Page 55 of At First Spark
We eat. For the first few minutes, that’s all there is. Fry baskets sliding between us. Lark taking exactly one careful bite before realizing she is, in fact, starving and eating like someone who has spent two days pretending she didn’t need things.
I don’t mention it. I just push the onion rings closer when she reaches for one the second time.
“You’re watching me again,” she says.
“I’m making sure you don’t pass out in my truck.”
“I’m beginning to think you enjoy assuming I’m two bad hours away from collapse.”
I take a drink of coffee and set the mug down. “I enjoy being right.”
Her eyes narrow, though there’s no heat behind it now. Not really. The shift is subtle, but I feel it.
Lark wipes her fingers on the paper napkin and looks down at the table.
“My dad used to bring me to places like this after jobs. When I was little, he’d let me order pie first,” she says. “Said if life was going to be hard anyway, you might as well have your priorities straight.”
I glance at the pie case near the counter and then back at her.
“That sounds smart.”
“It was reckless according to my mother.”
“Your mother and I aren’t going to agree on much, are we?”
That gets me a real smile. Real enough that it changes her whole face for a second before she reins it back in.
“No,” she says softly. “Probably not.”
We’re quiet after that. The comfortable kind this time. The kind that lets us eat and breathe and exist without filling every inch of space just because it’s there.
I don’t realize how far into dangerous territory that thought has taken me until the bell over the diner door jingles and a man steps inside.
Tall. Dark hair. Clean-cut. The kind of guy who looks expensive without trying. His gaze moves through the diner, catches on our booth, and stills.
Lark goes rigid across from me. So slight I might have missed it if I hadn’t already been watching her too closely all evening.
There it is. The answer to a question I didn’t know I was asking. She knows him and suddenly the whole diner feels different.
The man starts toward us. Lark sets her coffee down very carefully. I don’t look away from him.
Not even when she says, low enough that only I can hear, “Well. That’s inconvenient.”
He stops beside the booth.
“Lark.”
Her face closes. Not cold. Not panicked. Just… shut.
“Nolan.”
There’s a lot in that one word. History. Frustration. Resignation.
The man’s gaze cuts to me and back again. I lean one forearm on the table and meet it without comment.
“Didn’t know you were in town and not at the inn,” he says.
Her expression doesn’t move. “I am.”
