Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 74227 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 371(@200wpm)___ 297(@250wpm)___ 247(@300wpm)
I asked Tobias, but my eyes were still trained on my new wife. She was laughing at something Reed was showing her on his phone. She pointed, clapped her hands, and then threw her head back and giggled.
It made me hard instantly.
The smile that lit my face was nothing short of cheesy, but I had to admit, I was fucking happy.
That smile slipped when I watched my other brother, Finley, approach them from behind.
He wasn’t sneaking or anything, but the moment he let his presence be known by touching Lark on the back, she flinched and crouched like she was preparing for a blow that was never going to come. Definitely not by my brother’s hand, anyway.
My stomach sank.
“What the fuck?”
I started walking, ignoring my brother’s question, and hurried to where Lark was standing.
Tobias had missed the whole story and I hadn’t had a chance to fill him in completely yet. He’d know by the end of the night, though. He’d figure it out, and he’d try to fix it.
He was our fixer. The rest of us were the shit stirrers.
The closer I got, the more I realized that Finley and Reed were looking rather ill. Both of my brothers had backed away, and Finley looked like he was going to vomit at any moment.
“Lark.”
Lark’s eyes snapped open and she stared at me with relief in her eyes. I watched as her back straightened, and she came out of her protective stance. I’d never seen this reaction from her. The one that told me for sure that she had been abused.
But she never reacted like that. I’d never seen her freak out before. It was baffling.
Why now?
But, if I were a betting man, I would say that this had a lot to do with the fact that her ex now knew exactly where she was, and I wasn’t letting her run like she wanted.
She didn’t feel safe.
And again, that really pissed me off. I wanted her to always feel safe with me, and damn her ex for doing this to her.
She came to me, burying her face into my chest as she said, “I’m sorry.”
She had nothing to be sorry for. Nothing.
I made eye contact with Reed and Finley, and they both took off, leaving us alone in the corner.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated again.
I ran my palm down the length of her hair, stopping once I reached her back.
“Why don’t you flinch any time I touch you?”
Why had I just asked that?
She seemed to slump in my arms, and I felt even worse for blurting out my inner thoughts.
“Trust.”
“What?”
“Trust,” she repeated. “I knew I could trust you.”
“How?”
“The day that you repossessed my car, I’d seen you earlier. At the gas station.” She cleared her throat. “You were trying to feed a stray dog. He was so skittish, and you were so patient with him.”
“What about when I come up to you from behind?”
She shrugged. “I feel you.”
“You feel me?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I feel you. You’re like a reassuring heat at my back. I can always feel when your eyes are on me. Like a warm hand is running down the length of my arm, telling me it’ll be all right.” She blew out a shaky breath. “I was looking at Reed’s phone, laughing about a meme he showed me, and I wasn’t prepared for someone to come up behind me. I thought there was a wall at my back.”
“There was,” I confirmed, continuing to run my hand down her hair. “He came out from the partition. There’s a hidden wall there that leads up to my office.”
She blew out a breath. “Of course, there is.”
I grinned. “Gotta have some secrets, darlin’.”
She pinched my side and pushed away from me. I let her go, but not far.
The moment she was standing up straight, I wrapped my arm around her and led her back to where Finley and Reed were talking with Tobias now.
“I’m sorry,” Lark said immediately. “I didn’t mean to react that way.”
Finley shrugged. “My ex-wife used to do that…before me,” he hastily added.
Lark just shook her head. “I’ve seen you with Leida. I know that you’re not like that.”
And he wasn’t. Finley was about as against it as one could get.
He’d given it a good go with his ex. Though she’d had a lot to overcome when it came to their relationship, she had so many ghosts in her past that their relationship was doomed from the start.
Finley got a good deal out of it in the end…his daughter.
A daughter who was currently leader of the pack as she squealed and played on the dance floor with the other kids.
“When are y’all going to start popping out some babies?”
That had come from Evander, who came up behind us.
I winced when his hand came down hard on my shoulder, making not just me, but Lark jolt, too.