“I do now. What the fuck?” I asked, wiping the excess ink from his back. “How do you know any of this?”
“We have a class together and study occasionally. Last night she ran off to see you and I had to play distraction for her brother. The guy is unhinged. You should have seen when he realized she gave him the slip. It was like a possessive boyfriend flipping out.”
“Lark didn’t say much about her family. I know now why. Her stepdad is that loud fuck on the city council.”
“I don’t know about him. I’ve only seen the asshole brother. Just thought I would warn you that she’s not safe in that house.”
Having missed Nick’s point until he spelled it out, I inhaled harshly. “Not safe?”
“The way she is around Dylan is like she’s scared. She’s not that way around other guys. When I reach for something near her, she doesn’t flinch. With him, she does.”
“Fuck,” I said under my breath. “I’ll talk to her about moving out.”
“Money’s tight. I know that much. We talked once about it when I had breakfast at Denny’s. She said she couldn’t afford to take more than two classes. The rich asshole stepdad isn’t helping.”
Leaning back on my stool, I thought about my muse stuck in that house with men who made her flinch. She hid her ugly life and smiled easily, but too much of it was a lie.
“Thanks for telling me,” I said, returning to work.
Nick never winced at the pain. He was cold as a fucker and I suspected if he were bigger that he might have taken down Cooper. My friend was hard, but he cared about his safety. I suspected Nick didn’t.
“I know what it feels like to want a girl and have her out of reach,” Nick said, reading again. “Lark deserves to be happy. She’s on her own too much and she’s not a person who does well alone.”
“What girl?” I asked, letting my curiosity out.
“Not worth mentioning. It’ll never happen, but you and Lark make sense.”
“Is it Farah?” I pushed. “The girl you can’t have.”
Nick laughed. “No. Farah’s great, but she’s like Lark,” he said, glancing back. “Delicate. Your girl is like a flower and flowers get bruised too easily.”
With that comment, Nick fell silent. I left him to his quiet and worked on completing another part of his tattoo. I didn’t allow myself to get distracted with worrying over Lark.
Yet, in the back of my head, I was already thinking how her family’s bullshit needed to be aired. No more protecting fuckers who caused her fear. Something needed to change.
Chapter Thirteen - Lark
When depressed, I clean obsessively. My manager called me the hummingbird housekeeper because I was a flurry of activity. I cleaned my tables, other servers’ tables, swept the floor, cleaned in the kitchen then started again. I wanted everything scrubbed down as if hoping to wipe away my unhappiness. It never worked, but I couldn’t stop myself.
Waking up and knowing I would tell Aaron goodbye, I was a frenzy of cleaning. Even focused on wiping tables, my mind saw Aaron everywhere. The green in the ugly carpet reminded me of the scales on his cobra. The blue on the tiles in the restrooms made me think of Aaron’s eyes. Every man I saw was compared unfavorably to the one I wanted. This included Dylan who picked me up for school.
That morning when he drove me to work, we were both silently angry. As he dropped me off at school, Dylan decided silence wasn’t working for him. He grabbed my wrist and stared down at me.
“If you sneak off again, I’ll know it.”
“Let go of me,” I whispered, afraid to lose my temper and cause him to lose his. I’d seen him truly enraged before and I knew he had no problems hitting a woman. “I need to get to class.”
“That guy will use you and toss you aside. You want to be his former slut?”
“I want to go to class.”
“I’ll be here when classes end and your loser boyfriend shows up. If you try to weasel out of telling him to fuck off, I’ll tell Larry and you can move the fuck out. Do you understand?”
Staring in Dylan’s eyes, I realized he was jealous. He would never really view me as a sister. This was as much of a certainty as how I would never view him as anything more than my asshole stepbrother.
Classes were boring and I nearly fell asleep a few times. The night before in the closet hadn’t been restful. Plus, I had nothing to clean and my depression lingered in my thoughts. While I dreaded telling Aaron goodbye, I wanted to get it over with too. I guess deep inside, I just wanted to see him. Everything was better when I imagined his gaze on me.
When my second class ended, I walked to the quad next to the senior hall. Both Dylan and Aaron were waiting. My stepbrother was glaring at Aaron who didn’t seem to notice he was there. Dylan remained on his Harley in the parking lot while Aaron walked towards me.