Page 177 of At First Spark
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I do. I didn’t say I loved you because of what happened. I’ve known since the first night you stayed here.”
She studies me.
I think about all the ways I have gotten this wrong before. All the ways I mistook wanting for knowing. Need for connection. Comfort for commitment. Melanie and Kenzie had belonged to a version of my life built around easier answers and lower stakes. It had been casual because casual costs less when it ended.
Lark was never going to be that. She matters in all the ways that make a man careful. All the ways that make him reckless too.
I reach for her this time, not to pull her closer so much as to settle my hand against the side of her neck and keep her therewhile I say the thing I should have maybe understood before now.
Something in her expression changes at that. Softens, yes, but more than that. Settles. Like a part of her has been waiting for that specific answer and didn’t know it until she heard it.
She leans in first. The kiss is quiet in a way our others weren’t—no storm under it. No smoke. No panic at our backs. Just recognition and relief, and the kind of tenderness that usually shows up after people have nearly lost each other and don’t want to waste the lesson.
When she pulls back, she keeps her forehead against mine and laughs softly under her breath. “That was unfairly good.”
I smile into the space between us. “You’re welcome.”
She breathes out another laugh, and there he is—the easier part of me, the one everybody keeps swearing still exists. It comes naturally with her. Less forced every time. Maybe because I don’t feel like I have to split myself cleanly in half around her. Protector here. Goofball there. Firefighter somewhere else. She somehow sees the whole of me and keeps staying anyway.
That thought sits with me later, after she heads to the inn for a couple of hours because she “refuses to let arson win and also desperately needs to check the moisture levels in the parlor walls,” which is both absurd and deeply, perfectly her.
The inn feels changed, too. There’s still too much stripped wood, too many open seams, too many decisions waiting. But the fear has gone out of it a little, or maybe gone out of her.
By evening, we’re both covered in dust. Rook is asleep in a square of sunlight by the front window. Nolan shows up with supply invoices and leaves with less tension around his mouththan he’s carried in weeks. Hadley calls once to “check on a contractor-related matter,” and absolutely does not mean the inn.
Life, somehow, keeps moving. That feels miraculous in its own quiet way.
It’s almost dark by the time we head back to the farm. The remains of the barn sit shadowed now, fenced off for safety, waiting for whatever comes next. Rebuilding. Clearing. Deciding what should stand in its place.
For a second, standing beside Lark in the yard, I can see all of it at once. The damage. The work ahead. The woman next to me, who came here to rebuild one thing, and somehow, helped me start rebuilding another.
“This isn’t how I pictured any of this,” I say.
She glances up. “The fire or me?”
I think about it, then smile slightly. “Both.”
She nods like that absolutely makes sense. “Same.”
We stand there in the cooling air a while longer. The farm is quiet around us. The house lit warm behind us. A future not yet formed but no longer unimaginable.
I turn fully toward her, and she watches me, waiting.
“There’s something I need to say before my mother and sister beat me to it and make it weird,” I tell her.
Her mouth curves. “That does sound like a risk.”
“It’s a serious risk.”
I take her hands in mine. The gesture feels steady in a way that makes the next words easier than they should be and harder than anything I’ve ever meant.
“I’m in this,” I say. “Not halfway. Not until it gets inconvenient. Not because things got intense. I’m in it because it’s you.”
Her eyes hold mine, widening just slightly. Not with surprise exactly. More like recognition.
“I know this isn’t simple,” I continue. “I know your life is still yours and the inn is still yours, and I’m not trying to fold you into some version of my world where you simply exist in it. That’s not what I want.”
I take a breath. Hold it. Let it go.
