Page 11 of Roulette

I reached for the torque wrench and was halfway through setting it when movement caught my eye through the open bay door.

Lark walked with her shoulders straight and her chin level, as if the ground beneath her feet had earned a temporary kind of trust. Her blonde hair was loose today, falling in waves past her shoulders. She tucked a strand behind her ear with her free hand as she reached the picnic table outside my house. She pulled out the bench to sit. Then she just sat there, one hand resting on the table, the other tracing the worn grain, looking out toward the tree line at the edge of the property.

My wrench went still in my hand. I didn’t mean for it to happen. One second I was tightening a bolt, and the next I was watching her sit at my picnic table, the morning light catching the gold in her hair, and the wrench just stopped turning.

Hornet caught it first. He followed my gaze through the bay door, then back to my face. The corner of his mouth lifted in a grin that spelled trouble. He elbowed Gunner hard enough to make him slosh solvent over the rim of the tub.

“Fuck, man --”

“Look,” Hornet said, jerking his chin toward the yard.

Gunner looked. His expression went from annoyed to delighted in about half a second.

“Well, shit.” He wiped his hands on a rag and leaned back against the workbench, crossing his arms. “This is the third morning in a row he’s been staring out that door like a dog waiting for the mailman.”

“Fourth,” Hornet said. “Monday doesn’t count because she was still inside. But Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and now today. That’s four.”

“I’m not counting days,” I said.

“Sure you’re not. You’ve just happened to be out here at dawn four mornings straight, coffee already made, like a man who has no idea what day it is.”

I picked up the wrench and wiped it on the rag. The metal was warm from my hand. “Shut it.”

They didn’t shut it. They never shut it. That was the point of brothers -- they saw the thing you didn’t want seen, and then they held it up to the light and made sure everyone else saw it too.

Gunner straightened up and put his hands on his hips, his face arranged in what he clearly thought was a perfect imitation of my resting expression. Blank. Stoic. Eyes fixed on something in the middle distance with the focused intensity of a man solving a particularly difficult math problem in his head.

“Oh, Lark,” he said, in a voice pitched an octave higher than mine and about three times more dramatic. “Your hair is like sunshine. Your tomato-chopping skills are the envy of the clubhouse. Please sit at my picnic table forever and never leave.”

Hornet snorted into his coffee can. The third brother -- a Prospect whose name I hadn’t bothered to learn yet -- was trying not to laugh and failing completely, his shoulders shaking as he pretended to adjust something on the workbench.

“I don’t sound like that,” I said.

“You sound exactly like that,” Gunner said. “You just do it on the inside. We can hear it.”

I tightened the bolt. The wrench turned, the threads bit, and I kept my eyes on the work instead of the yard. But I could still feel her out there, sitting at the picnic table, the awareness settling in my chest like something solid I couldn’t shift.

Fox was standing at the edge of the garage, one shoulder against the doorframe, a mug of coffee in his hand. He’d been there long enough to catch the whole exchange, but he hadn’t joined in. That was Fox -- he watched. He listened. He let the brothers run their mouths because that’s what brothers did, and he stepped in only when it crossed a line that mattered. This wasn’t that line.

I glanced over at him. His gaze met mine for a beat, steady and unreadable. He gave me the smallest nod -- barely a movement, just a dip of his chin that said he saw it, he understood it, and he wasn’t going to make it worse by talking about it. Then he turned and walked back toward the clubhouse, his boots muffled on the gravel, and left me to the noise.

I went back to the bike. The bolt refused to budge. I moved to the next one, and then the next, working my way down the chain case with the methodical focus that usually kept my head clear. My jaw ached from clenching, and I held the wrench harder than necessary. Twice, my attention wandered through the bay door to the picnic table where she sat, morning light settling across her shoulders.

The third time, I made myself look down. The metal was warm under my hands. The garage smelled like work. The brothers were still laughing behind me, too caught up in their own bullshit to keep studying my face, and that was close enough to peace for now.

* * *

I heard the window before I saw her. Wood scraping wood, then the soft sound of someone exhaling through their nose, frustrated but determined not to admit it. I came around the side of the house and found her on the porch, both hands braced under the bottom sash, her weight on her back foot as if she could force it up through sheer stubbornness.

The afternoon had warmed up. The air was thick with the smell of cut grass from somewhere across the compound, and the porch boards were hot underfoot. Lark had changed into shorts and a faded T-shirt, had her hair pulled back in a loose knot that was coming undone at the nape of her neck. She hadn’t heard me approach -- her focus was entirely on the window, her jaw set, her fingers braced under the wood like it had personally offended her.

I came up behind her and reached past her shoulder without saying anything. My arm brushed against hers, close enough I felt the warmth of her skin through my sleeve, and then my palms were flat against the top of the sash beside hers. One firm push, and the wood gave with a groan that sounded louder than it should have in the still afternoon. The window slid up, and a rush of air moved through the gap, carrying the smell of grass and distant charcoal from someone’s grill.

Lark stepped back. Her shoulder bumped my chest, and she moved sideways to put space between us, her arms crossing over her stomach in that defensive hitch I was starting to recognize.

“I had it,” she said.

“Sure.”