heard it too. She started past me. “I have to tell them not to come back. That I’ll call the cops.”
I grabbed her arm. “We can’t go after them.”
“Those are people on my property. At two in the morning.”
“I know. And I need you to trust me right now. We can’t go rushing in there.”
I could see her frustration as she looked toward the lights. “Why can’t I go after whoever is trespassing on my property?”
“Because they’re not kids and they’re not lost. I’m pretty damn sure the people out there are bad news.”
“What?” But she stopped pulling at my hand holding her.
The engine sounds continued to fade until they were nothing. They were gone.
The silence between us pulled tight.
“Bad news? What exactly does that mean?”
“There’s a drug operation running through the county.” I said it straight because that was the only way to say it. “They move product through remote rural properties. Back roads, access points, land where the owners aren’t patrolling their far boundaries.”
“And you think they’re using Pawsitive.”
I let go of her arm. “I’ve been finding signs on your property for a while but wasn’t sure.”
“Signs like what?”
“Tire tracks on the back access road, two sets, heavy. A section of fence cut clean with wire cutters on the south boundary. The old equipment shed has been used as a meetup spot—although that looked like teens more than anything. I went to Hunter with all of it.”
“Hunter? Why?”
“The Warrior Security guys mentioned the drug issue when I saw them in town a couple weeks ago but said it was primarily on properties on the east side of Garnet Bend.”
“Well, it looks like it’s not just the east side of town anymore.” She ran a tense hand through her hair, pulling it back from her face. “And you’ve known about this for a while and didn’t tell me.”
“I wasn’t sure it was definitely drug-related. Could have been kids getting into trouble. I didn’t want to scare you over something that might have been nothing.”
“But you were concerned enough that you told Hunter.”
Shit. She was pissed. And rightfully so. “I went to Hunter. Laid out everything I’d found. He confirmed it matches the operation they’ve been tracking with Lachlan.”
“You told Hunter about activity on my property. Before you told me.”
“Lark—”
“You made a decision.” Her voice had gone low.
Controlled. “About what I needed to know about my own land. You decided what I could handle, and you took it to someone else, someone who doesn’t live here, doesn’t own a single board of this place, and you gave him information that should have come to me first.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“I know exactly what you were trying to do.” She took a step back, and the distance between us widened into something that had nothing to do with measurement.
“I’ve lived through this before, Logan. I had someone who decided what I was allowed to know, what information I deserved to have about my own life. He called it protecting me too.”
It landed harder than the elbow she’d thrown. Harder because I couldn’t set my jaw against it or shake it off or file it under things that didn’t apply to me, because it did apply to me.
My reasons were nothing like Carter’s. My intentions were clean. But the result was identical: a man had decided what she was strong enough for and kept her in the dark about her own life.
I stood there and took it because the truth was the only thing I had.
“You’re right,” I said. “I should have told you.”
“Yes. You should have.”
The fight drained out of the air between us. What replaced it was something emptier, something that had burned through the anger and left a tiredness that sounded older than both of us.
“We said we were doing this together,” she said. “After the birthday party. At dinner. In this bed we’ve been sharing. We agreed to be partners, and then both of us—”
She stopped.
I let that sit. I already knew what she was talking about. “Both of us what?”
She didn’t answer.
“I found the letter, Lark.” I kept my voice even. “From Pinnacle. The acceleration clause. Full balance of the second mortgage, due in thirty days.”
Nothing moved. The property held still around us.
“When?” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“This afternoon. I was looking for the screwdriver.”
“I was going to tell you.” Her arms dropped to her sides. “I put the letter on the counter the day I got it. By the coffeemaker. Right next to your mug. I was going to show you in the morning.”
“What changed?”
“You had a nightmare. A bad one. Tova pulled you out of it and I was lying right there, and I couldn’t do anything except watch you fight through it.
And after you went back to sleep, I got up and moved the letter to the drawer because I looked at you and I thought, he’s carrying enough.
I’m not adding mine until I have a plan. ”
I closed my eyes. Opened them.
“You see how it’s the same, right? That what I can or cannot carry is my decision to make. You don’t get to decide for me that I’m too broken to take on your problems.”
“I know.” Her voice cracked on the second word. “And you don’t get to decide for me what I’m allowed to know about my own land either.”
We stood there. Two people who’d both been trying to protect each other and had managed to do the one thing neither of them could tolerate: take away the other person’s choice.
“I wasn’t trying to control you,” I said. “I need you to hear that.”
“I know you weren’t. That’s not what this is about.” She rubbed her face with both hands. “I spent three years having every decision made for me. I can’t do that again. Even when it comes from a good place.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. Okay. Everything, from here on. You get all of it—the things I’m sure about and the things I’m not.”
“Even when you think it’ll scare me.”
“Even then.”
“Same goes for me,” she said. “No more junk drawers.”
“No more junk drawers.”
Something shifted between us. The letter was still in the drawer. The drug operation was still on her land. Thirty days was still thirty days. But the ground under us was shared ground for the first time, and we were both standing on it with our hands open.
Lark straightened.
“I want to know everything,” she said. “Right now. The tire tracks. The fence. The shed. What Hunter told you. What you think is happening back there and what the plan is.”
She stepped closer.
“All of it. And don’t leave anything out.”